I learned of LEGO Serious Play in a Playful Learning Workshop organised by Digital Learning, and I immediately decided to give it a go. As a consequence, I borrowed three LEGO kits from the Digital Learning team. Then I tried it out in the first lecture of MANG6321 Introduction to Business Analytics and Management Sciences.
In this lecture, I introduce the concept of a model, and LEGO is a perfect modelling material. I asked my students to build their own models in five minutes, using no more than 10 bricks each. They could model whatever they liked. Next, I asked each of them to show me their model and explain what they built.
I was really impressed by their creativity. Among other things, their models included various vehicles, robots, castles, a clock and even a chocolate biscuit! Most importantly, this in-lecture exercise allowed me to draw my students’ attention to the definition of a model and features of a good model such as accuracy and stability. It also helped them reflect on how to improve models: have more time, more material/data, better material/data etc.
A few students cleverly joined their models together into a larger creation, which sparked a discussion about systems of models. Moreover, this exercise was a good icebreaker, very much needed in the first lecture in Week 1, and it seemed that my students really enjoyed it.
To sum up, I found Serious Play very helpful and would like to use it again in my lectures.
Dr Katarzyna (Kasia) Bijak
Lecturer in Management Science
Southampton Business School
University of Southampton
Want to know more about Lego Serious Play?
- CELT Manchester Metropolitan University. (2018). LEGO® Serious Play®. [online] Celt.mmu.ac.uk. Available at: https://www.celt.mmu.ac.uk/teaching/lego_sp.php [Accessed 17 Oct. 2018].
- Dann, Stephen (2018) ‘Facilitating co-creation experience in the classroom with Lego Serious Play‘ in Australasian Marketing Journal Vol. 26, Iss. 2, pp.121-131, May 2018.
- Heacademy.ac.uk. (2018). The Serious Business of LEGO® Play | Higher Education Academy. [online] Available at: https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/blog-entry/serious-business-legor-play [Accessed 17 Oct. 2018].
- James, Alison (2013) ‘Lego Serious Play: a three-dimensional approach to learning development’ in Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education Issue 6, November 2013
- Kristiansen, Per, and Robert Rasmussen. Building a Better Business Using the Lego Serious Play Method, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/soton-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1724877.
- Priestner, Andy ‘Seriously useful play: adventures in LEGO Serious Play’ in Walsh, Andrew Inspiring, innovative and creative library interventions: an i2c2 compendium, Lepton, Huddersfield: Innovative Libraries, 2015.
- Wikipedia.org. (2018). Lego Serious Play. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Serious_Play [Accessed 17 Oct. 2018].
How can I try this?
The Digital Learning Team has three LEGO kits that can be booked by emailing Digital-Learning@soton.ac.uk
Read our other blog posts about Lego in education.