Creating a new kind of education problem solver: A designer and strategist that integrates empathy, collaboration, critical thinking and re-thinks existing systems; An innovator who learns with questions.

The Designership is organized around four learning frameworks – formal curriculum, participatory culture, high-impact practice and experiential co-creation.

The formal curriculum is structured learning that will take place to walk participants through specific skill development and facilitated activities.

The participatory culture are curated channels designed to promote continued discussion between face-to-face interactions and to encourage content creation for shared learning.

 The high-impact practice will focus on specific personal development skills and build participants’ creative thinking and collaboration toolkits.

The experiential co-creation framework is based on participatory leadership methodologies and in place to facilitate each participant’s ownership and contribution to the final outcomes of the program.

Objectives

Participants will develop design thinking skills that include empathy building, creative problem solving, synthesis and analysis thinking that hones in on user needs which are critical for education innovators looking to bring new kinds of thinking to their work. The program will develop participants’ expertise in foresight, research and innovation methodologies and will enable them to acquire contextual knowledge to develop new resources for the sector.

Upon completion of this program, participants will be ready to tackle future-oriented strategic real-world issues and develop ideas and solutions that are effective and authentic to their users.

This program will enable participants to:

  • Explore and test human-centred methodologies
  • Utilize design thinking, foresight and participatory tools
  • Develop strategic, creative and human-centred solutions and implementation plans reflective of current and future-oriented issues
  • Navigate ever changing problems in education and find solutions to address the gap between community and education

Program Overview

Learning Touchpoints Formal Curriculum
2-day Learning Retreat Design Thinking 101 Workshop

Introduction to Foresight

Design-based Research Techniques and Analysis
2-day Studio Conference Participatory Leadership

Prototyping and Collaboration Workshops

Content Creation Workshops

Feedback and Iteration Sessions
1-day Working Sessions (4) Research – Trend Scanning

Understanding Users – Persona Development

Prototypes – Scenario Crafting

Revisions

Key Features

  • Participants will engage in a collaborative, co-creative studio environment. Working in trans-disciplinary teams, participants come from inside and outside the norms of education, participants will benefit from the diversity of backgrounds.
  • A network of education innovators who will offer feedback on the development of the final report.
  • A curated learning experience of online and offline learning touchpoints.

 Reporting on Learning  

The centrepiece and culmination of this program is to write a report, a future-oriented strategic document that will be a resource for the sector. The report produced in this inaugural program will be a time capsule of current trends and issues. The draft report will be shared at the 2-day studio conference broadly with fellow learners and the feedback will be used to revise the working document.

Throughout the one-year program participants will be required to document and share their learning journey as a reflection tool and progress report. These thinking pieces will be used in the final report as a way to create a dialogue about the learner as the designer.

The final report will be shared online as a tool to facilitate further strategic conversations. In a vague, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world we need tools to navigate new pathways and develop strategies to shape the future for ourselves.