Thinking Along Instead of Just Taking Notes: How Lego® Serious Play® Brings Distance Learning Courses to Life
How can you get students to think about routines, responsibility, and systemic barriers to consumption—beyond PowerPoint slides and theoretical lectures? With a method that looks so playful—yet still generates a surprising amount of depth.
This winter semester, our instructor, Prof. (FH) Dr. Birgit Teufer, BSc BA MA, kicked off her course on Sustainable Consumer Behavior in the Master’s program in Business Administration and Business Psychology with a different approach: Instead of using definitions or slides in a traditional lecture, she used Lego® Serious Play®, a creative workshop method that helps teams visualize their ideas and approaches—in the truest sense of the word—and make them tangible. The students were given a simple, open-ended task: “Build something that comes to mind when you think of sustainable consumption.”
What emerged was anything but a mere game: The models illustrated just how diverse and complex sustainability is in everyday life. From barriers to enablers to systemic interconnections—the students literally “put their perspectives on the table.” The Lego© models they built sparked a lively debate during the course, which clearly demonstrated that sustainability is not an abstract concept, but rather an issue that can be shaped collectively.
The use of this method had an immediate impact and clearly demonstrates how modern methods at FERNFH enhance the learning process and prove that challenging content doesn't have to be dry, but can instead be surprisingly creative and interactive.
Lego© Serious Play© isn’t just a valuable tool for education. Companies and organizations, in particular, can benefit from this workshop method and transform their meetings—moving away from mere calendar fillers with no real outcomes, toward meetings that foster genuine exchange and produce tangible, visible results.
Are you interested in Lego© Serious Play© and want to learn how to use this method yourself? FERNFH regularly offers its own training courses on this topic.
Become a LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® Facilitator
