Best practices: When identifying problems, start by thinking about relatable scenarios that are encountered daily. For example, “Imagine you’re trying to use your favorite app, but it keeps crashing. Identifying the problem is the first step to fixing it.” This helps students understand the importance of problem identification in a context they are familiar with.

In discussion, it’s natural for teams to name solutions and problems to solve. As a Mentor, it’s important thing to keep your teams from solution jumping or proposing a solution before fully understanding a problem.

Keeping a separate list of solutions to track them as they come up gives the team something they can reference later, but always guide them back to thinking of problems. For example “That’s a great idea for a solution we’ll write down on the solution list. Let’s keep thinking of problems we can solve and what may be causing the problem.”

Don’t rush the process of thinking of problems and understanding them. Asking “why?” will help get down to the root cause of a problem, and that’s what you want to solve. 

These videos will help students understand how to identify problems in various contexts and relate those skills to both everyday experiences and their coding projects.

1. Solving Problems
2. How to Better Identify Problems – Design Thinking

Encourage teams to write down all their ideas as they think of problems to solve. Having this archive of ideas can help if they decide to shift their focus later in the season. 

Guiding Questions to ask students: 

Can you think of a time when you were unable to complete a task? What did you do to try to fix it?

Can you think of concerned you’ve heard from people in your community?

Why do you think it’s important to identify a problem before trying to solve it?

How can you use what you learn in coding to solve real-life problems?