MUS reflection

Sophia Rowen- MUS Reflection

Some notable things I observed at MUS summarized below:
1. Time of day influences level of focus

2. Time was an obvious constraint (Most students at the table I was facilitating were not able to test their designs because they ran out of time and had to listen for instructions on the next round)

3. Wording matters (The round where the students have to work together and use an 'idea' from each of the members in their group I found was confusing and difficult for students to adhere to)

4. Students need to see their group members test their own designs
          - students need to see what works and what does not work with the members of their groups      
designs
          - students need to have a discussion about each of their designs before going into round 2 and round 3, otherwise they won't collaborate successfully in round 3

5. Classroom influences level of engagement (student's are comfortable in their own school maker space, it would be interesting to see the level of engagement with the same students in the Ex-Lab)

6. Group dynamic matters (it would be interesting to have groups chosen by the students vs. groups chosen by the teacher)

I think that the curriculum could use an added section that includes student's taking time to write down their goals for each iteration, and that way they won't have the same design for each iteration, I found that many student's used the same design for each round and they were not changing the design necessarily, but may have been thinking that they were improving the same design. If this was the case, it could be helpful to have them jot down some ways that they imagine changing their design to meet the requirements and constraints of the challenge.

I enjoyed observing the students at MUS, the space that we facilitated the engineering design challenge was amazing. I noticed stark differences in the way the student's responded to KJ's introduction versus the way student's responded to the introduction given by Kevin and Juliana. Having two 'teachers' can be confusing and cognitively demanding for student's to listen to both voices. However, I thought this was a cool way for us MAPS to have experience teaching the curriculum and I wish I didn't have to leave early to go to my midterm!