Session 5: Facilitating future skills using Lego ® Serious Play®

Abstract

Serious Games, simulation and gamification in education is widely used to motivate and engage students in improving their knowledge, understanding and confidence using real world situations (Mekler et al, 2017; Tews et al, 2020). The demands of complex and uncertain organisational life once leaving Higher Education can be an exciting, yet daunting prospect. Students need to have the freedom and safety to explore their own skills and competences prior to graduating in order to feel confident and competent to meet the real-world challenges they will encounter once they graduate (Ӧzhan & Kocadere, 2020). Lego® Serious Play ® can facilitate the thinking, communication, and problem-solving skills in order to help students build reflexivity, resilience, competence, and deeper learning, supporting immediate action learning (Oxford Analytica, 2016). Lego® Serious Play ® is a facilitated meeting, communication, and problem-solving method, where participants are led through a series of questions, which go deeper and deeper. Each participant builds his or her own three-dimensional LEGO model in response to the facilitator’s questions using specially selected LEGO bricks. These 3D models serve as the basis for group discussion, knowledge sharing, problem solving and decision-making. The session will outline the methodology and process of Lego® Serious Play ® in more detail. The collaborative work undertaken by LBS and Student Futures will demonstrate how it has been employed to support students who have been on Business & Management Placements and those who are seeking to gain important career development skills to support green careers and in sustainability jobs. Insights from the session will be useful to those in academic and student-facing services adopting this innovative and inclusive methodology and will resonate with those who wish to develop student engagement, confidence, reflexivity and impact.

Facilitating future skills using Lego ® Serious Play® PowerPoint.  Only LJMU staff and students have access to this resource.