Situation
Loreto Normanhurst, an independent school for girls is running a Design Sprint program at scale for 180+ year 10 students in November 2021. ADAPTOVATE partnered with them as part of our commitment to Pledge 1%.
The school has partnered with 9 businesses including Netflix, Google, Universal and Guzman y Gomez to help them solve 9 business problems with an adapted version of the widely used Design Sprint format created by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky in 2016 (book published).
Students work on the business problem throughout the week in small consistent teams of 8-10. The teams are self-facilitated.
Twenty five staff support the students throughout the week and guide them to an outcome which includes understanding new ways of solving problems and creating prototypes of solutions for the business leaders involved and the companies they represent.
Complication
The teaching staff from Loreto from varied disciplines need to be trained on how to run Design Sprints without incurring program expense. In 2021, approximately half of the teachers facilitating have never participated in the program. For the third time in four years, ADAPTOVATE supported their learning as part of their 1% Pledge initiative of three critical parts of the Loreto Design Sprint program in a two hour interactive workshop focusing on:
- How to create and build a map which outlines the problem and encourage the students to target a part of the problem for their solution
- How to ‘sketch’ a solution for the problem
- How to support the team as they build a prototype
ADAPTOVATE is fully committed to Pledge 1%. Loreto shares a conscious for supporting great community initiatives. How important is it for Loreto to team up with like-minded organisations?
I cannot stress enough how important it is for the values of each organisation to be aligned in order to make a week like this successful. I always start with transparency so it’s very clear from the outset what we are looking for in a partner and what they are likely to get out of the experience.When I am assessing whether a partnership is likely to work I have a couple of strategic filters that I apply. Is the organisation already engaged in contemporary best practice? Are design sprints and/or human centred design a familiar space for them? If so, they will likely send the right person to work with the students and they will respect and value the process.
An organisation might not be operating in the space but have a sticky problem to solve, if that problem is likely to resonate on some level with students and be within their real or imagined domain expertise they might also make for a good partner.
We work with big business and social enterprises, while social enterprises often really ‘speak’ to our students desire to ‘be the change’ we’re also seeing so many companies recognise their potential for good. Consider how many Loreto graduates may well end up working for the world’s most recognisable brands and be part of the team that ushers them into the next era.
Liz Green, Knowledge and Learning Strategist; Teacher at Loreto Normanhurst
If you have an organisation that would like to discuss ADAPTOVATE assisting you through our Pledge 1% program, please contact us via our website home page.
