Me and my four friends who had taken Design Technology as a subject decided to form up Design club as our CAS project. Where we aimed to give students the experience of an actual Designer’s life in various different forms like graphic, industrial, architectural, product, fashion and etc. For this project around 20-25 students from grades 9-11 enrolled in order to learn about design. We started by giving a brief about this club and asked the students their expectations from us and we cleared our expectations from them. The following sessions were planned by following the modules we created, in which one was on basics about designing, second about CAD, and third about Graphic design. Due to the pandemic, the club was completely taken online and students were not able to make any tangible products rather they had to create designs or prototypes.

Learning outcomes achieved: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ,6, 7

LO1: Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth

All the founders clearly new our strengths which was our knowledge about design and our passion towards this subject so we were teaching the subject with the mindset that we will be able to pass our knowledge to other students who want to pursue a career in design just like us. And from this club we are also able to grow and learn from the students we are teaching as well, as we were inspired by some of their ideas and designs.

LO2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process

During the experience the thing which I found the most challenging was sometimes managing the students, even though we were 5 people hosting the sessions it was difficult for us to handle the doubts of multiple students at once as it was our first time teaching. But we slowly overcame this challenge as a group as the session went along we got a hang of it and it became comparatively very easy to handle students. With the help of this challenge I faced I was able to improve my communication skills as I had to interact with the students constantly to manage them. Another challenge I faced was that we had to manage this club alongside our studies and assignments which was quite troublesome. I was able to overcome this by creating a proper schedule which helped me organise my tasks.

LO3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience

For initiating and managing the club required a thorough planning in order for the club to run smoothly. First of all me and my friends decided the aim of the club, then the targeted age group, then the curriculum, sessions, etcetera. Also we planned how will conduct the sessions, the flow of teaching and we decided to divide each session’s curriculum into 5 to make the task easier. This required a lot of planning and meet ups amongst us five hosts and design technology subject teachers in order to come with this plan. Although the difficulty we faced was managing the club alongside our studies but we helped each other to complete the tasks.

LO4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences

Commitment and perseverance was shown by each one of us in order to make this club a success. We all had a sheet where we noted down our tasks allotted to each person, to make things clear and easier to follow. Also even after a tiring school day we took time out of our day to meet up and plan the next sessions of the Design Club. Also during weekends we met in order to check students progress and their work. Occasionally tasks were not completed on time but during those moments we helped each other out to complete them.

LO5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively.

In this project 5 students of Design Technology subject decided to start this club. We had a lot of fun in planning and teaching throughout as we were like minded as we all had similar interests. With the help of the club we were able to grow our friendship as well. This project wouldn’t have been a success if we weren’t 5 people, this is because there were lot of tasks to do in order to plan for the sessions and also there was school assignments we had to do simultaneously in order to not lack behind on the studies. So being 5 people helped us out here as we were able to divide the tasks and responsibility amongst each other. We also divided the curriculum to teach as per our strengths, as if I am strong in a particular topic of design then I will teach that topic to the students, so similarly we did that and divided the curriculum amongst us five. Also we gave group tasks to students in order to make them work collaboratively, which made the classes fun and smoother to run. From working collaboratively I was able to learn communication and collaboration skills.

LO6: Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance

Throughout the course we taught the students about green and sustainable designs, this topic is extremely important in the current generation as environment and natural resources are continuously depleting due to irresponsible consumerism. Green and sustainable design surrounds around creating products in such a way that it harms the environment in the lowest way possible. So with the help of the club we were able to make the students more aware about this issues of global significance and possible solutions to those issues.

LO7: Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions

Designing is one of the key reasons behind the depleting environment and natural resources, as mentioned earlier, consumerism has led to the depletion. Ethic of choices and actions of a designer plays a crucial role in helping the environment. The designers should be inclined towards making green products in order to help the environment. Green products are products which minimise waste and pollution. Also they should focus on creating products with bio degradable materials, as they can be easily disposed after use. We taught all the concepts to the students in order to make them responsible designers in the future by helping them be more aware about the issues to the environment.

To conclude, the learner profile attributes that I developed in this activity were communicator, open-mindedness, reflective and knowledgeable. I improved my communication through communicating with the students in the club. I improved upon open-mindedness while respectively listening to every students opinion during discussion. And I improved upon the learner profile knowledgeable by passing onto my knowledge to the students and also learning new things from them and other hosts. And I improved upon learner profile reflective by reflecting upon each session with the other hosts and discussing what we could have improved upon. Lastly, this club was really fun to host as this surrounded around my favourite subject Design Technology and also it was hosts were my friends which made the experience even better. In the end we were able to expand our existing knowledge and were able to improve our teaching as well.