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Slide Notes

"So, if everything went well, we should now have a lot of great information from our Empathy Interviews with other students. This information is going to lead us towards making our school better - but only if we are careful about it.

Let me tell you a quick story:

Imagine your friend runs up to you and says, 'I was just robbed!'

You're concerned, so you ask your friend 'who robbed you?'

They say, 'some old guy in a green shirt at the mall - I think his name was Hank.'

You ask, 'are they still there?'

'Yeah - I even know what store they're at!'

They tell you the store, and you call the cops, telling them where to find the man that robbed your friend.

When you arrive at the store, the police are there, looking very upset. You realize that the 'old guy in the green shirt' is the store clerk . . .

Your friend then says, 'why did you call the cops?'

'Because you told me you got robbed!'

'Yeah, well - the guy charged me $25 for a t-shirt that shrunk to half its size the first time I washed it!'

How could you have avoided that situation?"

(students turn to partners and talk it out, then share-out with the class)

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Asking the Right Questions

Published on Nov 22, 2015

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PRESENTATION OUTLINE

1.

ASking the Right Questions

"So, if everything went well, we should now have a lot of great information from our Empathy Interviews with other students. This information is going to lead us towards making our school better - but only if we are careful about it.

Let me tell you a quick story:

Imagine your friend runs up to you and says, 'I was just robbed!'

You're concerned, so you ask your friend 'who robbed you?'

They say, 'some old guy in a green shirt at the mall - I think his name was Hank.'

You ask, 'are they still there?'

'Yeah - I even know what store they're at!'

They tell you the store, and you call the cops, telling them where to find the man that robbed your friend.

When you arrive at the store, the police are there, looking very upset. You realize that the 'old guy in the green shirt' is the store clerk . . .

Your friend then says, 'why did you call the cops?'

'Because you told me you got robbed!'

'Yeah, well - the guy charged me $25 for a t-shirt that shrunk to half its size the first time I washed it!'

How could you have avoided that situation?"

(students turn to partners and talk it out, then share-out with the class)

Photo by ed_needs_a_bicycle
2.

Getting the Right INformation

"So . . . obviously, in that little scenario, you were trying to solve the problem - your friend getting robbed - in a way that made sense to you, telling the police who to arrest. But the problem was, you hadn't asked the right questions, or gotten the right information, so you solved the WRONG problem.

We don't want to do that with our school. So the first step was for you to do Empathy Interviews to get closer to what other students really want or need at our school. Now we need to figure out how to take the information we got and turn it into information we can use to make sure we solve the right problems."
3.

Distilling the Information

"So we have a lot of information to begin with, and we need to make it more manageable, and figure out which is the most important to focus on. To do that, we do something called 'distilling'."

"Anybody know what 'distilling' is? (hint - think boiling salt water to get salt)"

(student responses)

"Distilling is the act of getting down to the 'essence' of something. With salt water, distilling means boiling the water until all the water evaporates, and all you're left with is salt. With information, we're focusing on what is most important, while letting everything else get out of the way."

"So how do we do that?"

(students brainstorm in groups for 5 minutes - how do we "distill" information? share out)
4.

Finding Themes

"You've all shared different ways to 'distill' information - right now we're going to focus on 'finding themes'."

"You've probably done this before, but what we're going to do is take all the things people said and write them out. Then we're going to take those pieces and group them together into 'themes'."

"For example, we asked you all about student lunches, and when asked about what lunches you would like to see, we got the following information:

- ham sandwich
- grilled cheese
- tacos
- french fries
- turkey sandwiches
- pizza
- french fries
- ham and cheese
- fruit salad
- chicken tacos"

(write them all on the board)

"So how would we group these into 'themes'?"

(students group within their Family Groups and share)

Photo by formamind
5.

Choosing Priorities

"So now that we've got our groupings and themes - how would we decide which groups are the highest priority based on the responses we got? For example, if we could only choose one kind of food to get, what should we go with? Two kinds?"

(students share out)

(make sure to get responses and emphasize priority for the group with the most mentions, etc.)
Photo by London Permaculture
6.

Empathy Interview Themes

"Okay - so that might be a little too simple with the list I gave you. Now let's try to come up with some 'themes' from an Empathy Interview. We're going to do the same thing - list some things that came up, group them, and then choose priorities based on what was said most often."

"So what things did people say during your interviews?"

(students share out, write a number of items on the board until there are enough to practice grouping/theming with)

"Great. Now, in your groups, let's practice grouping this information and choosing priorities to focus on."

(students do that in groups)
7.

ASking the Right Questions

"How might we . . ?"
"So now that we have our groups and priorities, we want to create a few 'How Might We' questions to help us brainstorm. For example, if we found out that students really like PE because they feel better when they get to move around, how might we turn that into a question that starts with 'How Might We?'"

(student attempts - looking for an answer similar to 'How might we find ways to have students move around more in classes other than PE?')

(if there is trouble coming up with a 'How Might We?')

"The key is to focus on the main 'why' of what we find out. So, in the last case, why did the students like PE? Because of movement - so we want to ask 'How Might We get more movement.'"

"What if students did NOT like something? What if we found out that some students did not like their math class because the homework was too difficult for them to do on their own? What might the 'How Might We' look for that?"

(students try)
Photo by ed_needs_a_bicycle
8.

Empathy Interview 'How Might Wes'

"So now it's your turn. In your groups, 'distill' your Empathy Interview information, group them, and then create 5 -7 really strong 'How Might We' questions with that information. We will take these questions and use them to help us brainstorm solutions next time."

(students work on How Might Wes)

Greg Callaham

Haiku Deck Pro User