What is rapid prototyping and how can it apply to the ELT classroom?

Nicole Kyriacou
A teacher stood in front of her class with her students raising their hands
Reading time: 5 minutes

Tom Chi is an internet veteran with quite a resumé. His roles have been many and varied – from astrophysical researcher to Fortune 500 consultant and corporate executive, developing new hardware and software products and services.

He worked on Microsoft Outlook when it was in its infancy, was a major influence in taking Yahoo Search from 0 to 90 million users and is now Head of Product Experience at Google X – Alphabet’s secretive division focused on creating technological innovations for the future. It has produced the self-driving car and Google Glass, and its Project Loon aims to provide internet to every square inch of the earth.

At Google X, Tom was in a unique position – always having to think five, ten or even more years ahead in order to conceptualize and build the technology of the future. As you might imagine, this is far from an easy task; not only do the ideas have to be original, but they have to meet people’s future needs – something that is not easy to predict.

So, how does Tom and the others at Google X deliver their vision for the future using today's materials and technology?

That’s where Rapid Prototyping comes in. It’s a concept that allows teams to experiment, learn and adjust prototypes quickly and cheaply, so that projects (and products) get off the ground. Failure is seen as a starting block and an inevitable part of the learning process. Following his workshop, we are going to look further at rapid prototyping and how it can relate to the ELT classroom.

Integrating rapid prototyping into ELT teaching
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What are the rules of rapid prototyping?

According to Tom, rapid prototyping follows four main principles:

Rule #1:

You must find the quickest path to experience. Ideas are nothing until they have been tested; prototyping is the quickest path to go from guessing into direct experience. You will soon see an idea’s strengths, weaknesses and potential once you have tried it.

Rule #2:

Doing is the best kind of thinking. People are very good at imagining things, but until we try them, we won’t know what works and what doesn’t. By actually doing something, we’ll come up with new ideas, new challenges and new solutions.

Rule #3:

Prototyping follows a distinct pathway: from conjecture, to experimentation, to results and finally decision-making.

Prototyping rule #4:

Prototyping helps us reason in time and space: instead of lots of planning, imagination and guesswork, it makes us build something real, considering real use cases and real situations.

How does rapid prototyping affect progress?

The rapid-prototyping learning loop follows this pattern:

  1. Building a variation
  2. Testing with customers
  3. Observing results
  4. Adjusting from results

This process allows us to increase the chances of success in any given project dramatically. For example, if an idea has a 5% chance of success, by trying it 20 times there is a 64% chance of success and by trying it 50 times, there is a 92% chance of success.

Considering that each time an idea is prototyped, learning takes place, the chances of success are likely even higher with every trial.

But wait, what has rapid prototyping got to do with the ELT classroom?

Tom shows how a technology giant like Google can innovate and produce results quickly and efficiently through rapid prototyping – and all the while, he is explaining how much faster learning is when we experiment and do things.

Encouraging project-based work

Of course, our students are not innovating or building new products for tech companies, they are aiming to learn a language. But as Tom said, learning by doing is much faster and more effective than simply conjecturing and talking about theories.

Following his first rule of prototyping (find the quickest path to experience), we need to give students the experience of using the language as fast as possible. Project and task-based learning allows students to build their vocabulary, and test their grammar and overall communications skills in an authentic way.

This also covers Tom’s second rule (doing is the best type of thinking). If we can tap into our students’ creativity, we can allow them to experiment with language, discover what they know and what they don’t know, and then really work on learning the things they need for certain tasks.

When it comes to Tom’s third rule (conjecture, experimentation, results, decision-making), the teacher has more responsibility. We need to look at how we benchmark, measure and analyze our learner’s progress. Without a pathway, our students will not know how they are progressing and may easily lose motivation. The students therefore need to have a firm idea of their abilities, when they need to learn and how they are currently performing. We can then make decisions regarding individual class plans and syllabi.

Finally, by exposing our students to authentic materials, we cover Tom’s fourth rule (reason in time and space). Authentic readings, listenings and videos give learners the opportunity to work with real-world language, trying out what they are learning in authentic contexts. It helps them imagine using the language outside of the safe environment of the classroom too, giving them the challenge they need to push them into learning faster.

Fostering a growth mindset

The very fact that Tom’s team is able to imagine and prototype what seem like impossible ideas – that then have the potential to change the world – is awe-inspiring.

We can all learn from his vision, tenacity and methodology. At the heart of the experimentation and learning at Google X lies a growth mindset.

If we help our students develop a growth mindset, they will see failure as an opportunity to learn, as well as a challenge as a chance to grow, and feedback as a constructive way to improve.

Learning is a dynamic process. As teachers, it’s important for us to look outside the world of education to find inspiration and ideas. We hope this has sparked your curiosity and added a dash of inspiration for your future classes.

Read our post 'Fostering critical thinking in the classroom' and the webinar 'Develop a growth mindset'.

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  • a young man sat in a lecture hall with other students behind him

    How the GSE helped Salem State University meet learner needs

    By Sara Davila

    Salem State University is one of the largest and most diverse public teaching universities in Massachusetts. In total, it has about 8,700 students enrolled, 37% of whom are people of color. It also educates 221 international students from 59 different countries – with China, Albania, Brazil, Morocco, Nigeria and Japan among the most represented countries on campus.

    The university runs an intensive English language program. Most students who enrol come from China, Brazil, Albania, Vietnam, and Japan. The program also has a number of part-time English language learners from the local community.

    In 2016, Associate Director Shawn Wolfe and teachers at the American Language and Culture Institute did a review and found that areas for growth included establishing a universal documentation for identifying learner needs, goals and progress.

    “The biggest challenge was that we needed to have a better way of placing students,” Wolfe says. “We also needed to have a way to have our curriculum, our assessment and our student learning outcomes unified.”

    The team lacked programmatic data related to learning gains and outcomes. Additionally, they realized that assessments could be used to inform students about entry requirements at the university and other programs. And that’s where the Global Scale of English (GSE) came in, as a tool which enabled the staff at the American Language and Culture Institute to personalize and diversity their English teaching program to meet learner needs.

    Cultural and linguistic diversity

    David Silva PhD, the Provost and Academic Vice President, highlights the need for this type of personalization when it comes to education.

    “We have to be prepared for an increasing variety of learners and learning contexts. This means we have to make our learning contexts real,” he says. “We have to think about application, and we have to think about how learners will take what they learn and apply it, both in terms of so-called book smarts, but also in terms of soft skills, because they’re so important.”

    Silva makes the point that, as the world gets smaller and technology becomes a bigger part of our lives, we can be anywhere at any time, working with anyone from across the globe. “We need to be prepared,” he says, “for those cultural and linguistic differences that we’re going to face in our day-to-day jobs.”

    The ability to change and adapt

    So how does the curriculum at the American Language and Culture Institute help prepare students for the world of study and work?

    At the Institute, the general review led to the realization that the program needed to be adaptive and flexible. This would provide a balance between general English and academic preparation and would also encompass English for specific purposes (ESP).

    Wolfe says, “The GSE fit with what we were trying to do because it offers three different options; English for academic learners, English for professionals and English for adults, which is another area that we realized we needed to add to our evening program so that we can serve working adults that are English language learners in our community.”

    The English language instructors at the Institute were also impressed with the capabilities of the GSE. Joni Hagigeorges, one of the instructors, found the GSE to be an excellent tool for tracking student progress.

    “What I really like is that you can choose the skill – , listening, speaking – and you’re given the can-do statements, the learning objectives that each student will need to progress to the next level,” she said.

    Wolfe also commented on the GSE Teacher Toolkit and the way that it supports assessment and planning, allowing instructors to get ideas for specific learning objectives for groups or individual students. “It’s enabled us to personalize learning, and it’s changed the way that our teachers are planning their lessons, as well as the way that they are assessing the students.”

    A curriculum that will meet learner needs

    The GSE has allowed the team at the Institute to become more responsive to changing student expectations. The alignment of placement and progress tests to the GSE has allowed instructors to have more input into the courses they are teaching.

    Elizabeth Cullen, an English language instructor at the Institute, said, “The GSE helps us assess the strengths and weaknesses of various textbooks. It has helped us develop a unified curriculum, and a unified assessment mechanism.”

    This unification means that the curriculum can easily be tweaked or redesigned quickly to meet the needs of the students. What’s more, as Elizabeth points out, the students benefit too. “The Global Scale of English provides students with a road map showing them where they are now, where they want to go and how they’re going to get there.”

    Standing out from the crowd

    In this time of global hyper-competition, the challenge for any language program is finding innovative ways to stand out from the crowd while staying true to your identity. At Salem State, the staff found that the GSE was the perfect tool for the modern, data-driven approach to education, inspiring constant inquiry, discussion and innovation. It offers students, instructors and administrators a truly global metric to set and measure goals, and go beyond the ordinary.