Helping 8th graders succeed at school

In Denmark, all students in 8th grade do an assessment to judge if they are likely to graduate 9th grade. To support those at risk of not passing, the ROCKWOOL Foundation Interventions Unit is developing an 8-week intervention program consisting of an internship and support from a team of counsellors and teachers. EGGS has been a partner supporting the creation of a visual identity and dialogue tools for the project.

With increasingly stricter admission requirements for secondary education, kids with lower academic abilities are at risk of not receiving further education. In 2019 alone, nearly 7000 9th graders graduated without sufficient grades (Source: Rockwool Foundation). Back in Business aims to support students at risk of not graduating by giving them experiences of learning in a different context and strengthening the collaboration between teachers and students.

During the intervention, teachers, training counsellors, students and their parents form groups that together work to support the student in their new environment. During the internship the student gets valuable experience from outside the school environment which strengthen their abilities once back in school.

Creating a clearer focus and direction

The ROCKWOOL Foundation Interventions team has an extensive amount of material, knowledge, and experience related to the intervention. However, they needed help creating a unifying identity the students could relate to. By working closely together with the ROCKWOOL team and the different actors, and at the same time using our outside perspective as design consultants, we could craft an engaging direction for the visual identity in ‘Back in Business.' One of the most important results from this was a service description of the intervention offering, which describes the activities, core concepts, and the roles of the actors in the process.

We used service design and business design methodology to visualize and facilitate the process of identifying a clearer focus and direction. This way, we could strengthen Rockwool's team, contribute with a design perspective, and enable existing competencies.

Concrete tools for dialogue

Apart from the service description, we gave several dialogue tools a new visual direction in collaboration with social & pedagogy experts. The tools are designed as a series of games that can be used in the interactions between the students and teachers in the intervention. The tools allow the teacher and student to set goals and uncover the student’s ambitions and development opportunities. The tools development was based on user tests in earlier prototype phases with both students and teachers and reflect their insights and needs.

Promoting empowerment and togetherness

As Back in Business is a social intervention, it must promote empowerment and togetherness. Not only the students go through a journey - so do the teachers and counsellors. Therefore, it's crucial that visual identity communicates and promotes this message to all stakeholders – students, teachers, politicians, and institutions. By including 8th-grade students in developing the visual identity, we developed an adaptable and versatile visual identity that the students can, and want, to identify with.