Up-designing Learning Experiences: Making Math Learning Irresistible
- Partnerships for Authentic Learning and Leadership
- Mar 14
- 3 min read
We think teachers are creative designers of learning experiences. We also wonder and worry about curriculum resources that assume high levels of student engagement. With up-designing, we consider both these ideas in authentic learning. Up-designing leverages teachers' creativity and authentic learning design ideas to enhance the existing curriculum. In doing so, the student learning experiences become more authentic, inquiry-based, agentic, and purposeful. The result? Engaged students and irresistible learning!
We use three up-design prompts to spark teacher creativity; they are:
See a problem with the curriculum or the community, solve the problem (rephrased tag line from our friend and colleague, Dr. Buddy Berry, Eminence Independent Schools, Kentucky)
Who needs to know? and/or Who can help us?
What if…?
For an example of what this looks like in practice, check out the creativity of Theresa Knapp, an Olentangy Schools Elementary Intervention Specialist, Creative Designer, and member of our Summer Institute Steering Committee at Partnerships. At a recent professional design session at our Innovation Design Incubator, Theresa thought about her second grade math group and asked, “What’s the problem with math learning in my context?”
We asked follow-up questions like, “Is it purposeful and relevant?” Theresa then asked, “Who could help us?” and What if we partnered with “expert” math learners? The outcome of asking these questions? Theresa reimagined a data science project that transformed traditional math learning into a short burst of cross-grade collaboration in data science and math stamina, with Kelsey Smith’s high school STEM class (also an Olentangy creative designer).
After Theresa discussed her students’ biggest questions about why math matters and what makes math learning easy and hard, the second graders collected data about elementary students’ perceptions of math learning at school and analyzed those data with Theresa.
The second graders shared their results with the high school STEM class. From there, the high school students prepared a slide show of their personal experiences with math learning in their computer programming class, sharing their ups and downs with math. They also shared their computer game prototypes with the second graders for testing and feedback. The outcomes for learning and life? For both groups of students, getting to know each other, sharing stories of math learning and set-backs (resilience), collaborating, and using data science skills, with an authentic purpose, were just a few of the results.
According to Theresa, the best outcome was the careful attention and engagement of her students with the high school students’ presentations. Hearing about older students’ math learning journeys did something special for their own personal connections to their learning. Connecting their data analysis to high school math learning made data science more purposeful and inspiring.
Years ago, we referred to projects like Theresa’s as peer-assisted learning, and it’s a powerful model with lots of science to back it. Theresa’s talents and instincts, sparked by her creativity, were good ones. She created an experience within the existing curriculum that up-designed the math learning process with authenticity, collaboration, and inquiry, and these qualities led to irresistible learning for both second graders and high school STEM students. This is an example of creative design thinking for learning experiences at its finest! Well done, Theresa, and thank you!