Project overview
LEGO® Serious Play™ (LSP) is well established as a business technique, it has been used widely in a number of commercial contexts such as telecoms and banking. However, although the basis of LSP is supported by many educational theories and practices,
it has as yet seen little application in educational contexts (McCusker, 2014). The LEGO® Serious Play™ (LSP) Method is one where participants use LEGO blocks as mediating artefacts to build symbolic or metaphorical representations of abstract concepts.
In this way participants’ conceptions of intangible thoughts and ideas can be concretised by a LEGO® Model. The sharing of such ideas through a physical representation allows them to be manipulated and positioned within a physical landscape which depicts how these ideas relate to those of other participants. This process provides a forum which facilitates rich discussion with other workshop participants.
Image credit: Alena Darmel via Pexels
More information
The aim of this study is to explore students’ attitudes towards using Lego to develop their professional skills (i.e., self-reflection) in Business and Management Education. The aim is to promote experiential learning in Business Schools. The main research questions the current study wishes to explore are:
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What are students’ attitudes towards the use of Lego as a serious play in Business and Management Studies?
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What are the challenges that students face when they get involved in group work in terms of their studies?
At least 100 level 4 students will be randomly asked to participate in a study in terms of the MN4057 (Digital Business Management and Emerging Technology) module. All students will be asked to take part in the Lego Serious Play (LSP) implementation as part of their module.
Students who will participate in the study will be chosen randomly depending on their willingness to participate and allow the researcher to use their essays. In terms of this study, they will be asked to form groups of three to four people and use Lego as a serious play.
They will be asked to imagine the kind of challenges they may encounter during their studies and use Lego to portray how they are going to overcome them. They will be asked to use Lego as they are often used, that is to promote learning by doing in Higher Education.
LSP are also very popular in assessment centres and students can start their preparation if they want to apply for positions in prestigious companies such as Amazon. They will be asked to read and sign an informed consent form after the researcher answers all of their questions.
They will then play with their group using Lego for up to 30 minutes. Students will be asked to write a reflection of their engagement in this activity and reflect on its worth and interest to them and their peers. Their reflections will be part of an online blog.
In progress.
- Conference presentations (London Metropolitan University Learning and Teaching Conference 2023, Learning, Teaching and Student Experience Conference 2023).
- Paper (in preparation).
