If you watched the lecture from Week 3 that featured Jeff Hopkins (principal at PSII), you may have heard my voice from off-camera chiming in during the lecture.

I graduated from PSII last year and this post is going be about my experience with the school’s inquiry based method of learning- and how it allowed me to explore an Aladdin’s cave of new skills that I wouldn’t have been able to learn in a pre-curated learning environment.

I’ll use my foray into graphic design as an example of what I was able to learn using the inquiry method.

What the Inquiry Method Does

Jeff Hopkins and other senior educators at PSII came up with the inquiry method as a way of learning in a self-guided, natural environment. In Jeff’s words, when we’re very young, we experience the world through our senses, and especially hands-on learning where all five senses are fully occupied; or in other words, inquiring. The inquiry method aims to replicate this feeling by using a nonlinear approach to learning- and it starts with making questions that create further, and deeper questions that help to guide you towards your ultimate goal.

Credit; learningstorm.org- Examples of initial questions used at PSII that can be used to create inquiries.

Starting Inquiries, in a Nutshell

  1. Stage 1 of the inquiry process: Immediately start with a spark- your initial question.
    • It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it should allow you to do deeper, long term research. Using my inquiry into jersey redesigns as an example- my initial question was ‘how do I integrate the design language from an esports team’s partners into a jersey to give it a more eye-catching design?”
  2. Stage 2 is where your ‘surface-level’ research begins, creating deeper questions.
    • This could include gathering resources, or trial and error. Before I did any redesigns, I started learning Photoshop’s mechanics, experimenting with colour theory and finding my ‘style’ of design.
  3. Stage 3 is where the true research starts.
    • Using what you’ve learned in all the previous stages to construct a project related to your inquiry. I then started doing further research into the jersey I wanted to redesign and critiqued what I wanted to improve in my redesign (for example, mismatched patterns of shapes or an underwhelming set of colours.)
  4. Stage 4 is when you execute the project your inquiry has been leading up to.
    • I then picked a colour palette for my jersey, gathered some team-related logos and other elements and glued them together in Photoshop- and often my designs were (in my opinion) better than the original.

One noteworthy thing as you start inquiries; reflect on how they’re going whenever possible. Self-guided learning makes it very easy to get side-tracked, which can either slow your progress or kickstart an entirely new inquiry. However, it does offer you a lot more room to outsource knowledge that isn’t directly part of the curriculum- this could include talking to experts, or groups connected to your specific field of interest. This method isn’t for everyone, though, as it works best for people that can work on their own terms.

Example: My Inquiry into Graphic Design

During my fourth and final year at PSII, I wanted to learn how to use Photoshop, because I was interested in redesigning jerseys for esports teams. I was partially inspired by Tom “Tommo” McCluskey, a graphic designer that specialized in making fan-made redesigns of Formula 1 cars. This was where the inquiry method allowed me to experiment with different approaches to the same idea. Before I began any projects, I spent about a week on and off working with Photoshop just to understand how it worked- how layers were arranged, what button press did what command, and so on.

When I started the inquiry, my initial project was redesigning a jersey from FaZe Clan,(a world-famous esports team/lifestyle brand,) and I wanted to experiment with incorporating design language from the team’s partners into my redesign to make it more eye-catching. Once I found a proven design formula, I then experimented with applying it to other teams’ jerseys.

Above: a comparison of FaZe Clan’s 2023 esports jersey, next to my redesign on the right. Their team was primarily sponsored by Porsche, so I used elements of Porsche’s design language, like the cursive from their car’s model names and numbers as part of my redesign.

Above: My redesign of Luminosity Gaming’s jersey (pictured on the right.) At the time their Apex Legends team was sponsored by a Mexican soccer team, so I wanted to channel that motif into my redesign whilst exclusively using shades of blue as a colour palette. A lot of soccer shirts tend to have a three-striped pattern up front, but the topographical pattern front and back which provides the shirt’s main texture was purely my idea.

I eventually got bored of making jersey designs for myself then took a suggestion from Drew, my ‘homeroom’ teacher. He recommended that I designed a hoodie for the graduate students for that year, and after some experimentation, I had a few ideas for what I wanted the design to look like. What I had in mind was to use the school’s logo as part of the design, to create a streetwear-style design that didn’t look tacky.

I started working on the project in January, brainstorming the design language whilst working with my classmates to get the feedback I needed, and my teachers to find a manufacturer and get them produced. We then used TeamSales to make them for us, and got our orders in just in time for our graduation in late June.

Above: what I wanted my design for the grad hoodie to look like.

However, my design was too complicated for TeamSales to produce, given the patterns on the sleeves I made was designed with a “if money was no object” mindset. I then handed the design over to Jeff himself, who simplified it so it could be produced more easily.

Below: me posing with Drew (who’s wearing the grad hoodie I designed) on my last day at PSII. Drew was a massive help in my process, hooking me up with TeamSales to bring my idea to life.

For someone used to the traditional school curriculum where all the material is premade, learning using inquiries can seem a bit like Plato’s Cave, which I mention briefly during the lecture. In a nutshell, Plato’s Cave is a theory that revolves around prisoners that have been in a cave for their whole life- and their only sign of the outside world is the shadows projected on the cave’s walls. When they’re finally free, they become so confused their surroundings that they decide to go back in the cave- their previous comfort zone.

I use Plato’s Cave very strategically, since I can relate to it from my personal experience at PSII. When I first walked into the school at the start of COVID-19- I immediately found myself wanting to go back to everything being premade. I was completely thrown off by the lack of structure or how to guide myself through the learning process. But over the course of four years in this type of nonlinear learning, I came out of PSII with full confidence that I was prepared for university- since I was already used to the environment. In fact, Jeff mentions that nearly everyone that graduated from PSII said the same- he says that nearly all PSII grads (myself included) found that there’s a heavier sense of agency in university, a method which they find slightly boring, but doable.

(The only thing I wasn’t prepared for walking out of PSII was studying for midterm exams, which nowadays I prepare for surrounded by several textbooks, computer screens and a fridge full of Red Bull.)