Concept Speed Dating + Feedback
What did you learn from the speed dating session that is helping you to further refine your ideas?
Our team individually received feedback from our peers on Tuesday through speed dating. The format went by really fast but the outside perspectives were valuable in pushing our concepts forward! I’ll try to organize the feedback into common ideas, as well as how we plan to incorporate them into next steps and prototyping.
1—How can we ensure that this is collaborative?
Some classmates questioned how collaborative this workbook truly was; in part, this is because we weren’t able to flesh out all the activities in our three arcs, but it also raised a valid point. Our goal for this learning experience is to engage learners in a balance of self-reflection and group learning/connection. Sharing about failures and successes with others is tough, so we really need to a) incentivize vulnerability as key to learning takeaways, and b) make discussion as meaningful as possible in the way we facilitate the conversations. Our next steps for prototyping include actually drafting up the content for the page prompts. The language and instructions that are on the page will impact how successful and relevant the activities are. We also went back to our learning framework and mapped out our sketches to identify which activities were already collaborative and which ones we could leverage to become more so. In terms of pacing, this might also be a great way to ensure we follow new challenges with points of reflection to vary the intensity of the process. Lastly, there are also ways we can develop a sense of openness and community around this without making all the activities themselves collaborative. If the artifact is visually well-designed and meaningful to the learners, it could be displayed where other people could see it. Alternatively, finished workbooks could be scanned and uploaded to a website to create a digital community around participants.
2—How can we lean into the learning context to maximize value?
One of our questions for our peers was “when and where might this experience be most valuable?”. We identified points of transition within the college experience as “when”, such as entering freshman year and preparing to graduate. The Interacting with Others group encouraged us to expand beyond these bookends and look at other significant moments in college, such as heading into junior summer and the emphasis placed on internships. There are a number of perceived milestones that center around traditional ideas of failure and success, all of which represent opportunities for students to engage in this experience. The time element of personal growth is also key; for example, writing a letter to yourself at the beginning of college and revisiting it in senior year as a tangible documentation of growth. This might even inform our content. By making workbooks with content specific to different experiences that learners are entering, it will be easier for learners to define new goals in the fourth arc of our experience. For example, if this is happening at the start of a new core class, students can shape their reflections and goals around the content of the class. This added structure might ensure realistic goals and a degree of accountability.
3—How can this experience create impact over time?
One of our team’s biggest challenges is that anything we hope to teach is towards the end goal of lifelong learning. There’s no way to capture everything in one sitting, but we want to set learners up with tools and mindsets that they can practice over time and across situations. The Sustainability team suggested the online forum I mentioned above. By giving these artifacts a growing digital archive, participants are able to revisit their own journeys and view others. When it comes to prototyping, this could also be a platform for learners to track their progress. The end activity might ask learners to identify how they plan to achieve a goal, becoming a more individual experience by letting learners document their progress. Our current sketches include a small card to remove from the workbook upon completion and carry around in a wallet or phone as a physical reminder of the (small) goals set by the learner. Hopefully our prototypes can test or expand these ideas!
4—How can we refine and celebrate the form?
A lot of our peers responded positively to the form we proposed for our learning experience. People resonated with the idea of walking away with your own piece of the experience and generating value around the artifact itself. We will start prototyping to see where we can take the visuals of the unfolded workbook! It can act as a physical reminder of learnings. Within the workbook, we are still defining methods of interaction. Some peers noted that the current form might be too heavy on writing, so we want to incorporate other forms of mark-making as well as verbal dialogues around these topics. The format of an unfolding workbook lends itself to revealing secondary layers of information, but could we achieve the same thing on a single page? We plan to prototype to see how the physical affordances of this workbook can impact the learning activities themselves.
