The LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®1 methodology has been used in teaching to spark innovation. Drawing upon ideas from constructivism - knowledge is not simply acquired but actively constructed,2 and constructionism – learning happens most effectively by making something,3 innovative ideas are built brick-by-brick from the students. On this topic our team member Jessica Coenen hosted a workshop at the Tag der Lehre 2025, which took place in the University of Münster Schloss on 27. October. This year the overarching theme was "Teaching for the future: learning and teaching through collaborative research.’’
The LSP workshop opens with a skill-building phase to break down barriers of fear and establish commitment from the students to work with LEGO as a medium to be creative. Within the skill-building phase the students are introduced to the circular process of (1) constructing, (2) sharing, and (3) reflecting their creations. The next phase gives the students a priori selected small projects, in the form of building contracts to work on. These building contracts are developed in a way to align with the learning objectives of the module, project, or programme. The circular process of (1) constructing, (2) sharing, and (3) reflecting repeats again here. The workshop concludes with a few students presenting their creative solutions for the building contracts to the entire group and one final round of sharing and reflecting.
We thank all those who participated in our LSP workshop at the TdL25.
Literature:
“Open Source - Serious Play Pro.” Serious Play Pro, https://seriousplaypro.com/about/open-source/. Accessed 23 Feb. 2024.
Piaget, J. The Child’s Conception of the World. London: Routledge, 1951.
Papert, S. Mindstorms. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1980.
