Researching Problems

  • Consider aspects of problems you might want to solve
  • Research more about the problems
  • Possibly select a problem to solve for your project

These are the activities for this lesson:

FOCUS ON A PROBLEM

Last week you brainstormed problems and categorized them according to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. Grouping problems might have spawned new ideas or showed relationships between different problems you are considering.

This week, you will delve into one or two problems you might want to work on, in order to consider their scale. The scale of a problem is the size of the problem. Is it big enough or meaningful enough to have true impact?

hand holding camera lens focusing

CONSIDER IMPACT

To consider the impact of solving a problem, let’s consider these elements:

  • Is it a big problem? Does it affect a significant number of people?
  • Has the problem appeared in national or global news?
  • Is there room for innovation? Are there already companies working on the problem? Can you do something more than they are doing?
  • Are there national foundations, non-profits, or startups interested in the problem? 
  • Could you potentially partner with them to work on it?

 

 

 

Best practices: Many teams have done research, this should be building on an existing skill. Have think about a school project they worked on where they needed to find information on a specific topic. That’s research! Go through the process they followed for that scenario to guide you in building a research plan with the team.

The research plan your team uses does not need to be extensive, it should include:

  • topics to be researched (potential problems to solve)
  • key questions the team wants to answer (take a look at the questions under “Consider Impact” in this lesson)
  • key terms that can be used to find information
  • who is in charge of what
  • when research should be done by (deadline)

Having a research plan will help teams commit to learning more about their problem and building a deeper understanding. 

Part of putting together your research plan is thinking of questions and key terms to search. Teams should know the right key terms to use and how a search engine works. Google is a commonly used search engine, the video to the left reviews how Google works and shares some tips on getting to the right key terms and how to effectively search to find the answers you need in less time. 

Guiding Questions to ask students: 

What are some steps you take when researching a topic for a project or paper?

How do you decide what sources are trustworthy when gathering information?

Why is it important to thoroughly research a problem before trying to solve it?

Mentor tips are provided by support from AmeriCorps.

stylized A, AmeriCorps logo in navy

ACTIVITY: RESEARCHING PROBLEMS

Estimated time: 20 minutes

Measure scale and impact of 2 or 3 of your top problems

Fill out the worksheet for each problem, to measure its scale and impact.

Note you can make a copy of the worksheet and edit as needed.
Open worksheet

REFLECTION

Hopefully you have narrowed down your problem to just a few by now. Continue to research these problems to help you decide which one to work on.

What problem are you leaning towards as your problem to solve?
Who else is doing interesting work on this problem?
Why are you excited to solve this problem?

REVIEW OF KEY TERMS

  • Research – gathering information about a subject
  • Scale – the size of your problem or solution

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

If you are interested in talking and learning from other young people around the world about problems of interest to you, check out the Ultimate Dialogue Adventure from Generation Global. Click on the picture to visit their website.

Hear from other Technovation Girls teams to see how they came up with a problem to solve!

This video clip(5:30 min) from an alumnae panel on ideation could be helpful.