In each charrette, HCDE
undergraduate students function as
classroom teachers, conducting the
workshop, presenting the material,
and facilitating the activities of the
K– 12 student groups. In addition to
guiding the students in the process,
they also must exercise good classroom-management practices for a workshop
to be successful.
The charrettes are typically offered
in classrooms with 20 to 30 students,
with special events accommodating as
many as 60 participants. We find that
it is most effective to have students
work in small groups (of usually three
to four), having one undergraduate
student facilitator for each four to 10
of the K– 12 students. Middle school
students generally need more coaching,
so more undergraduates are deployed in
those classrooms.
The workshops are planned to
last between one and five hours. This
provides opportunities for the K– 12
students to interact closely with the
college students. These interactions
often lead to informal conversations
between the two groups that are
priceless. K– 12 students frequently
ask questions about college studies
and life outside of academic pursuits.
Having the opportunity to spend time
with current undergraduates allows
them to envision themselves as college
students, which is often difficult for
young people, especially in underserved
communities.
We find these direct classroom
interactions with current
undergraduates to be far more effective
in generating interest in human-centered design, engineering, and
college in general than using traditional
“booth and brochure” methods of
outreach to K– 12 students.
CO-DESIGNING
THE CHARRETTE WITH
TEACHERS TO FIT
THE CLASSROOM SETTING
Our team takes a human-centered
approach as we design a charrette.
We identify the needs of the students
and research their educational and
community environments. HCDE
undergraduates co-design the charrette
workshops with the classroom teachers.
They interview the teachers about
student interests, learning goals,
available time, room layout, students
with special needs, and classroom
technology. This allows us to customize
the workshop.
Co-designing with teachers in an
urban and rural setting. While we
do many workshops locally, near the
U W Seattle campus, we also try to
reach schools that are outside of this
urban area to fulfill our mandate as
a public state university. Students in
districts farther away from Seattle
have a harder time learning about the
U W and its myriad opportunities.
To work with schools in distant
communities, we collaborate with the
U W Pipeline Project [ 2], which has
been successfully bringing outreach
workshops to remote locations in
Washington for decades. In one such
effort, we offered a weeklong workshop
at Neah Bay High School and
Markishtum Middle School, both in
Neah Bay, Washington, in conjunction
with Pipeline’s Alternative Spring
Break (ASB) initiative [ 3].
In Neah Bay, the charrette
workshop took place in one-hour
class sessions each day for one week,
in middle and high school classes.
Planning the curriculum for such
a workshop began more than three
months in advance. In a visit to the
school in the autumn, program leaders
met with the school’s educational
team to discuss workshop topics and
Figure 1. An HCDE student provides feedback to middle school students on the interaction flow for the app they are designing during a charrette.