Village Tech Schools

Designing an experience and opportunity for students participating in virtual learning to reconnect with their peers and community. 

  • In the Fall of August 2020, The SMU Master of Arts in Design and Innovation (MADI) studio class partnered with Village Tech Schools to explore how they might improve the online learning experience for teachers and students at Village Tech Schools. The Fall Human-Centered Design cohort consisted of sixteen SMU MADI graduate students, MBA students, and creative computing undergraduates who were then split into four groups, in order to tackle the How Might We question from four different angles. This project lasted a total of 4 months and ended in December of 2020.

    The main point of contact for Village Tech Schools was Elizabeth Podany the Director of Curriculum and Innovation at Village Tech.

  • Madison Becker- Madison Becker is a second-year MBA & MA Candidate studying Accounting and Arts Administration.

    Caroline Harms- Caroline Harms is an Interior design consultant and first-year graduate student in the MADI program. With a background in Human rights, politics, and design, she hopes to expand her knowledge in design research and design content with an intentional intersectional approach.

    Sisi Kang- Sisi Kang is a senior undergraduate student studying at the Meadows School of the Arts, majored in Creative Computation, minored in Cognitive Science. She enjoys Product Management, User Experience, and Service Design.

    JT Ringer- JT is a first-year graduate student in the MADI program and the Prop Supervisor for the Divisions of Theater, Opera, and Dance at SMU. He has also worked in the Prop Departments at Plays in the Park, Opera Boston, The Brevard Music Center, and The Santa Fe Opera. In his free time, he enjoys woodworking, homebrewing, and cooking.

  • How Might We Improve the Online Experience for Students and Teachers at Village Tech Schools. 

  • Students and teachers across all grade levels at Village Tech expressed an issue of connectivity and resources while both learning and teaching virtually. 

  • Created and designed a three-tiered experience that includes an 8x11 box, a zine, and a how-to guide that would connect virtual students back to their community at Village tech. 

  • To provide virtual students with tangible access to tools, motivation to engage all while participating in class virtually.

How Might We Improve the Online Experience for Students and Teachers at Village Tech Schools. 

How Might We Improve the Online Experience for Students and Teachers at Village Tech Schools. 

In the Fall of 2020, we found ourselves deep in the trenches of the COVID-19 pandemic. The world had been through massive changes in such a short amount of time and there were still so many uncertainties on the horizon. One of the many challenges was that schools across the nation were struggling to keep their students and teachers who were participating virtually motivated and engaged. SMU MADI partnered with Village Tech Schools to brainstorm how we might help improve the online experience for students and teachers at Village Tech. 

With our research question defined, we began gathering context and striving to understand the full scope of the project. We began by conducting background research on Village Tech to get a clear understanding of the school's culture and core values. We watched two town hall meetings posted on YouTube, visited the school’s website and social media pages, read local newspaper articles, and toured the campus.  This general context building led us to some key insights into the school's core values and culture. We learned that Village Tech placed a strong emphasis on five core values: empathy, design, voice, connection, and belonging. Below is an excerpt of the five core values as defined by Village Tech:

Empathy: Integrity and empathy are at the heart of design, therefore we, Prioritize character and compassion. 

Design: Teachers design meaningful work, therefore we, Support the teacher as designer, inquirer, and artisan. 

Voice: All students have something to contribute, therefore we, Provide opportunities for students to develop their strengths and produce work of depth and quality. 

Connection: Integrate subjects, skills, and the world, therefore we, Make learning-rich by connecting subjects, skills, and students to the world beyond school. 

Belonging: Build genuine relationships with students, therefore we, Create settings where teachers and students can know each other well. 

In addition to these five core values, Village Tech also placed a high level of importance on Sean Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens. Those habits being:

  1. Be Proactive

  2. Begin with the end in mind

  3. Put first things first

  4. Think win-win

  5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood

  6. Synergize

  7. Sharpen the saw

Students at Village Tech are encouraged to live by these seven practices, and the 7 habits can be seen on posters across the campus. 

The five core values and Covey’s 7 Habits have a profound impact on Village Tech’s culture. Students at Village Tech take problems into their own hands and discover their own solutions. At Village Tech if your computer is broken you learn how to fix it. If you need a box you make it yourself. The students and faculty are encouraged to be self-sufficient and take ownership of their work.

We saw this culture firsthand when we had the opportunity to visit the Village Tech campus. While on our visit we saw the incredible breadth of tools and design prototyping material available to students. Below is a picture of the tools and materials available to students at Village Tech. 

  1. Dignity and respect 

  2. Voice 

  3. Neutrality and transparency 

  4. Trustworthiness 

Over the 16-week project period, our team facilitated 8 hours of interviews. 5 hours with village tech employees, 2 hours of group interviews with senior students on miro, and 1 group interview with parents.  After completing all of our interviews, we began to synthesize all of the data and information we collected. From our interviews we learned three key things:

1. We learned the definition of the two key terms we were trying most to understand, Forge and Tools. 

2. We got a better idea of how we should define equitable access to tools. 

3. We discovered that there were two more hypotheses we need to consider before moving forward on a prototype. 

The first key thing that we learned from our interviews was that Forge was a state of mind and the act of creation, and to the teachers at Village Tech Tools were anything that could help you Forge. This information would prove to be vital later on as we developed our prototype. 

The second thing we learned from our interview was that we need to have a clearer definition of what we meant by equitable access to tools. Particularly because it was apparent that there were some large socio-economic gaps at Village Tech. We knew we couldn’t attempt to solve these socio-economic gaps, but there was another way we could frame the issue. For the purposes of our project, we decided to define equitable access to tools as virtual students receiving the same access to tools that in-person students received. However, accomplishing this newly framed goal would be nearly impossible, because there was no way we would be able to transport a laser cutter or a Mac computer to every virtual student. 

The third thing we discovered from our interviews was two new hypotheses that would later lead to our first prototype. As stated before, we quickly realized that if we were defining equitable access to tools as virtual students receiving the same access to tools as the in-person students, we could not actually achieve complete equity. Then we started thinking, if Forge is a state of mind, and a tool is anything that helps you Forge, maybe we didn’t have to bring students a laser cutter. Maybe it could be simpler than that. Perhaps it was less about the tools themselves and more about the feeling of being physically connected to Village Tech. Maybe it was simply about the feeling of having design tools, any design tools, in your hands. That became our second hypothesis, connection. Maybe by connecting students back to the feeling of being at Village Tech, we could improve Village Tech’s online learning experience. The third hypothesis we discovered came from all of our interviews. We heard from teachers, parents, and students that motivation was an issue.  Students were struggling to stay motivated to do the work, and they were struggling to manage their time. So naturally, we couldn’t ignore motivation as a key hypothesis. We then considered, perhaps through some sort of motivation tactic we could improve Village Tech’s online learning experience.  

At this point, we had three hypotheses, equitable access to tools, connection, and motivation, but no clear forward direction. That is when we hit our innovation point. 

Ultimately, our team of four designed an experience that could be adapted into a variety of situations while encompassing the values of village tech and encouraging the students to forge creatively. This experience is called VT @ Home. Village Tech at Home is a three-tiered experience that includes an actual 8x11 box, a zine that also has a social media component and a how-to guide. The VT @ Home experience is important because it was created with the intention of bridging the gap of connectivity between the at-home students and the in-person students. Addressing the issue of connectivity while also providing the students with tangible access to tools that are provided in the box, connection to village tech, and motivation to engage in their at-home and in-classroom settings. 

This concept was necessary because, in our interviews with Village Tech Students, we found that students felt disconnected, and unmotivated in their virtual classrooms. We found that many students felt distracted at home and didn't have the access to tools that they normally had when they were at Village Tech, in person. They missed using the resources they had there and visual and kinesthetic learners expressed a struggle to keep up. Additionally, teachers and students expressed that they were worn out and needed assistance with motivation. For these reasons, our work with Village Tech and our ultimate design solution, VT @ Home, was imperative. Through our work, we were able to draw connections between feelings, emotions, and ideas that teachers had tried to previously articulate but hadn't been able to express.