Abstract:

All education involves a transfer of knowledge; sharing knowledge, skills and ideas in one person’s head and seeking to develop a similar mental model in the head of another person. Educators use a range of pedagogies to facilitate the transfer of knowledge. Methods are then used to assess the effectiveness of the knowledge transfer through structured questioning, testing and practical activities to enable students to demonstrate their ability to apply knowledge. These methods used to evaluate knowledge transfer can unwittingly cause stress, promoted by the fear of being wrong. The student can struggle to articulate their ideas effectively and tutors can struggle to bridge the gap between the words the tutor speaks and the interpretation of the words heard by the student. Despite knowledge sharing being at the heart of pedagogy, the question remains: how do we measure the differences and similarities between the mental model in the head of the tutor and the mental model in the head of the student?

Lego® Serious Play® is a structured method of using Lego® bricks for problem solving and sharing tacit knowledge. The method is often used for strategic planning and knowledge management in facilitation workshops in a range of industries. It is based on Piaget’s constructivism theory providing mental stimulation to transform learning.

An advantage of Lego® Serious Play® is that the methods encourage participants to externalise their thoughts, building a physical representation of their mental model. Participants then share their Lego® model using the Lego® Serious Play® method, sharing their mental model by explaining its physical representation in the Lego® model. This has a further advantage in that by externalising the mental model, the model can be discussed more objectively. Discussing the model in a more personally removed manner, participants become absorbed in the discussion of the model, rather than be overcome by fear of personal judgement.

This paper presents the results of a pilot study to assess the ability of Lego® Serious Play® as a means to represent the extent to which the mental model in the head of the tutor has been successfully shared with students. The work focuses on how the method can be used to evidence whether students have developed a similar mental model in their heads and how similarities and differences can be surfaced.

The paper explains how Lego® Serious Play® was used with postgraduate computing students to examine their understanding of a process that had been introduced, discussed and applied in a range of classroom activities. Each student was asked to build a model of their understanding of the process and share their model with each other. This provided a medium for similarities and differences between the models of each student, and that of the tutor, to be objectively observed. The process allowed deeper comprehension to be explored as questions were asked about why certain elements were positioned differently in different models. Finally a shared model was built to provide a collective mental model of the process, which was deeply enriched with meaning for all students. The initial pilot suggests that Lego® Serious Play® is an effective method for creating a safe environment to externalise and share mental models, promoting meaningful discussion. This research will be of interest to tutors who are seeking novel ways of encouraging students to share their thoughts and build richer mental models.

Keywords:

LEGO® Serious Play®, mental models, postgraduate, knowledge sharing.