Destination Imagniation

A quick tour through the ideas of Destination Imagination.
Destination Imagination is a student team competition that involves creative pursuit of a challenge or set of challenges that the students have to problem-solve in order to complete. It is a successful student extra-curricular “competition”, but could its principles and programs be utilized in other ways? As a former sponsor of student teams such as Odyssey of the Mind, Science Olympiad, Science Fair, Technology fair, Drama conferences/puppetry competitions, robotics fairs, and several others, I think that I have a good perspective from which to review Destination Imagination. Much of the program is very well done, but a closer analysis may help to see where it stands in relation to current educational goals and where it may be able to go in the future. Here are some of my observations and ideas about the DI program.

Commendations:
1. Team approach, seven members is the right number for good group dynamics. Also, cognitive abilities are not the most important factor for team member participation. (Unlike some mathematics competitions, etc.)
2. Open-ended challenges offer greater room for creative or original solutions than some other similar competitions with a “kit” available to use to “do” the challenge.
3. Encouragement of fluency in certain content areas.
4. Offers an output for certain creative impulses for kids that may not be served anywhere else.
5. Competition is present but not stressed at a high level.

Questions:
1. Authenticity? Always a question with regard to many of these extra-curricular or enrichment activities. To what degree are these challenges addressing the types of problems or challenges that students may face today or in the future? This is not exactly clear. Further thought to why each challenge is presented may be needed. How is it related to possible future skills/content/learning? How are these challenges tied to the community, country, or the world of today or tomorrow?
2. Alignment with Learning Standards. Many are “listed” in a document on the DI website, but it is not clear how or if any particular standard will necessarily be addressed by any particular challenge. Due to open-ended nature of some of these, it may be difficult to align these in any specific way with learning standards. This needs careful consideration before it can be said that any one challenge definitely does address a specific standard of learning. In a sense, the educational “objectives” of what students should Know, Understand, and be able to Do are not clearly articulated, but this is inherent in the open-ended nature of most of these challenges, so it may be rather difficult to make these connections within the design.
3. Twenty-first century skills. Some of these do address the new skills needed in this century as identified by several educational groups. However, are these skills TRANSFERRED or connected from the DI activities to other areas of the curriculum or needed learning? What type of research should be done to determine whether any of the skills, knowledge, or ideas generated through DI are being utilized in other content areas, or if the students involved are able to transfer these skills to other disciplines?

How DI could be implemented within the school day: (pros/cons)
1. As a Separate class. One teacher only needs training. Easier to schedule, but may not be feasible for one teacher to coordinate all activities. However, this also may not be possible for all students to have equal access if they can not fit this class into their schedule.
2. Within one class. Again, easier to schedule, but it will take away time and resources from the current teacher/class. What should be done to insure that DI does not adversely affect any other parts of the curriculum?
3. Integrated approach across disciplines. This may be the best approach of all. Teachers share responsibility for team groups and their challenges. Schedule may be an issue depending on how it fits within the existing curriculum. Requires all teachers to be on board and work together in the challenges (this may or may not be an issue in some schools). Requires training of all teachers in DI, which may be cost and time prohibitive.
4. Only some elements are stressed or utilized. Some may be easier to use than others depending on the nature of a school’s curriculum. However, the entire program may have a greater impact than piece-meal approaches. In addition, could a team compete with other groups without doing all parts of the challenges?

How DI as curricular component could change school:
1. Nature of learning—student centered, constructivist, instead of didactic. Students and learning take the center stage (literally).
2. Standards of content—some pure “content” may be stressed less over thinking and making the “next best solution” the goal rather than the grade or passing a specific test on content.
3. Assessment—the nature of the assessment process may have to be adjusted. Tests that require students to think in unusual ways to solve a problem may be needed to assess how well this program is working.
4. Cooperation instead of competition between classmates. Working together is always preferable, although some competition can also be a good motivator.
5. Celebration of success in thinking and original ideas rather than skill or perceived ability. Levels the playing field in some ways in that higher cognitive ability may not necessarily translate into higher achievement in DI.
6. Social nature of group problem solving may change the way students view school itself. In my view, anything that can “de-institutionalize” the school system and make it more student-friendly is a virtue.

What about the Creative Problem Solving model and DI?
CPS in a nut-shell:
1. Objective Finding. Situation, Brainstorm goals, Consensus choice of one.
2. Fact Finding. Brainstorm related facts, rank relevance, all perspectives given.
3. Problem-Finding. Brainstorm-re-statements of problem. Get best consensus definition.
4. Idea-Finding. Diverge—brainstorm all possible solutions to problem, then Converge—Sort/rank these.
5. Solution-Finding. Brainstorm criteria of best possible solutions. Rank these and then choose a best solution based on matrix.
6. Acceptance-Finding. Implementation issues are brainstormed and implemented into solution for best acceptance.

Now, this type of problem solving is useful in some areas specifically. In science, for example, parts of this would work well for a group trying to design something in engineering or trying to get a good idea for a science project. Destination Imagination could offer some of this type of problem-solving through its challenges and CPS and DI would work well together as models for approaching group problem-solving. This skill set might be transferrable in this type of setting. However, with students choosing the goals and objectives in DI, there would need to be some careful supervision and guidelines to insure that the process would work properly and the group would not get distracted by alternative possibilities. The pre-set parameters of DI challenges including limited time, space, and materials help to constrain certain tangents, while encouraging others. This same approach could be used in more general terms for the entire program, but must be carefully adjusted to the developmental level of the group. Balancing the right amount of constraint with the right amount of freedom of creative expression would be critical. From the aspect of “Flow”, the right amount of challenge and potential success from previous skills must be balanced such that the group will have the maximum possibility for growth and learning. If DI could be designed for level-specific feedback and control loops for groups, such that it could be adjusted appropriately as groups gained skills and needed greater challenges, then it could possibly show through research how it not only could encourage creative thinking, but actually teach it! This would be important for addressing some of the questions such as alignment to SOL objectives and transfer of the new 21st century skills.

Two General Ideas:
1. The overall system of public education must become more balanced towards constructivist approaches and creative expression in terms of its goals, philosophy, and objectives. This is asking the system to move towards DI some.
2. Programs like DI must adjust some of their parameters and implementation options such that they can be utilized by schools as part of their curriculum. In this way, they may need to move a bit towards the “system”. However, they can maintain their mission, but just plan to offer more streamlined “options” for those systems that will want more potential structure or specific content addressed through any program used within their schools.

Destination Imagination is a good program worth pursuing right now as either enrichment and/or extra-curricular as well as potentially meeting many of the 21st century educational goals. We need more programs like this to explore alternatives and encourage our future creative thinkers.