Mapping Transition Narratives & Mission Impact v0.2
This work presented here includes insights and work that was co-created with Nicolas Landriati, Luciana Santerre, Ping Huang, Vladimir Genov, Thomas Wissingh & Gabriela Bustamante.
In this piece, I continue to share the progress on designing and enacting ecological approaches to higher education that connect to and facilitate sustainability transformations. Particularly, it looks back at the entire pilot of Mission Impact in The Hague University of Applied Sciences, the Netherlands (September — January, 2020–2021) and looks forward to the second iteration of this educational project. The piece also dives into (some of) the data that was gathered in this period and how this was analyzed collaboratively. The piece ends with some speculation and notes looking forward. But before that, a brief recap of the last few weeks:
Hectic
It has beeeeeeeeen crazy! besides finishing the pilot of our educational experiment I have been co-organizing and hosting the very first national hackathon on the circular economy. This project has been more successful than we had dare to hoped and eventually included 9 regional hackathons covering almost the entirety of the Netherlands (granted, it’s a small country but still how cool is that!). What we collectively managed to pull off has been nothing short of amazing, particularly in the limited timeframe (about two months). In this hackathon more than 10 educational institutions collaborated to tackle regional circular economy transition challenges in a week, with a grand pitch battle on Friday the 5th of February.
I even got to kick-it all of live at the national conference on circular economy (1st of February, 2021) together, amongst others, with the minister of (higher) education. She even personally wished all of the students throughout the country a lot of luck and fun! Next to the hackathon, I have been quite busy with:
- Kicking-off our research centre’s very first student researcher’s community, where we are hosting roughly 60 student-researchers for the next semester to work do their internships/graduations by focussing on sustainability and circular economy-related challenges in and around our institutions.
- Working on the first issue of IMPACT magazine, where the students from the Mission Impact v0.1 pilot share their work this last semester. A tiny slice of which can be previewed here:
- Working on an experimental method to analyze the data from the pilot inspired by a winterschool I followed by the RUG-Twente universities. This experimental method that brings together insights from applied narratology and transitions design (we call this method Narratives of Transition Mapping or NTM). The NTM combines the strengths of stories with that of system’s thinking, both of which are used quite heavily in educational sciences.One such method was even used in the pilot!
The last month has been very intense and we have done a lot. I am quite proud of it to be honest. I do, however, feel that I will very soon need to take a break to relax and recover a little bit from all of this exertion.
In the rest of this post, I will:
- Dive into the initial analysis of the pilot
- Present next steps & initial (re)design ideas.
- Present the NTM method we are playing wit as well as initial redesign ideas based on that.
Looking back at Mission Impact v0.1
The last semester, I have been conducting a pilot at The Hague University of Applied Sciences, where I attempt to bring into practice, into being, an ecological form of transformative education. That connects to and co-creates sustainability transformations sustainability transformations in the regions around our institution, focussing particularly on the Binckhorst area of The Hague. Looking back now, I would say that for the most part, this has been very exciting and a lot has been learned. I have also however, failed in some critical regards, which will be highlighted and substantiated in the rest of this piece. I look at these failures as learning opportunities for making the v0.2 version of the course even better as we work towards a prototype of ecological education in an university. I am proud of this beautiful learning/failure because I see it as part of a process towards something new. In the previous post, I focussed more on the aesthetics and experience of the students as we were wrapping Mission Impact v0.1 up. In this post, I explore the experiment from an educational design perspective and cast my eye forward towards v0.2.
Please note; all quotes are by different students who were engaged with Mission Impact v0.1, these have been anonymized for privacy reasons. v0.1 refers to the pilot we just wrapped up and v0.2 is the second iteration which will start in September 2021.
Practice-based researcher.
Before I continue though, you should know I consider myself a practitioner-researcher. What I mean by this is that my research activities are intertwined in my practice as an educator. And improving my practices as an educator is the driving force for becoming a researcher. This also means that partly, I integrate insights from scientific literature into my practice, but also that I believe that practice can lead to scientific innovation and this dialogue between research and practice is what energizes me to work on education. In my case, this is expressed through a combination of science-based educational design choices as well as those shaped by intuition and the moments ‘on the floor’. It is this perspective that led to the initial co-design of Mission Impact v0.1, which builds on a longitudinal and abductive approach to simultaneously design and enact the educational innovation I believe is the route for universities to explore to remain relevant and meaningful places of collective and societal learning. An education that is more ecological (or living) in nature, that contributes simulatenously to theoretical development about education & learning as well as practically to sustainability transformations and tackling wicked problems.
The case
Mission Impact was a semester-long educational pilot into exploring more ecological approaches to higher education, that combine working on external transition challenges (such as the transition towards a circular region) with internal transformation (the way we feel, perceive, and are in the world). This is done in close partnership with regions and partners in and outside our institution to leverage the potentiality of higher education as beacons of learning-based change. In this pilot, 17 students from 9 countries and 12 educational programmes joined to develop their regenerative leadership capacity — the ability to connect to and guide collective learning towards sustainable future realities — in the Binckhorst region of The Hague. Where they worked on a variety of transition challenges, such as sustainable homes of the future or the vulnerability of circular businesses in the face of rapid urbanization. To support the students with their inner transformative work, collective reflective sessions were hosted every two weeks throughout the semester. Initially, these sessions were highly scripted activities that included storytelling exercises, guided meditations, drawing, and other forms of arts-based learning. As the semester unfolded, these became increasingly less scripted as it became clear that the students primarily just needed a safe space (in the sense of a space to talk vulnerably in comfort) to share about how they were doing, feeling, becoming and developing in this process of inner transformation.
These sessions, together with reflective art and writing assignments which were integrated every fifth week of the semester, form one part of the dataset for the analysis and redesign of Mission Impact. The remainder consists of design workshops (n=3) as well my autoethnographic field notes. The first two of these artful reflective exercises were open format and focussed on how the students were experiencing Mission Impact up to that point. The final assignment used the Living Spiral Framework so that a stronger for case for comparison could be made. This resulted in a total of 49 documents included in the analysis, as well as recordings from seven sessions (ranging from 1,5 to 3 hrs). Both the educational design, as well as the research, build on a relational approach to sustainability, which sees the development of regenerative leadership as an emergent property of the dynamic relationships between learners, context & educational design. The NTM includes this relational lens to explore how to improve the design of Mission Impact and what this experience asked from learners respectively.
Mapping Narratives
There is a lot of potential to combine the science of stories and that of transition design, as both in their own way, explore alternative realities. Following the argument posed by Ives et al (2020) that the most fundamental system level that needs to be transformed for sustainability transformation are those within our selves (in relation to external reality) and that stories have the capacity to touch us to our deepest cores, there is great potential to use narratives or stories for (positive) societal and personal transformation.
Transition design (TD)is an emerging field of design practice that attempts to tackle the complexity and wickedness of contemporary challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, gender equality and/or social injustice. This approach is under development but has been explored in a variety of setting such as Kyoto, and could be a promising direction to inform decision-makers to make wiser, more life-friendly decisions. TD is also one of the main intellectual fuels for the Mission Impact v0.1 pilot. Fundamentally, TD engages with meta-stories (such as neoliberalism/capitalism) that are leading to system’s clashing and thus need to change (or transition). This results in personal clashes with other system’s levels (personal inability in many places to not use plastics for example) or even systemic crashes such as the continued impact of our economic activities on our social and ecological integrity. Many of the prominent theories, models and approaches of new economic thinking, such as the doughnut-, circular-or regenerative economies can be viewed as alternative meta-stories with varying degrees of transgression from the current dominant narrative. TD aims to identify the leverage points for interventions in these complex systems that lead to action towards alternative and more desirable future states.
The intention of TD acts as a potential bridge between transition and applied narratology studies. As narratives are rich sources of knowing, notably for their descriptive and I would argue more importantly their transformative power. Stories engage with two modes of thought (Bruner, 1986) that of the paradigmatic (or logical-scientific) and that of the speculative and aesthetic (narrative). Much can be gained by incorporating a stronger focus on stories, and the science of story(telling) into TD to co-create these more desirable futures. As the intention of TD to focus on enacting more desirable futures (such as those that stay within the ecological and societal boundaries of the planet) is shared with sustainability-oriented education and there is a need for methods that incorporate all system’s levels of these wicked problems, including the personal, merit the serious exploration of a marraige between applied narratology and TD. This includes both ways of identifying more desirable futures through the use of better stories, as well as using more better futures to create more desirable stories. In other words, by combining the strengths of stories with that of transition design, more meaningful (and potentially impactful) future narrratives can be designed (which can be externalized in a variety of artefacts such as fiction, arts, visuals etc.).
The NTM leaves from this proposition that it is precisely these intersubjective relationships between time, systems and meaning from a multiplicity of stories(tellers) that allows unraveling (some) of the complexity involved with sustainability transformation and the identification of potential interventions for more regenerative futures. Both those in external systems such as new collective business models, policies or economic theory, and those inside ourselves such as new worldviews, mental models and values. The intention of NTM is to unravel the complexity of people’s relationships with wicked transition challenges, including both external (business, policy, money, family, other people) and internal factors (values, feelings, perspectives, worldviews). Where stories are seen and mapped as relationally co-constructed subjective approximations of a shared reality. This perspective necessitates a broad collective of character viewpoints (i.e. stories from multiple agents involved in the continuous co-creation of the challenges you are working with). This adds insights from system’s & complexity studies through the inclusion of multiple system levels while also providing more space (and merit) to the subjective found in story(telling), i.e. the inner dimensions of sustainability. So far this only includes talking with people, but perhaps there is also space in this to engage in dialogue with more-than-human life or even materiality.
By combining insights and playing with the strengths of both of these fields I believe a lot can be gained, both intellectually, and pragmatically for the wicked challenges we collectively face. The NTM is our initial attempt at bridging these disparate fields and we openly invite other to join as we go on this path with confidence.
Approach
For our analysis, we used two guiding questions, which are questions I am exploring for my PhD:
- What are the key design characteristics of an ecological education (based on the stories & experience) and how can we either make these better or go forward in the next iteration?
- What does this type of experience ask from the learners and how can we improve the experience to support learners in the future going through such type of transformative education?
And the following steps:
Gather stories about a transition challenge.
- Analyze stories (abductively based on guiding questions (1) and (2), each story analyzed by at least two people independently. Where the guiding questions are specific to the transition challenge you are exploring.
- Map the key quotes, insights, and memos based on the guiding questions to the NTM.
- Interpret, map, discuss, add relationships of the resulting map until a consensus is reached on these
- Use the clusters and patterns of relationships to identify potential intervetions that can act on leverage points for systemic change.
- Present the results (in the form of a narrative) to the participants and confirm and/or adjust based on feedback and response.
- (Re)design & enact interventions and gather new data for the new situation.
Where step (5) is what we are working towards now. We intend to present early prototypes by the end of next week and then iterate on the designs upto the 0.2v of Mission Impact, which will start in September 2021. For each five week timeframe, a seperate NTM was filled in to explore if large changes had occurred in those time periods. And if so, how and why these emerged.
In this experiment, the learner narratives were mapped on a temporal scale (past, present, future) and different system’s levels, which included:
(1) Macro — in this context this referred to relationships with elements, forces, events, or items that influenced beyond our university. E.g. covid-19.
(2) Meso — in this context this referred to relationships with elements, forces, events, or items within our university but originating outside the course Mission Impact. E.g. university policy.
(3) Micro — in this context this referred to relationships with elements, forces, events, or items within the Mission Impact course. E.g. the assessments.
(4) Nano — in this context this referred to the relationships within individual students and their educational context. E.g. feelings, phenomenological experience.
There was substantial variation of data quality, which was represented in substantial fluctuations (ranging from a handful to about 80) in the number of codes in each reflective piece. This variation of data quality is relatively common in arts-based methods. The analysis and mapping was conducted collaboratively with four students, two teachers of the Mission Impact experiment, and myself. For this we used Atlas.ti cloud and Miro for the (abductive) coding and mapping respectively. Daily recalibration sessions (30–60 minutes) were held for both the coding and mapping exercises. These were planned to realign and discuss difficult to place items. Both memos from the research team, as well as direct quotes, were included in the final mapping and several clusters of insights emerged.
Results
This NTM exercise resulted in a number of insights, the most highly connected item, however, was the impact of COVID-19 on the (educational) experience. With many parts of the narrative discussing the (primarily negative) impact this has had on their overall education. The following are the main results.
Educational design
Community — one of the key components that was stressed in the narratives was the importance of community building. Both in the sense that facilitating community-based activities and learning is an educational design element that requires active work from educators (within the course). As well that larger collaborative activities are sometimes (required) because of the scale and complexity of the work involved (outside the course). Where part of the task of the educator is also to act as gatekeeper, connecting students with (key) stakeholders in the place they are working with. To what extend this is required remains unknown because of covid-19’s general impact on making connection more difficult. Outside of the course, connecting to the broader community of learners in the ecology we were active in was highlighted as a key component of educational consideration. In our first test, this was the Binckhorst area of The Hague. Although it is important to note that one of the students also mentioned this was different because of COVID-19, what was remarkable was to see that almost everyone agreed on what to do next. The consensus is that we should try to pre-identify the ‘spiders in the web’ people that can act as connectors between the region(al challenge) and the students.
This was particulaly problematic as tackling wicked challenges requires a lot of varied data, which was even more difficult than it can already because of our covid-19 reality ‘one of the most complicated points of the process was when the teams weren’t collaborating and we were all struggling to prepare the workshops’ this collective struggling also led to ‘a moment of general vulnerability that wasn’t only experienced by me but by most of [the] Mission Impact students’. In part, this was tackled in this v0.1 version through the inclusion of collective reflective sessions inspired by the Challenge Lab at Chalmers University of Technology. In these sessions, every two weeks all students as well as myself came together to share how we were doing, both with our research projects and as human beings in these times of collective crisis. This crisis [Covid-19] has been challenging for all of us, but particularly so for students. Who have often been stuck in tiny rooms for months on end trying to continue their education.
I also have to admit, that this is an area where I have failed (spectacularly) as an educator. As I forgot the importance of community building in this type of work (at the beginning of Mission Impact) in favor of more intellectual depth and rigor. This resulted in an overloaded course, with very interesting, but exhausting and ultimately (because of the lack of community and space to slow down) less meaningful workshops and lectures.
During the very first guest lecture, our guest said: ‘connection before interaction’ well I think I failed my students in this regard but this quote has not left my mind since. I believe this was partially because of nerves, partially out of wanting to get too much into a single pilot and partially because of my Asperger's which just makes it easier to forget how important connection can be for neurotypical people. Regardless of the reason, once we picked up on this in practice we adapted towards it. For example, we switched from individual coaching sessions to collective coaching sessions, incorporated game nights (I got beaten in Among us a lot!) and gradually the bi-weekly reflective sessions became less structured to allow for more open dialogue.
These changes were co-decided by the students and also acted as small reminders for them to see the course as an living system that they were actively co-creating. This was highlighted as valuable ‘A huge positive of the minor was the amount of support that was shown. By the tutors, by my teammates, by the other students, and even some of the lecturers. I felt very supported when I needed it and I tried to support others when they seemed to be in need. I hope to keep this up.’
Content — one of the amazing things, but simultaneously one of the weaknesses, of this pilot, was the diversity of guest speakers. Over 30 guests contributed to workshops and lectures. As a student commented ‘During some lectures, I feel empowered and motivated to make a change. I feel eager to contribute for a better world. There are lectures, which make me feel confused and as if I do not belong’ or ‘Mission impact was very strange and odd in the beginning.’ (note different student). Perhaps more important than resulting in a bit of chaos (who doesn’t love a bit of chaos) it also delivered different expectations than what was communicated and/or perceived by the students when they signed up for Mission Impact. One of these being that there was a stronger focus on entrepreneurship than leadership. Additionally, a (severe) lack of research knowledge was experienced for many of the students, as well as by us as coaches, which made the ask to jump straight to creative methods daunting (or outside their zone of proximal development). This presents a bit of a difficult conundrum, where on the one hand the chaos allowed for beautiful self-guided learning such as ‘I also started doing research on mindfulness. I saw journaling coming back a few times. Like I said before, I had always enjoyed writing, for research but also in my spare time I enjoyed writing fictional stories. So, I thought starting a journal would be something I could enjoy as well as it could help me.’ While also making it harder to link the guest contributions to the transition research practice. In short, a lot of learning has occurred, but it was all over the place. Whether this is necessarily a bad thing remains to be seen.
Through the NTM exercise, three wish for three clear learning lines emerged, these will be worked out and integrated into the v0.2 of Mission Impact. In addition, to the content, these will also be more structured so that the programme acts as ‘safe spaces’ for engaging with the complexity of the wicked challenges in the regions. So that these are digestible for the learners to develop themselves, or to use as a base for the transformative work they are engaging in. Through this decision, we shy away a bit further from radical constructivist approaches to education. These identified learning lines are:
(1) Regenerative Design & Leadership
(2) Creative Researching
(3) Personal Sustain-abilities
A bit selfishly, I have also decided for the 0.2v of Mission Impact to prepare (large) parts of these learning lines with the internal team to focus on coherence a bit more, reducing the number of guest contributions considerably. This also allows a reduced reliance on external contributions to run this educational experiment. This clarification of learning pathways should hopefully also allow for clearer communication and better expectation management moving forward.
A small note on chaos — I regularly go for long philosophical chats about the type of education that is trying to emerge with a dear colleague and we frequently discuss the perceived dichotomy between chaos and structure in educational processes. I think a meaningful conclusion for our latest chat about this was that this is more of a scale than a binary and that moving (or dancing) across this scale as the context of education, as well as the developmental level of thes students, evolves is the most important part of embracing chaos. This dancing does, however, demand a great deal of adaptability as well as resilience from the educational programme and learners respectively.
Structure — Improving the (supporting) structures, or processes of guiding students through this work, is vitally important. As many references to (lack of) structure were found in the stories of the students. Some positive ‘ I have experienced my mindset becoming more open and spirit-centered, considering the importance of nature. Moreover, I think that the minor is well organized, I like the lectures and I extremely value the books we had as a mandatory reading’ and others negative ‘Overall, the first couple of weeks felt hectic. Like too many online classes for one day, too little human interaction, too much sunshine to spend the whole day fixed behind a screen inside. Juggling work, classes, and projects in the first five weeks, I probably dropped more than just one ball. But somehow, it turned out fine.’
While a lacking structure is not necessarily a bad thing for the facilitation of learning (see a note on chaos above), in this pilot everything was unstructured/choatic. Which I see as one of the major failings of myself as an educator and is one of the main learnings we take from this experiment with us forward. When working with complexity, uncertainty, and unclarity of context, which when working with wicked problems is usually the case, having some structures that acts as a place you know you can come back to if you get lost in complexity is vitally important.
When engaging with VUCA projects, adding an additional layer of chaos through the educational design did not help (most of) the students to feel safe and comfortable enough to take steps forward. Taking this a step further, it may even be unethical to unleash students to this complexity while also holding them accountable (through assessments) of producing results. The additional anxiety and stress that this generates could potential even be psychologically harmful and should be a key consideration for any educator working on ecological forms of education. As such, the structures of the course, from the perspective of providing psychological safe spaces and places of support for embracing complexity is the key deciding factors for all other educational design choices. In response, in our context this will form in a weekly structure that can be maintained throughout the semester, which will include sessions dedicated to reducing the feeling of drowning in complexity, that act as holding spaces where they feel safe in being vulnerable and where they can recharge, redirect, and re-engage. The design challenge as an educator is thus how to balance, on the one hand providing the necessary structures for this safety while on the other remaining adaptable enough for changes in (external) contextual conditions.
Some of early responses and ideas to this challenge have already been discussed with the research team, leading to some very early sketches (we prefer to sketch out our thoughts to make it easier to align as a team).
What it asks from learners
Perhaps it is a coincescedence but the results that emerged from this question spell the acronym B.R.A.V.O. But this could also be my bias towards positivity. These results do not differentiate between learners (e.g. students and educators) for engaging with these more ecological approaches to higher education.
Balance — Throughout the semester, the importance of balance was stressed. Both internally with yourself (psychological health), externally with the educational requirements (such as assessments) as well as forces outside of the educational convines (particularly COVID-19 and resulting difficulty reaching professionals) were highlighted. In this first pilot, we demanded too much from ourselves (collectively) as well as educationally which led to scheduling as well as energy issues ‘I try to fit my own life into my schedule. The screen glitches and cracks, symbolizing the overwhelming amount of things to do and emotions around the situation. The light dims, my room is dark. The space in which I sleep, eat, and work feels nothing like a home’. This further led to internal struggles ‘how can I be of support to my family while still working hard as a student? It is really hard, especially right now, to combine the minor with my personal life. I really need to work on this more in the next weeks. So I’m taking this learning question with me once again’. Moving forward, the programme has to consider balance in the broadest sense (psychologically, socially and educationally) very carefully and remain adaptable for changes in external context to allow for individualisation of balance. This could for example mean that people have different pathways through the minor, not just in practice but actively facilitated as part of the educational design. My colleague Gaby described this as all walking a path up the same mountain, but with many different routes leading to the top. Some of us feel comfortable taking the steepest routes while others need a slower journey. Whether everyone who starts needs to reach all the way to the mountain top, or the top is also relative is still an open question.
Reflexivity — throughout the semester examples of reflexivity were observed in the learners. These were moments where their own beliefs and habits were questioned because of the complexity of the challenges (and the times) they were faced with. An example of this was ‘lastly, I would like to get rid of my pessimism. When I talked to family and friends about the minor they looked at me as if I was an idiot. The goals we had were way too ambitious and unachievable according to them. This strengthened my doubts about the world and the results and impact of the minor. I believe that the results of the minor — despite the difficulties due to COVID-19 — were very satisfying and I think I proved these people wrong.’ This ranged from changes in perception of self-ability to be a catalyst of change ‘I became more aware of the need for a sustainable world, I was aware human were destroying the world, but I did not realise I as an individual can also make a change’ to actively chosing to participate in Mission Impact because they wanted to challenge their own perceptions ‘coming to this minor, I was very enthusiastic. This was an opportunity for me to explore concepts of regenerative cultures and hopefully open a new path for my studies’. One of the students commented that (s)he was so used to using specific methods and looking at research from a particular way, she was blind to even consider there were alternatives. Overall, it was very clear that reflexivity plays a central part in this type of ecological education. Moving forward, creating spaces and moments to critically engage with our own perspectives and beliefs will be a key part of Mission Impact.
Action confidence — I think that seeing how learners develop action confidence is one of the great privileges of being an educator. By far, it is the part of the experience that is most meaningful for me, as this is really something that they can take with them no matter where they become change makers. Action confidence is the ability to step into the unknown with courage, to walk paths that are yet unwalked. This demands a high degree of courage as you are often facing resistance (both internally in the form of self — doubt and externally from others as you attempt to change existing systems). Throughout the learner stories, references to this developing courage were made. These ranged from stepping outside their comfort zones, feeling lost or scared, to finding their own strength in accepting that they can move forward even if the path is unclear. Because of the complexity, unpredictability and uncertainty of the context (changing availability of professionals, covid-19, mental states) developing this ability was neccesary for the learners to do anything. This confidence was also shown in action; through small practices, such as the courage to open up when feeling down and the courage to turn on the webcam and show yourself in the intimacy of your home. And in larger doings such as the workshop that we designed and hosted collaboratively. Honestly, if the learners took nothing else from this experience but becoming more confidence in their ability to take action and change the world, I consider the pilot a success.
Vulnerability — Throughout the semester, a considerable degree of vulnerability was shown. Of course, it took a while for some to engage with the rest of the Mission Impact community openly about their vulnerabilities. And some of the learners never quite got there. The moments that did include genuine sharing of vulnerability were extremely powerful for all those involved, even resulting in tears. These moments were challenging, beautiful and changed all involved ‘nothing is perfect, but I think what is so great is that we were able to support each other. Not necessarily always in the work that we did, but in allowing the other person to be vulnerable, to struggle and then to thrive.’ The bi-weekly collective reflective sessions were particularly powerful spaces for vulnerable engagement with each other as ‘[these] showed me that it is important to stand up for myself and ask for recognition, they made me realize that it is acceptable to be vulnerable and to ask for help’. The type of work required to work towards a more sustainable future for ourselves, as well as the regions around our institutions, inherently involves running into situations where being vulnerable is a strength. This also materialized in learners gaining the confidence to ask for help from the community ‘‘by realizing that even if we did not know how to execute a task or write the report, we can always ask the other groups for help, made me feel part of a community’ and the inclusion of topics that they would normally consider to be outside of education (such as family issues).
Openness — One of the fundamental characteristics of this type of learning, is a degree of openness. This came back in multiple forms, such as openness to emerging futures, as well as the messy processes of engaging with these. One student commented ‘ I also noticed how important group dynamics are due to our biweekly reflection sessions. As I saw other groups struggle within their teams and the impact of your own attendance/openness to collaborate. I also saw what having just a session to come together and talk or open sessions of playing games does with the dynamic of a group. People became way more open and enjoyed their time a lot more when these events started’. This also asks for an openness to new forms of insights, new people, and new disciplines. This second form of openness was also perceived as one of the more challenging as pects of Mission Impact, particularly at the beginning. As (some of) these alternatives were quite far outside their comfort zones (n.b. they are used to education that deepens their knowledge instead of that invites them to broaden it). Many mentions were made about the importance of holding (safe) spaces — ‘as spaces to connect with other students (practice opening up and being vulnerable and at the same time supporting one another)’ and their importance for this openness to flourish. It is also where it asks a lot from the educator, as facilitator, co-host, and participant of these collective holding spaces for genuine and open engagement with each other. In my own notes, I commented how holding these spaces requires living B.R.A.V.O as a teacher.
Workshops
We hosted three (Feb 10–12) days of design workshops where a variety of internal and external experts (professors and students, as well as representatives of the regions with which we will be working next year) joined us for co-creation. Here, we presented these results as a basis for guiding the participants through a process of ideation for the (re)designing the Mission Impact. In total, 10 people participated in this first round of redesigning this collective experiment. The four students working on redesigning Mission Impact have prepared these workshops with me and I very much enjoyed co-hosting these. I am also happy that we were able to include students in every step of the design process of Mission Impact v0.1 and now v0.2 as I strongly believe that students should be actively involved in co-shaping the future of their own education as much as they should be involved in the co-shaping of our collective regenerative future more generally. These sessions were two hours long and included visual storytelling (sketching) and open discussions. The results were mapped on a miro board and live visualized, both of which were presented at the end of the session to corrobate the results and ensure we didn’t miss important ideas. A variety of design questions were prepared based on the above results of the NTM. Next week, we will ideate the insights from these sessions, as well as the NTMs, further into low fidelity prototypes of Mission Impact v0.2.
Further development of NTM
Besides working on Mission Impact v0.2 we will also be continuing our work on NTM, as we believe there is potential for this continued union of story science and TD. As such, we will explore if it is possible to use this emerging framework as a guide for the students in the 0.2v of this experiment. As part of the process of redesigning the regions with which we work. Where the NTM can act as a framework for applied narratology/design doing that marries insights from transition studies & stories to bring about more sustainable futures. Or in other words, to help the students in their process of guiding the places around our university to help the regions transition and themselves to transform. An early model of this framework can be seen below and includes 10 steps, but this will require more testing and thinking.
Closing
In the next update we will share the results of these workshops, as well as first low fidelity prototypes of Mission Impact v0.2, which I am super excited about. We look forward to exploring this further as an example of applied narratology and TD in relation to educational processes to collectively learn towards a more sustainable reality. And I particularly look forward to testing these in the Greenport West-Holland & Binckhorst areas in or near The Hague next September. In addition, we will prepare this work to be submitted to a conference/paper on (higher) education so that we can share the learnings with the broader scientific community working on education that connects to and co-creates sustainability in the regions around our institutions.
As always, if you want to connect to talk, co-create or connect feel free to reach out to b.vandenberg@hhs.nl. Sharing, commenting, and clapping is much appreciated :).
