Learning Goals
Students will be able to investigate Georgetown Day School’s mission statement, origin story, and community artifacts to explain how the school’s values connect to belonging for neurodiverse students.
Students will be able to empathize with neurodiverse students by collecting and organizing observations, interview notes, and visual empathy-map evidence about comfort, communication, and access needs.
Students will be able to analyze how seating, lighting, sound, signage, and communication supports affect accessibility and belonging in a school affinity space.
Students will be able to define an evidence-based problem statement for a neurodiversity affinity space using firsthand feedback from peers, counselors, learning specialists, alumni, and affinity leaders.
Students will be able to ideate multiple low-tech prototype ideas for a student-led neurodiversity affinity space, including floor plans, quiet-corner mockups, and advocacy supports.
Students will be able to prototype and refine a low-tech affinity-space model by revising features based on critique from users and community partners.
Students will be able to justify a student-led affinity space proposal with advocacy scripts, exhibit labels, and presentation language that connect design choices to the needs of neurodiverse students and the GDS mission.
Products
Neurodiversity User Research Portfolio and Tested Mini-Prototype
Each student submits an evidence-based portfolio showing what they learned from interviews, observations, and empathy mapping, plus one low-tech mini-prototype for a feature of the affinity space. The portfolio must explain how the design responds to a specific user need and what feedback shaped the prototype.
Student-Led Neurodiversity Affinity Space Proposal, Floor Plan, and Public Pitch Board
Teams create a shared problem statement, a higher-fidelity affinity-space prototype or service plan, and a public pitch board for GDS community members. The final product must show how individual research informed the team solution and how the proposal supports belonging, advocacy, and next steps for a lasting student-led group.
No rubric has been generated yet.