Remote Methods for Community Participation: Design of Enabling Learning Environments

Introduction

In 2020, at the time when the first waves of the Covid 19 pandemic reached South Africa, a group of four Honours students in architecture, interior- and landscape architecture from the Urban Citizenship Studio of the Department of Architecture at the University of Pretoria, were working on developing community action plans for a school in the City of Tshwane Metropolis. Many learners in the school would leave school before completing the academic program. To address the problem of low school completion rates, the design students engaged with teachers, learners and other community members to find solutions towards developing an enabling learning environment. The unforeseen circumstances of lockdown however brought an abrupt end to site-based collaborative design and forced the students to explore alternative modes of community participation. As a result, the project was expanded to explore the use of remote methods for community participation design.

According to Awan, Schneider and Till (2011: 57, 60) the role of the designer in participatory design is to facilitate the gathering and exchange of information, shared vision building and making design scenarios visible, understandable, accessible and scalable. Activities were developed that would enable community members to participate in design thinking, research and aesthetics using social media and other digital media platforms. This article provides a reflection on the process and outcome of the project.

Problem statement

The phenomenon of learners leaving school before completion of the academic program forms part of a larger challenge in Africa. The African Union’s “Continental Education Strategy for Africa” (CESA 16-25 2016:13) indicates that learner numbers in school drop from 79% at primary level (about 144 million), to 50% at secondary level, and 7% at tertiary level (CESA 16-25 2016:13). Completion rates in secondary school range from 29,5% for lower secondary school to 13,9 % for upper secondary school (CESA 16-25 2016:17). Further to this, around 30 million children in Africa are unschooled, with the number increasing as a result of rapid population growth (CESA 16-25 2016:13). Factors contributing to these dynamics are:

• discontinuity between home and school environments (CESA 16-25 2016:15)

• foreign language as language of instruction, which means learners must cope with learning a foreign language whilst adjusting to structured approaches in teaching and learning (CESA 16-25 2016:15)

• learners do not acquire the knowledge and skills expected at each stage of education (CESA 16-25 2016:15)

• more than two thirds of learners fail to read competently at the level they are enrolled for (CESA 16-25 2016:15)

CESA 16-25 sets out to “launch comprehensive and effective literacy programmes across the continent to eradicate the scourge of illiteracy” (CESA 16-25 2016:8) and highlights that “the capacity of families and communities to collaborate with schools (to enhance learning) are essential ingredients for a successful educational journey” (CESA 16-25 2016:15).

The role of community in education

A well-known African proverb states “it takes a village to raise a child”.

In the context of education, it can be concluded that education is a community-wide concern, and that “belonging” is critical for successful education (Gundara 2000:65, 74). An enabling learning environment provides opportunities for learners to engage in enjoyable, cognitively demanding literacy-related activities every day throughout the day, in- and outside of school, to enable “life-wide learning” (Dowd, Friedlander, Jonason, Leer, Sorensen, S’Sa, Guajardo, Pava & Pisani 2017:32). Life-wide learning is enabled at micro level when “home” and “community” form part of the educational environment. At home, literacy acquisition is enabled by the availability of reading materials and family habits such as reading together, talking together and helping with homework.

At community level, activities such as group reading or borrowing books from local mini libraries enable life-wide-learning (Dowd et al. 2017:32). In settings with economic- and resource constraints, illiteracy and unemployment, ways must be found to support and develop enabling environments which can connect community, home and school. In a sense then, “the village itself needs re-educating” writes Gundara (2000:74).

Author Yanki Lee (2008:31) in an article on community participation in design, states that end-users are often not involved in the design process. With this need in mind, the student-researchers from the Urban Citizenship Studio set out to develop a community action plan through community participation design.

Methodology

To enable community participation in design, a designer should explore platforms that enable innovative collaboration and social inclusion of end-users. Initial research was conducted on site and engaged learners and teachers at the school with which the Urban Citizenship Studio had an established relationship. The students had conducted a site analysis of the school grounds and the surrounding neighbourhood before the lockdown started. The community participants also included educators at the University of Pretoria Pre-University Academy (UP-PUA), community organisations such as the Scouts and Environmental centre, and community members met whilst conducting fieldwork in the neighbourhood. Community members invited the students to home, church and choir rehearsal visits.

These on-site interactions were however short-circuited by severe lockdown regulations. Connection to some of the community groups could be retained through social media. This enabled the transfer of on-site to remote community participation design. Sixteen community members, including educators at the school and the UP-PUA, leaders and church members at a local church, and colleagues from school and church that lived in the neighbourhood participated in the remote design process.

Lee (2008:33) differentiates between “abstract space”, the realm of design, and “concrete space”, where people live. Community participation in design requires the bridging of these realms of abstract space and concrete space. Social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Google applications (Forms, Google Meet and Google Jamboard) were used to engage with community members in design research, design thinking and aesthetics. Remote collaborative methods used in the community participation design project were evaluated for ease of use, effectiveness to enable community participation and enjoyment of users in design participation (Figure 1).

Most participants in the research project had access to a smartphone. In situations where participants did not have access to smartphones, Wi-Fi or data, hybrid methods were used incorporating SMS messaging, airtime calls or “please call me” options.

The development of stakeholder- and community briefs

Conversations were conducted with teachers and educators at the school and the UP-PUA to develop a stakeholder brief. The brief identified the following focus areas for the design intervention:

• Design interventions that would help to establish a sense of belonging for learners.

• Design interventions that would help to improved language skills, literacy and creative writing.

• Vibrant libraries as places of ideas, visual-, verbal and text-based information sharing, creativity, connection and collaboration where people from different backgrounds can connect and be united.

Ideation / Concept development

(i) Questionnaires, forms and open-ended diagrams

The input gathered from these briefs were reworked into questionnaires, interactive diagrams and forms that was sent to participants on WhatsApp to initiate ideation. Based on the premise that local mini libraries can enable life-wide learning (Dowd et al. 2016), help to build community, and provide social-, thinking-, meeting- and study spaces (Mirtz 2010: 857) questionnaires were designed to invite stakeholders and community members to explore what “a library” could be and what libraries can mean in the local context. The WhatsApp drawing tool provided a simple, playful and creative way for participants to engage with the questionnaires, diagrams and forms (Figures 2a and 2b).

Responses to the questionnaires and diagrams were posted on Instagram. The Instagram page enabled the sharing of information, ideas and comments while also building a sense of belonging by establishing an on-line community (Figure 3).

Positive response and discussions ensuing from the questionnaires and diagrams were reworked into an open-ended visual representation. Participants were invited to share ideas, stories or associations that came to mind when they studied the image (Figure 4).

(ii) Storytelling

Stories reveal the needs, aspirations and challenges of local people and provide insight into “the life of a place” (Hamdi 2010:68). Through events of co-creation, whether story-telling or co-design, locally relevant interventions can come to the fore which release the latent potential and energy in a place and enable self-expression in a community (Hamdi 2010:64-65).

Considering the importance of storytelling in oral cultures, people themselves could be seen as travelling libraries similar to library book-trolleys, moving beyond the boundaries of school, public and academic libraries.

Story trolleys could transport stories by community members recorded in writing, voice- or video recordings as well as books. In this way, story trolleys would provide community-wide connections along streets to support literacy through storytelling, reading and writing. From these discussions, the designers identified the potential of streets as the site of the design.

(iii) Streets as community learning spaces

Streets offer transitional, inter-relational spaces that provide opportunities for connection, social exchange and meaning creation in a community (Hamdi 2010:32).

Street- and streetscape analysis with stakeholders and community members provided valuable insight in local context experience of streets as public space. Participants described streets as “social places” where “people meet and interact”. Participants commented that the street looked “uncared for” and that “this area can be designed for” (Figure 5).

Using Google Maps and Google Jamboard, participants were invited to draw routes for the story trolleys. This activity exerted enthusiastic response from participants. Ideas were translated from “abstract space” to “concrete space” and enabled participants could visualize project in the local context (Figure 6).

(iv) Park ports

The exploration of libraries, streets and streetscapes led to the identification of a need for nodes, or “park ports”, where trolleys could stop along the way for community members to access stories and books.

Park ports would provide spaces where community members could gather, lend books, read together and share stories. The presence of park ports as literacy spaces would provide a visual and mental connection between school, pre-university academy, community and home, with the travelling story trolley providing the mode of connection. Further to this, park ports could also enhance the streetscape and provide a designed interface to support the social character of the streets. Park ports would be designed in compliance to municipal and safety regulations.

The idea of park ports was translated to small garden parks along streets. These parks would consist of modular elements: a surface finish to provide spatial definition, a tree or trees to provide shading, a bench or benches and a pavilion to could provide social-, reading-, study- and thinking spaces. Park ports and story trolleys could provide a means of documenting and sharing local- and indigenous knowledge, building social coherence, community identity and intergenerational knowledge sharing.

(v) Co-evaluation

Stakeholder co-evaluation of the concept proposal was conducted using email and on-line meetings. Stakeholders were positive about the idea of using trolleys to take learning and literacy into the community. It was suggested that different trolleys could be used for different topics, or that learners could each have a trolley to borrow books from school libraries to link the learning institutions with the community.

Stakeholders suggested that the pavilion and benches could become creative spaces. Pavilions could be painted in a bright colour such as red or yellow. This would also help to establish a visual connection between pavilions and help to establish the identity of the route.

Stakeholders were positive about the use of Instagram for building community and suggested that Facebook could also be used. Instagram and Facebook pages could also become part of the library (Figure 7).

Design research and aesthetics

(i) Materiality

Lee (2008:32) writes that even though design is increasingly focussed on process and function, aesthetics still is “the core knowledge” of design, and that user participation in design research, design thinking and aesthetic decision-making is often neglected.

To enable community members to participate in design research and aesthetic decision-making, a poster was designed for the identification and selection of local materials which could be used in the design of the modular library elements. The poster was sent on WhatsApp and invited participants to use their mobile phones to take photos of materials and street views, to describe what the participant liked about the materials they photographed, and how the materials could be used in the design. Community members were also invited to list local artists, craftspeople, storytellers and community members involved in building construction or gardening (Figure 8).

Community members sent photographs and participated in online discussions using Google Meet and WhatsApp. The results from the community design research and aesthetic analysis provided valuable opportunities for the gathering and exchange of information, discussion, and the facilitation of shared vision-building. This activity provided a way in which community design innovation could be shared in a visible, understandable and accessible way (Figure 9).

(ii) Model building

Remote model building workshops made it possible for community members to participate in the design and configuration of modular elements and the layout of library parks. To facilitate communication, working to scale and modularity, general packaging materials were used to build the models (Figure 10a).

A sheet of cut-outs was also designed which could be sent on WhatsApp or email to be printed or redrawn at home (Figure 10b). Model building workshops and discussions were conducted using Zoom, Google Meet and WhatsApp

(iii) Prototypes and presentation

Following on community participation in ideation, site analysis, design research and model building, prototype building using the material research, and models of modular elements and library parks would be the next step. The constraints of the academic term and lockdown regulations however did not allow the project to proceed to the building stage.

Online co-evaluation sessions were conducted by stakeholders and the research team and presentation- and construction drawings were developed to provide visual feedback of the possible outcomes of the community participation design process (Figure 11).

Discussion

The collaborative design activities explored in this remote community design project offered opportunities for individuals and communities to meet, to explore, discover and discuss issues of common interest or need, to exchange perspectives, and produce new information in an informal and playful manner. Awan et al. (2011: 57, 60) description of the role of the designer in participation design set the students from the Urban Citizenship Studio to develop processes and platforms that would enable community participation in the gathering and exchange of information, facilitate shared vision building and make design scenarios visible, understandable, accessible and scalable.

The participation of community members in the design brought richness and multiplication in creativity through remote community participation that could enable bridging the abstract - and concrete realms of design and community.

Expressions of social innovation came to the fore and were made visible, understandable and accessible. These ideas can be further developed and extended in the community.

Remote community participation in design was limited in situations where participants did not have access to smartphones, Wi-Fi or data. These conditions also inhibited the use of visual communication. Further research will have to be conducted to identify and develop alternative or hybrid methods of remote community participation in design in situations where users do not have access to smartphones or data.

In reflection, end-user design participation in the design of learning environments helped to facilitate the development of physical, relational and mental connections between school, community and families and perhaps help to reconnect the community, or “village”, to the learning of the child.