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Lesson 32: The Design Process

Overview

Over the course of five lessons, students will be building up to building a project of their own design using either Play Lab or Artist as their programming environment. In this portion of the project, students will learn about the design process and how to implement it in their own projects. The lesson guide overviewing all five stages of the process can be found in the beginning of the project process, here.

Purpose

Students may be ready to jump straight into building their projects, but this lesson will help shape their ideas into plans. This structure will keep the dreamers grounded and illuminate a path for those feeling left in the dark.

Agenda

Day 2 - The Design Process (45 min)

View on Code Studio

Objectives

Students will be able to:

  • Shape ideas into reasonable goals and plans.
  • Recognize any potential obstacles such as time constraints or bugs.

Support

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Teaching Guide

Day 2 - The Design Process (45 min)

Define and Prepare

Students will come up with a project and plan their strategy for programming that project in a single day. Students should have a project sketch and a description by the time the day is done.

Preparing Students for the Process:

The most important responsibility you have in kicking off this segment is to help your class understand the scope of this project. Students should be clear about the various expectations over the coming weeks so that they can prepare for their presentations appropriately.

To help your class manage this multi-stage undertaking, they should be given both the Final Project Design - Worksheet and the CS Fundamentals Final Project - Rubric on the first day of planning. Students will then be able to follow the rubric each step of the way to predict what their project grade will be in the end.

The Final Project Design - Worksheet will provide a place for students to capture relevant thoughts and processes as they go, so they are more prepared for their presentations in the end.

As the teacher, you should decide which elements of these documents are important to you and be sure to edit or remove anything that you do not intend to draw student focus.

Lesson Tip

Save 5 minutes or so at the end of the day to have students trade their Final Project Design - Worksheet to look at each other’s work. This will help make sure that nothing is omitted or overlooked.

Define and Prepare:

Now that the class has their Final Project Design - Worksheet in hand, they should start filling out the questions under Day 1.

Students will likely need to refer back to their notes from playing with the example projects, especially if they don’t have access to online Artist or Play Lab project levels while they plan.

Students should focus on defining and planning their project during Day 1, and not cross over into building until their ideas have been written up and/or drawn out.

If students get stuck, help them work through ideas by asking questions and recalling examples, rather than offering solutions.

Standards Alignment

View full course alignment

CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards (2017)

AP - Algorithms & Programming
  • 1B-AP-11 - Decompose (break down) problems into smaller, manageable subproblems to facilitate the program development process.
  • 1B-AP-12 - Modify, remix or incorporate portions of an existing program into one's own work, to develop something new or add more advanced features.
  • 1B-AP-13 - Use an iterative process to plan the development of a program by including others' perspectives and considering user preferences.
  • 1B-AP-14 - Observe intellectual property rights and give appropriate attribution when creating or remixing programs.