DxC Diary Entry #2: Sprint One in review
Hey there, and welcome to the second dispatch from the Design Across Cultures team here at the Digital Society School. I’m Bridget, one of four Digital Transformation Design Trainees in the Design Across Cultures track.
I’m coming at you today with our first SPRINT REVIEW (cue applause). That’s right, our first design sprint has already come and gone, which means that now it’s time for (drumroll, please) a bit of self-reflection.
What happened during Sprint One? What were the highs and lows? What lessons did we learn along the way, and what key insights we will take with us as we move forward? In this post, I’ll dive into each of these questions respectively.
What happened in Sprint One?
Over the course of the next four months, our team has been tasked with designing an intervention that will address the forty percent drop-out rate among students with an MBO background who are transitioning to HBO bachelors at the Amsterdam University of Applied Science.
To set our course for the first sprint, we first developed a “How might we…” question as a guide. We then proceeded to define a range of sub-goals to direct our collective efforts, the methods we would use to achieve these goals, as well as the “definition of done” for each goal respectively.
Our sprint goal
- How might we define and better understand the processes, actors, and existing research affecting the MBO > HBO transition?
Our sub-goals
- Better understand the Dutch educational system and the trajectory of Dutch and migrant students who study primary, secondary, and tertiary education in the Netherlands.
- Define the existing explanations of challenges experienced by students in this transition.
- Define the key stakeholders of the MBO > HBO transition process.
- Strategize how to best interact with stakeholders in the coming months.
Diving into the problem space
The bulk work of our work in this Sprint was concerned with getting the lay of the land of our problem space. As the majority of our team members come from international backgrounds themselves, we devoted quite some time to understanding the specific context of Dutch secondary and higher education, including divisions between WO, HBO, and MBO education. Likewise, we spent a good amount of time getting a sense of current literature on the subject of the transition between MBO and HBO programs, as well as that of student success in the context of HBO education. Beyond this, we took the first steps towards defining the most relevant stakeholders of this transition, as well as strategizing how to best engage them.
Parallel to our desk research, we also worked to channel our insights into a conversational object for future engagement with our project stakeholders. Ultimately, this took the form of a short video, which we used to breathe life into a user persona that encompasses the insights we gained from our literature review.
What key insights did we gain from this Sprint?
1. The roots of our problem likely go much farther back than we imagined.
As we began to learn more about Dutch education, we came to realize that the challenges faced by MBO students in the transition to higher applied education bachelors can only be fully understood in their broader context.
A key insight from our research of public primary, secondary, and tertiary education in the Netherlands was that students are put into tiered educational tracks quite early. Indeed, after finishing primary school, Dutch students are assessed on what they have learned, and depending on the results (along with a teacher recommendation and parent input) are sent to Preparatory Scientific Education (VWO), Higher General Continued Education (HAVO), or Pre-vocational Education (VMBO).
These tracks not only define students’ ease of access to higher education, (university, applied science, or vocational, depending on the track), but also prime students from an early age to circumscribe their professional self-image accordingly. Indeed, in our literature review we found that one key challenge faced by MBO students in the context of higher applied education was a lack of self-esteem.
2. Our problem space intersects with many broader systemic challenges.
Likewise, we learned that the challenges faced by MBO students as they pursue higher applied education bachelors programs intersect with many larger systemic problems of Dutch society. For example, unconscious biases of teachers and administrators can manifest themselves in the process of sorting students that comes at the end of primary education. Indeed, students from migrant backgrounds are consistently directed to the lowest tier of Dutch education.
In turn, students with migrant backgrounds, as well as those whose parents have not entered higher education, tend to struggle more with MBO — HBO transition. According to the research we read, these students can struggle to adjust to a higher education environment as they have less parental guidance to fall back on.
3. The key to the success of our project will be engaging students around their own self-efficacy
Finally, in reviewing the literature, we came to realize that despite the fact that many existing resources are indeed available to students in this transition, none of those we encountered actually engaged students in their process of conception and creation. Our intuition tells us that co-creating a solution with students will likely be the clearest way towards addressing student concerns.
What lessons will we take with us to Sprint Two?
1. Good organization is integral to remote-only work
With wave three of COVID around the corner, it seems the lockdown is here to stay, at least for the near future! That means that remote work will remain our modus operandi for the time being. One of the most prominent challenges our remote-only team faced in this sprint was keeping ourselves organized. Creating a Notion team database as a central information hub has worked wonders for us. Here we can work on collective documents, keep track of our Sprint Goals, divvy up tasks, and keep links straight to boot!
2. Embrace uncertainty.
In the Design Across Cultures track, we are a multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary team by design. Some of us have more experience in service design, others with research, and others still with creative ideating. For me, a key take-away of working together in this first Sprint has been that uncertainty is a good thing. I’ve found that it’s when I’m lost with how to proceed that I learn most about the strengths of my team-mates.
