Educator Design Process

When I started combining design processes with engineering, I refused to call it the Engineering Design Process. My take pulls elements from Maker Education, Design Thinking, Montessori, and incorporates a lot of art making. So I summarized phases and created a list of questions I wanted to ask students regularly in each phase. In turn, I then created questions I need to ask myself as I’m designing open-ended inquiry lessons and units. This PDF has both and is free to download.

If you are an educator, your design process should start at SHARE or EVOLVE and work backwards. This is not a new thing, its called ‘Backward Design’ and was introduced in 1998 by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe as an approach to instructional planning that starts with the end goal, then works backward from there. If you are interested to learn more, I’d recommend Jennifer Gonzalez post from Cult of Pedegogy.

If you’d like extended version with the icon visuals that you can use, you can download that for free from my TPT.