10 Myths about Iterative Design

  1. Iterative design is a skill review. Iterative design is a good way to find out if students actually learned skills that were taught on previous assignments.
  2. Iterative design stages are fixed and if they skip one, students should go back do it again.
  3. Iterative design means that teachers should specify how many “drafts” a student should complete, and have specific milestones for each draft or prototype.
  4. The process and steps of iterative design should be taught before any design actually begins. Students should be able to name and use the correct vocabulary before being allowed to do any design or construction.
  5. Teachers should require documentation from students that shows the steps and thinking they went through at each stage of a project.
  6. Iterative design takes too much time, so a good way to shortcut it is to tell the students how each step should look and what the intermediate products should be.
  7. Iterative design means that you can’t assess student work, so should be combined with “real” assessment, like a multiple choice test.
  8. Iterative design is something to do only after students complete real classroom work on the topic.
  9. Students will just goof off if I don’t tell them exactly what to do every minute.
  10. Students will just beg me to tell them what to do next.