Building Understanding: LEGO® Serious Play® within the GeoStat Freiraum Project

DCAT offered an On Demand Workshop to the Department of Earth Sciences as part of their “Geostat” Freiraum project, funded by the Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre, that explores the statistical tool of Feature Scale Transformation (FST). Students, PhD researchers, postdocs, and professors all gathered to literally build their interpretations of FST, which is a statistical method used to normalize the range of independent variables of data, and its role in geoscience education in an unexpected way — through LEGO®.

Using the LEGO® Serious Play® method, groups constructed models to explore why and when FST is needed for statistical analysis and how the concept might be (mis)understood by students and teachers alike. The room was full of energy and more than a few “aha!” moments as participants experienced how combining visual, tactile, and narrative approaches can deepen understanding far beyond words alone.

The collaborative task of building, explaining, and iterating models reinforced a core lesson: meaningful exchange happens when ideas are explored from multiple angles. LEGO® bricks just made that journey more transparent, and, also (honestly) a bit more fun!

 

As part of DCAT’s services, we offer On-Demand Workshops that allow departments and teaching staff to design workshops around their teaching questions and didactic interests — whether discipline-specific or for broader teaching and learning themes and challenges. Since 2025, DCAT also offers in-house facilitation using the LEGO® Serious Play® method. If you are interested, please contact Dr. Cynthia Heiner at cynthia.heiner@fu-berlin.de