A Bite at Conceptual design?

"What does conceptual design really look like in food technology? It is not trailing recipes so what do teachers teach? Food sketching?? Sensory analysis?" 

This is a question that was posed to me by my colleague and mentor 'Lesley Pearce' as a potential topic to discuss within my blog. To be honest it was a justified question that often comes up, as unlike the other technological disciplines, in Food technology it is a little harder to collect evidence of conceptual design.

Explanatory Note 4:

    A conceptual design clearly communicates a proposed technological outcome that has the potential to address the brief.  It is a detailed description of how the outcome would look and function.  Conceptual designs can be presented using a variety of techniques which may include but are not limited to – freehand sketches; diagrams; technical drawings; scale models; computer simulations; written descriptions; details of materials, components and/or assembly instructions.

So like I do with many of my previous blogs I asked teachers what they thought. I have enclosed a response that I got from Ritu Sehji, HOD food technology at Westlake boys high school, Auckland and some student work of what evidence could look like from Louise Clouston from Westlake Girls, Auckland.

                 

    Conceptual Design in Food Technology

My take on it, by Ritu Sehji, Westlake Boys High School 

 

Concept design is subset within product development. Initial ideas must be screened before trialling and testing so resources are not wasted.

The first step is to really understand the definitions and differences between:

1.     Concept

2.     Conceptual development

3.      Design concept

4.      Conceptual design

Concept is:

-       An abstract idea

-       A plan or intention

-       An idea or invention to help sell a commodity

Concept development is a process driven by-

a set of customer needs and

target product specifications, which are then converted into

a set of conceptual designs and

potential technological solutions

A design concept is the idea behind a design.

It's how you plan on solving the design problem in front of you.

the underlying logic, thinking, and reasoning for how you'll design a product. Your concept will lead to your choices in ingredients and cooking methods etc.

In order to come up with conceptual design the following questions must be answered or investigated

 

Conceptual design is the very first phase of design, in which drawings or solid models are the dominant tools and products.

 [ Solid models in food technology would be - Disassembling existing products, Analysing material/ingredients, Trialling and testing] 

I googled images for concept design in food and food concept designs but all I found was design sketches for restaurants, appliances, kitchen tools and gadgets.

Technical and Aesthetic- how the product will perform can be explored by trialling and testing

  Constructional- Production plans, flow diagrams

http://www.nzifst.org.nz/creatingnewfoods/product_concepts2.htm

CREATING NEW FOODS THE PRODUCT DEVELOPER'S GUIDE

Mary D. Earle and Richard L. Earle

So in summary after doing some research and trying to make sense of it all, this is what I think conceptual design in food technology.

Product idea concept is developed from:

market and consumer research

technical aspects considered

product idea/concept research leads to a more detailed description of the product ideas

Idea screening

consumer focus group (30-60) Groups of 6-8 people

Needs and opportunities/wants identified

Benefits for customers/stakeholders such as basic product benefits, use benefits, psychological benefits)

 When writing product idea concepts for use in further consumer panels or consumer surveys a consumer focus group is given the product idea description which is developed into a product idea concept. Be brief and present a picture of the product, use simple language, pinpoint the kind of product, do not exaggerate, describe the product’s reason and show that it has a useful and needed advantage over existing products.

vanseodesign.com/web-design/design-concept-thoughts/

www.ata-e.com/services/conceptual

support.ptc.com/WCMS/files/43559/en/CD2069_v4.pdf

Evidence what should it look like?

Level 1/ AS91046 or 1.3
EN2: Use design ideas to produce a conceptual design for an outcome to address a brief involves:

·      generating design ideas

·      testing design ideas through functional modelling

·      using stakeholder feedback to inform decision making

·      using findings from functional modelling to select design ideas

·      producing a conceptual design for an outcome

·      determining the outcome’s potential fitness for purpose.

Use informed design ideas to produce a conceptual design for an outcome to address a brief involves:

·      creating design ideas informed by research and analysis of existing    outcomes

·      evaluating findings from functional modelling and stakeholder feedback to justify the selected design ideas.

Use refined design ideas to produce a conceptual design for an outcome to address a brief involves:

·      testing, refining and evaluating design ideas through functional modelling and ongoing research

·      justifying the potential fitness for purpose of the outcome.

So, in answer to the initial question, Testing and trialling is acceptable evidence as long as it is combined with the above examples.

 

Karen Huo, Year 11 WGHS

Alice Taylor, Year 11, WGHS

        EN6: Functional modelling is used to explore and evaluate developing design ideas.  It is undertaken to gather evidence on all aspects of the outcome including its likely technical feasibility and social acceptability.

Sketching food designs as part of a discussion around acceptability of meeting the brief is good solid evidence but only part of a portfolio of evidence.

At level 3: AS91610

EN4       The brief used for this standard must allow judgement of an outcome’s fitness for purpose in the broadest sense.  Fitness for purpose in the broadest sense relates to the outcome described by the conceptual design, as well as the practices used to develop the conceptual design.  Judgements about fitness for purpose may include:

·      considerations of the outcome’s technical and social acceptability

·      sustainability of resources used

·      ethical nature of testing practices

·      cultural appropriateness of trialling procedures

·      determination of life cycle, maintenance, ultimate disposal

·      health and safety.

The brief may be provided by the teacher or developed by the student. 

In the following piece of work, the teacher set the task for students to explore ethical issues, report it through a media presentation while also producing an example of how to get around the ethical dilemma.

Sarah Leaf, Year 13, 2013, MHS

 Obviously this piece of work was part of a much bigger portfolio that collected evidence from trialling, testing, stakeholder feedback and more. However it is a good example of what a conceptual design could look like. Not sure I would want to prepare the recipe after reading the first two pages of work, but perhaps that was the point?

Does anyone else have some examples they would like to share? Please send them through to me at n.price@auckland.ac.nz

NCEA, Vocational Pathways and Transitions

As a parent and Educator I have long taken an active interest in how we support students make choices around career pathways. I have used this blog to unpack the three main tools that can help students define their pathways.

NCEA and the New Zealand Curriculum

Curriculum design and review is a continuous, cyclic process. It involves making decisions about how to give effect to the national curriculum in ways that best address the particular needs, interests, and circumstances of the school’s students and community. It requires a clear understanding of the intentions of The New Zealand Curriculum and of the values and expectations of the community.
http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/The-New-Zealand-Curriculum/The-school-curriculum-Design-and-review

The front end of the document discusses the vision and pedagogical practice of learning. Sharing key competencies and the model of inquiry teaching, both of which should be embedded in every teaching and learning scenario.

 

http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/The-New-Zealand-Curriculum/Learning-areas

There are 8 curriculum learning areas which are detailed in the back of the NZC and each one shows progression steps for more in-depth learning it is expected that to suceed at NCEA level 1 students will be working at curriculum level 6, NCEA level 2 at CL7 and NCEAL3 students will be working at CL8.

Technology Teachers are supported through course, learning task development by the teaching and learning guides.
Level 6
http://seniorsecondary.tki.org.nz/Technology/Achievement-and-learning-objectives/Level-6
Level 7
http://seniorsecondary.tki.org.nz/Technology/Achievement-and-learning-objectives/Level-7l-7 
Level 8
http://seniorsecondary.tki.org.nz/Technology/Achievement-and-learning-objectives/Level-8

But what does this mean to the lay person? How do parents and potential employers enable students to set value on what is important to them for success?

 There is a new resources that I have found incredibly helpful..... "Understanding NCEA'.

Chpt 6 “What parents can do to help” - focuses on “Making NCEA work for your child”, also included is an example of how to understand a schools course outline – to determine students pathway options. I would be promoting this to school communities as a way for parents/caregivers to stay in connected and knowledgeable about what is happening in your childs school.

English and Samoan language copies are available of this useful tool developed by Starpath researchers

There is not much advice out there around the best options to take or what courses lead into particular careers. This gap in explanatory support is currently being addressed by the minstry of education through the development of their pathways framework.

Vocational Pathways

The six Vocational Pathways improve the relevance of learning for students by indicating how their learning and achievement is valued by broad sectors of the workforce. Each has been colour coded for ease of recognition to help students and teachers plan study programmes.

http://youthguarantee.net.nz/vocational-pathways/

Contextualised learning improves the relevance of learning for young people by connecting it to the worlds of work and interest. It also makes better sense when delivered in a coherent learning programme.

Strengthening and building partnerships between secondary, tertiary, and ITOs

Collaboration and communication between secondary, tertiary, and ITOs will enable educators to develop a full understanding of their students’ needs and how best to accommodate these.
The following questions will help you to initiate conversation and reflection.

---

• What are our students’ needs? What evidence do we have to inform us? How do we use it?
• How will students’ progress and needs be monitored and shared?
• Who do we currently have relationships with?
• What possible new partnerships could be formed? Who should do this?
• How would new partnerships create benefits for our students?  
• How could partnerships be strengthened?
• How will new initiatives be tracked and monitored?
• How could we alter our business model or share funding to accommodate greater changes?

The Vocational Pathways Level 1 and 2 refinement process is now complete (for a summary of the pathways and outcomes of the process, go to: http://bit.ly/1hXT0Rz ); and draft Level 3 standards, as well as qualification maps, for Levels 3 to 6 are now available. In September 2014, the Ministry sought to refine the Vocational Pathways to ensure coherent, consistent, balanced assessment opportunities were available across all six Vocational Pathways. (Education Gazette article, 2015)

In regards to technology teachers, tools associated with VP for teaching and learning are:

•  The Vocational Pathways documents - Detailed description of intent and process
  
• The Recommended Assessment Standards - These have been aligned to sectors to show students key skills that relate to each particular sector.
  
• The Profile Builder - For students, by entering standards within their courses they can see which sectors they align with across all their subjects.
  
• Job Profiles  - For students, to link interests, subjects studied and preferences to specific job ideas for future careers. 
  
  
  
  

They also have some neat student stories that could inspire both teachers and students. http://youthguarantee.net.nz/vocational-pathways/students-and-whanau/view-their-stories/ 


Ok, so as a student you have been clever and planned your secondary pathway. You know what you want to do as a career and you want to got to university. You have the entry criteria, but..... do you have the ability to suceed?????

Transitions

NZC (MOE NZ)

 Focussing on the senior school and transitioning from school to tertiary training or employment. Tertiary training could be University's, Polytechnics or trade based training PTE's. Each of these have differing requirements for entrance into each course.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2008/sep/09/students.highereducation

Discussion in the media is always rife around the lack of successful transition by school leavers into tertiary courses, and as such perpetuate the myth that schools do not enable students to suceed outside of school. Given my understanding of schools and the data that shows

 

https://cdn.auckland.ac.nz/.../Stumbling-blocks-or-stepping-stones-Resea...

Dr Irene Andersen our literacy lead facilitator shared an interesting article which discusses the literacy requirements needed to suceed within tertiary courses and the gaps from what students are transitioning into these courses with.

 

http://www.nzcer.org.nz/nzcerpress/set/articles/let-s-talk-about-literacy-preparing-students-transition-tertiary-learning

 The findings from this article argue that  

"At the heart of the gap our students must traverse lie fundamental misunderstandings between teachers across the sectors. Neither group fully understands the extensive changes the other sector has undergone within the last 10–20 years"

So my thoughts are leading me towards suggesting to teachers when designing courses at level 1, 2 and 3 NCEA to consider the skills required sure, but also think about the relevance to pathways and transitioning your students beyond school. Do your research and make informed decisions that model the front end of the New zealand curriculum's Inquiry teaching model.

Technology Literacy

& Literacy abled in Technology

This was the title of a recent cluster meeting that was run in Auckland. Dr Irene Anderson (our Literacy specialist and a lead facilitator working at the University of Auckland) and I worked on putting together a workshop to help technology teachers understand the complex nature of Literacy in the subject area of technology. For this post I am going to share the content that we covered with the hope that it may be of interest to other teachers out there.

It is important to realise that both of these are important and both are quite different in the context of technology education.

being technology literate is more about the ability to understand and succeed within the subject, where as being literate in reading and writing enables students to be able to access success. The three biggest barriers that I have come across in the schools that I work in are:

In reflecting on the barriers we decided to split the session into three sub parts looking at Vocab, Reading comprehensions and Writing Frameworks.

Initially on entering the room we gave teachers either a word or a definition of subject specific terminology, asked them to find their partners and quickly brainstorm an elevator statement that they could use to describe their subject to a layperson. This is a technique you could use within the classroom to unpack words that students need to understand.

We then looked at two Digital tools that could be used to support Vocab building. The first was to use a QR code that can be scanned by students on their SMART device that then links to and opens a PADLET page, through which all students can type a response to a question or in this case I wanted the teachers to post a descriptive word that unpacks the picture. The show was used as a visual prompt and the ability to post words or comments around the prompt extends vocab that is specific to the context that we are looking at.

I have talked about the second tool in my last blog on Augmented Reality. Using a SMART device to scan a poster in the room that links to a video explanation is also a good way to enable students to reflect on taught knowledge if they were not sure or had forgotten the meaning. I can see the potential for students to prepare their own AR posters for the classroom or even as part of their design portfolios.

 

We introduced the idea that reading subject related stories, magazines, blog etc added to the students 'Kete' of experiences that could be drawn on, reflected on and discussed within their portfolios towards achievement standards. However, sometimes this is a hard task as the students can find the content difficult to unpack and make meaning of. For this strategy we used a story from a 2014 issue of the 'Connected series' from literacy online.

 

http://literacyonline.tki.org.nz/Literacy-Online/Teacher-needs/Instructional-Series/Connectedv 

 

The story called "Black is Back" discusses the dying process used to treat organic substances used in the traditional process of creating the 'Piu Piu"(Dancing Skirt).

This strategy was used to check meaning and summarise the content in a succinct way. Three different scenario's were given and students through collaboration had to choose the description that most matched the meaning.

Moving onto the last section:

I thought it was important to focus the writing section on the ultimate goal, which is to support students to successfully achieve in the external achievement standards. I am specifically talking about the generic standards at each level that require students to write reports of their technological experiences that they have undertaken throughout the year of learning in a way that addresses the question or topic. I think it is fair to say that the criteria for achieved falls directly to students being able to DESCRIBE, for Merit they need to EXPLAIN and for excellence they need to JUSTIFY the processes, decisions and thinking that has underpinned their experiences.

My recommendation is to use the above tool (or one similar) to unpack the standard before you design the tasks for learning. By unpacking in such a way it becomes very explicit for teachers to design learning experiences that hit the desired outcomes or learning objectives.
In terms of writing support a writing framework is a good tool to brainstorm and collate evidence in a way that enables the students to see the correlation between their thinking, their project and how to show this for the external examiner.

Please note: that the panel leaders reports in recent years have suggested that using a template such as the above and submitting as part of the external report can limit the success of the students achievement. This suggests that the markers require more depth and breadth in the students' explanations. This sedgeways beautifully into the last strategy that we discussed which was on the importance of using transition or linking words. In the example used below you can see the direct link to Point: Describe,  Explain: Explain and Extend:Justify. The template also gives examples of how linking words can be used to show the difference between these three. 

Ka kite Ano
Nicole