Applying the LEDx to BIG Design Challenges

Design Challenge #1:  Office Hours

Brad Griffith - September 8, 2016

I selected the Design Challenge #1: Office Hours because I consider office hours (and often one-on-one meetings in my office) to be prized contact time between learners and instructors.  

Discover - Student and Instructor Needs, Expectations, Goals

Students that visit instructors during office hours usually fall into two categories: they are missing a concept and may express an uncomfortable vulnerability by coming to visit me or they are a highly motivated student that needs additional help in meeting a goal.  This is also the case with my current position in that I help people solve problems or achieve goals. 

Understand - Create a Better Understanding 

I personally underutilized office hours as a student.  Office hours as I have experienced them can fall into a trap of mirroring a lecture that was already done in the classroom where the students don't get a real opportunity for one-on-one practice.  Sometimes resources can be given such as additional problem sets, but the efficacy is debatable. 

Envision - What Should This Become?

I asked myself now what I most wanted out of office hours as a student and as an instructor.  I recall my greatest experiences being those in which my professor was personable, helped me solve a problem, and I came away with a feeling of preparedness, like I had accepted a challenge.  This usually began through informal conversation at the beginning of the meeting.  

As an instructor, this would be the key to helping me to lower the effective filter as soon as possible in meetings with students to really get at why it was taking place and what we needed to accomplish.  

Next is perhaps the most important part.  Instead of the easy way of ending here and just giving the learner some information, it's important to proceed through a practice phase in which the leaner demonstrates competency or understanding of the conversation to the instructor.

This could be as simple as asking someone to repeat what you've just told them or to attempt to solve a mathematical equation. If the problem is, for example, a conflict in the workplace with another employee, this step could be an employee making an attempt at resolving the conflict.

This provides an excellent opportunity for further interaction between learner and facilitator through offering feedback.  This could be either positive reinforcement or corrective, depending on if the attempt was successful or not. 

I can see there is an opportunity here for a feedback loop in that an instructor may have to return to the topic at hand, allow for another practice attempt, and provide another round of feedback on that second attempt. 

In the end, I want to capture the notion of a student accepting a challenge at the end of the meeting. This should be something that allows a student or employee to demonstrate that they have mastered the competency that was dealt with earlier in the learning environment, perhaps requiring communication once more with the facilitator in the form of an assignment or other communication.  This could also come in the form of a student taking an exam.  

Now that I've gotten this far, I would also hope that this entire learning environment as I'm about to form it could form a continuous loop.  All instructors hope that students will repeatedly visit in office hours, not just for the times when they can't master a concept, but also when they are looking to expand their horizons.

Build - Develop the Learning Environment

After going through these first few phases of the LEDx process, it was quite easy to construct this LEM in Lucid Chart.  I think I may have created an innovation loop in this model as well.  

You'll notice on here that I have indicated this is a classroom environment with an online asynchronous evidence block at the end. These are entirely flexible since the initial interaction could be done online through a program like Skype.  Similarly, the follow-up task that I created at the end could be experiential.  

I look forward to hearing your constructive feedback about this model and to see how others approach this challenge.  Thanks for reading!