Objective:
- To explore, understand and describe a situation or problem
- To create a collective understanding or meaning from a group
- To visualise and communicate complex ideas effectively
Overview
This task focuses upon visual representation of problems and how this helps define a situation. It is essentially the transmission of ideas into pictures. It is used to stimulate participants in a programme to express themselves and their ideas in a pictorial form, often with the use of metaphor. It then stands as a basis for discussion of participant ideas and concepts.
This approach is recognised within some subject specialism as a rich picture, as a way to explore, acknowledge and define a situation and express it through diagrams to create a preliminary mental model or visual representation of the situation or challenge. A rich picture helps to open discussion and come to a broad, shared understanding of a situation.
Activity
Participants are asked, usually in groups, to discuss the meaning of a concept or an event or to explore a situation or problem. They are asked to portray this in pictorial form as a basis for presentation and discussion with other participants.
- The class is divided into small groups and each group is given pens and a flip chart sheet. The group are asked to ‘discover’ their own meaning through discussion and to write down or draw what they see as the key components
- The group is then asked to draw a picture which they believe encapsulates the meaning or the issue
- The picture is then shown to the rest of the class and the class (not the group) are asked to describe what it means to them
- This is then compared with the meaning that the group was trying to portray and the group are asked to explain this to other participants
- The facilitator notes all the meanings given and attempts to pull these together for discussion of the concept and why it was given different meanings. Academic concepts and research work can be introduced to build wider understanding (and credit can be awarded for its inclusion).
The approach can be used in a number of ways but most importantly to test understanding after readings and discussion and, to harvest pre-conceived views and attitudes relating to a subject as a basis for discussion.
If you wish to focus the activity, you can ask the group to identify opposing elements inherent within their challenge and use these are axis. So a groupmight identify “speed” as a key element of an activity (such as inherent within the eating-out experience) and also “service”. This would create two axis of Fast and Slow (for Speed) and High levels of service with No service. This creates four quadrants that they can seek to describe through a rich picture. This would show what fast, high level of service restaurant experience would be like, against a slow high service experience etc. You can then invite them to title these quadrants and explore them for benefits/costs.
Skill Development:
The exercise aims to stimulate creative expression. It also is designed to give ownership of learning to participants by creating discussion on the basis of their existing knowledge and ideas. With sufficient pens available, there will be no ‘lead author’ and therefore a strong basis for mutual understanding is created. A sense of ownership is given to the group and participation in learning is maximised.
Explore with the whole group the power of visual presentation and their perceptions of their involvement. Explore their satisfaction with the finished product and how well they feel it worked as a mechanism for communicating with a group.
Resources:
- Flip Chart / large paper
- Pens
References:
Gibb, A and Price, A “A Compendium of Pedagogies for Teaching Entrepreneurship” ncee 2nd Edition, 2014; first published in 2007
http://ncee.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Compendium-of-Pedagogies.pdf
Seek additional guidance relating to Rich Pictures from work within Soft systems methodology