Incorporating Student Voices with Participatory Design

Students and teachers spend their days subjected to policies, guidelines, and mandates that they rarely have any say in. Why is that? If we develop policies, guidelines, programs, even buildings with rather than for students and teachers, the result can be a success for all.

That’s what we did when we developed social media guidelines for students at the NYC Department of Education—we incorporated the input of relevant stakeholders. Only later did we realize this process has a name. It’s called the “Participatory Design.” And it worked!  

Here’s what our version of the participatory design process looked like:

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