Using the power of design to reimagine science education in Puerto Rico
(originally published April 2017)
Last week, Cenadores Puerto Rico (@CenadoresPR) invited us to the Yale University School of Management to work with a dozen scientists representing Ciencia Puerto Rico (@CienciaPR). In their 10 year history, Ciancia Puerto Rico has been dedicated to increasing the importance of science in Puerto Rico by: improving scientific understanding, advancing and connecting local scientist, facilitating grants to local laboratories, assuring that the science industry plays a larger role in the local economy and improving science education.
Ciencia Puerto Rico wanted to look 10 years into the future to develop strategies that assured their members played a significant role in improving Puerto Rico’s future. After having done multiple stakeholder interviews and researching the needs of Puerto Rico’s scientific community, they discovered that the core strategic need was to provide quality science education on the island and to drive greater appreciation for the process of scientific investigation.
However, knowing what to achieve and understanding how to actually achieve it are two islands separated by an ocean of challenges that can only be crossed by constructing a ship with a new way of thinking and innovative solutions. That’s where we come in. Our assignment was to help the leadership team reimagine how they might dramatically improve science education so that, in the future, Puerto Rico will be assured to produce some of the highest quality scientists in the world.
From the start we were aware of the challenges that could come from working with scientists who constantly analyze quantitive data and seek step improvements. We believed these challenges would prevent them form thinking beyond their evidence, harnessing creativity and focusing on qualitative human centric insights and results. However, the Ciencia Puerto Rico team quickly understood that one can only achieve different results by changing one’s mindset and taking a different course of action than in the past.
Our two day Design Thinking Sprint began with a quick introduction to our design mindsets, which puts emphasis on being human centric by understanding the needs, motivations, and insights derived from real stakeholders. The first experience focused on what we call Investigating for Insights. We broke the group into three teams tasked with developing a persona (an archetype representation of a specific type of stakeholder) around a student, teacher, or scientist. This exercise allowed them to develop empathy and a deeper understanding of what barriers each stakeholder had. These insights would then be used to create value adding and impact creating solutions. Afterwards, we had them create their moonshot, the most exaggerated outcomes possible, followed by the redefining of the challenge around their stakeholder and the development of a more realistic yet bold outcome. This is our way of helping people aspire for bold new frontiers beyond the stereotypical set of “been there, done that” ideas. We ended the first day in our design phase, where teams used some best practices in brainstorming to create large quantities of diversified ideas. We did this by pushing them to harness creativity using ideation techniques like role storming and constraint ideas. Finally, the teams finished by using dotmocracy to organize and identify those ideas with the highest potential value.
Day two started with another round of rapid ideation, followed by a shopping cart debates where ideas had to meet criteria that balanced innovation, influence, importance, and team energy. Each team chose one idea to develop further and explore its possible applications, additions, and execution details. By mid-day, teams moved to the experiment stage where they developed storyboards, prototypes, and refined their ideas with the resulting learnings. By the end of the day each team presented their ideas in a Shark Tank inspired pitch session where they received constructive critiques from other teams, which they would later use to improve their ideas and start developing a plan to move their concepts toward future testing.
We are excited by the prospect of seeing these truly inspiring and transformative ideas take hold in classrooms all around Puerto Rico. Additionally, we feel honored to have helped a group of such intelligent and committed individuals who aspire to improve Puerto Rico. We believe so much in their mission that we have committed ourselves to supporting Ciencia Puerto Rico in the coming months as they test, plan, and activate this project. You can find out more information about Ciencia Puerto Rico on their social media pages and at cienciapr.org.
