“Designed to support students who are deaf or hard of hearing, Discover UCL is a summer school that aims to encourage prospective Year 12 students to consider applying to university through a range of informative and interactive sessions. The three-day specialist programme features BSL interpreters and live captioning across all talks. It is one of only two widening participation programmes in the country aimed specifically at deaf and hard of hearing students.”
In July 2024 I was invited to take part in Discover UCL – a summer programme for deaf and hard of hearing year 12 students interested in applying for university. As a qualified Lego® Serious Play® facilitator I had used this active learning technique with my colleagues in HEDS and suggested that this gamification approach to learning might benefit this particular programme. I conducted a pilot study with the other facilitators who have been working on this programme for many years so that they knew how the session would run. I then created a bespoke Mentimeter for the session with 2 questions that the organisers wanted the students to engage with:
- Their motivations for attending university and the anticipated challenges they might face as deaf individuals.
- Their definitions of success and the paths they envisioned to achieve it.
“The session began with a brief introduction to LSP to structure the activity. The introduction alongside other instructions was delivered using Mentimeter (an interactive presentation software) as is the case for other LSP sessions on team building.
This was the first time that the students had engaged with Mentimeter and Lego® in an academic setting. Each student was given a Lego® Serious Play® kit and they were tasked with creating a Lego® model representation in response to the first set of questions. At the end of the creation period, participants shared and explained their Lego® models to the group using a pointer to highlight areas of particular significance in their models.
Students were encouraged to ask questions about each other’s Lego® creations rather than directly questioning the individual. For e.g., asking “What does that green block represent?” rather than “Why do you think X will be a challenge?”
While some concerns were specifically related to deafness, such as the need for support arrangements, most concerns were like those of any student considering university—financial issues, leaving home, fitting in, and making new friends.
The second set of questions followed a similar process. When asked about success, students largely associated it with financial stability (e.g., home ownership, car ownership) and achieving career success through hard work and progression. Interestingly, deafness was not seen as a barrier to achieving their defined success. “
(Anjoom – UCL Arena, facilitated the Lego Serious Play session)