Developing Integrated Learning Environments for Improved Outcomes

This chapter addresses the use of design thinking in created integrated learning environments where student learning is captured across curricular and co-curricular experiences. The chapter outlines the current context and trends in higher education that demonstrate the need for integrated learning environments and the need to assess experiential learning by centering students in the process. Centering students in the process of designing integrated learning environments empowers them on a path of self-authorship where students identify the goals of learning, how that learning will be documented, and how experiences scaffold to ensure students move from introduction to mastery of skills. The chapter concludes with examples from campuses that have created integrated environments where learning is documented and recorded, including examples of comprehensive learner records and a fully integrated bachelor's degree program.

A Design Thinking Odyssey

Co-curricular experiences should be warranted a fair amount of attention in higher education, particularly for their ability to help students develop real-world employability skills and a platform for them to critically reflect upon and expand their perspectives. These are crucial in developing the future-ready graduate – the type of graduate the Singapore Management University (SMU) strives to nurture. Yet, the authors have discovered that many students go from one activity to another without understanding what they can actually be getting out of these activities and how each activity connects to life after university. This has led the authors to seek to address the problem: “How might we rethink the purpose and delivery of co-curricular learning?” As part of the design thinking odyssey, this chapter details the prototype SMU has embarked on to measure and document students' learning in the co-curricular space.

Design Thinking

Design thinking is a process that student affairs practitioners can learn to support students in developing practices of leadership. The design thinking tool builds from ideas of transformative learning and leadership-as-practice. Deployed as an intervention for problem posing, design thinking is a tool and an opportunity to reframe how students learn. In design thinking, students are moved to problem solving through intentional practice. In this chapter, the author will explore design thinking from the lenes of transformative learning theory and leadership-as-practice. Moving through each stage of the process, she will share examples of how to use the practice with students.

Centering Learners in Assessment

Traditional assessment tends to be a one-size-fits-all approach to student learning that does not consider individual students nor the underlying systems of power and oppression in higher education. This chapter argues for equity-centered assessment as learner-centered assessment which eschews Western ways of knowing and not only focuses on individual learners but is also a tool for advancing equity. The authors compare and contrast traditional assessment with learner-centered assessment and describe benefits, characteristics, and strategies for implementing equity-centered assessment.

Testing Assessments of Integrated Experiential Learning

Design thinking is a powerful platform that provides the structure and process to measure integrated experiential learning (IEL). IEL situates the activities of experiential learning in an interdisciplinary setting that facilitates learning through reflection on experiences that engage deep knowledge in broad applications and span co-curricular and curricular environments. Using courses developed at two institutions as case studies, the authors describe pedagogy, instruction, and assessment methods, and focus the data types, collection, analysis, and implications of three assessment approaches (reflections, networks, and deliverables). They show how design thinking is essential to the assessment of IEL in courses and across institutional stakeholders, including student and academic affairs, alumni relations, employers and local businesses, and those focused on data for improvement in design (e.g., institutional research and legislators). Moreover, they show that the assessment phase of design thinking is essential to sustainability, scalability, and rigor of design thinking IEL projects.

Solving Wicked Diversity, Equity, and Inclusive Problems From a Design Thinking Lens

The central question that undergirds this chapter is, “How can practitioners see learning from the student's perspective?” The authors address this question to the extent to which diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and experiential learning assessment constitute what design thinkers refer to as a wicked problem – a complex problem that benefits from a multiplicity of perspectives. It will take more than just DEI professionals to unravel these complex and interconnected issues. They look at how institutions currently seek to quantify and qualify their students' learning and experiences – proposing how design thinking, particularly the central quality of “empathy” could enhance these efforts.

Reframing as Defining in Student Affairs

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the design concept of framing and the ways in which student affairs practitioners can apply the process of reframing in their work with students and in their assessment efforts. Similar to the way designers use frames to define the problem situation, students can be prompted and coached to view their curricular and co-curricular learning experiences in new ways. This chapter applies learning sciences theory and design concepts to student affairs assessment practice, beginning with the importance of reframing for student affairs and student learning. The chapter then employs transformative learning theory and Fink's taxonomy to understand and explain the use and importance of reframing. The authors utilize literature from the design and architecture fields to describe and illustrate the concept of reframing, drawing parallels to how student affairs practitioners can apply these concepts to assess and improve student learning.

Designing Learning Environments That Integrate With Students' Academic Learning in a Community College Setting

This chapter focuses on how student learning needs to be intentionally designed to consider both what happens in and out of the classroom. The chapter focuses on student learning within a community college context, where co-curricular engagement looks much different than at a four-year school, specifically on how community colleges engage in design thinking principles related to curricular and co-curricular learning around equity and inclusion issues. Additionally, it is important to note that while some community colleges have residential opportunities for students, approximately 28% in the U.S., most are considered commuter campuses. Creating co-curricular opportunities on a commuter campus can be more challenging, however not impossible, and often adds value to the community college experience.

Prototyping a University-Wide Co-Curricular Record

In this chapter, the authors will discuss a multi-year initiative at Michigan State University aimed at designing and implementing a university wide co-curricular record. The authors contend that prototypes are a good mechanism to advance, and possibly accelerate projects. The chapter will focus on the many prototypes developed throughout the project, organized in three categories: 1) the technical aspects of the software, interface, and connections to campus IT; 2) policies and guidelines for interacting with, creating, and validating co-curricular learning experiences and outcomes; and 3) prototypes of new hierarchical relationships and social/cultural processes which made the new project legible to all stakeholders in the institution. Ultimately, prototypes helped create familiar policy and practices to go with useful technology that allowed campus users to easily and enthusiastically engage with a new technology, recognize student learning, and create sustainable practices in the co-curricular space.

Moving From Ideation to Prototyping

To implement an effective approach to design thinking in higher education, it is crucial to move from ideation to prototyping. In the context of the co-curriculum, there is a push toward enhancing how programs and services contribute to student learning. Many educators are working toward strengthening the culture so that learning becomes central to the work of staff. However, the right conditions must exist to anchor the changes so that student learning is not merely a byproduct, but rather is the primary outcome of student engagement in the co-curriculum. In this chapter, the authors address the conditions that help enhance the effective delivery of learning-focused, co-curricular experiences. Through examining eight different institutions, they arrived at six conditions that helped in developing sustainable learning-centered co-curricular programs and services in higher education.