Hands-on projects can instill teamwork, design thinking among students

By having his 9th-grade students build a tiny home for the homeless, Tacoma, Washington, teacher Joe Romano said every member of his architecture and design class developed collaborative skills, he wrote in EdSurge.The students learned architecture, design and carpentry skills and concepts; conducted site visits and studied existing houses; and worked with computer-aided design software, a professional tool used by architects and engineers, Romano wrote. In addition, class members practiced seeing themselves as designers and problem-solvers in constructing a solution over a five-month time frame.Students each had opportunities to lead at different points of the process, and peers gave each other both positive and constructive feedback throughout the course. Romano also pushed each person to self-reflect over the course of the build, he wrote, which helped them reflect on their work and what kind of impact they felt they were able to make on their community, he wrote.