Redesigning Mission Impact
This work presented here includes insights and work that was co-created with Nicolas Landriati, Luciana Santerre, Marieke Buisman, Ping Huang, Vladimir Genov, Thomas Wissingh & Gabriela Bustamante.
In this update, I will discuss the design changes that will be implemented going into the second iteration of the Mission Impact minor at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. In this minor, we try to connect to and co-create regenerative learning ecologies to empower learners to co-create sustainable futures. In the pilot, we learned a lot about what is required in terms of support, knowledge, and structure to facilitate this. In this iteration, we will be testing some of those learnings. In the iteration, student teams will facilitate transgressive learning towards more external sustainability and through this engage with transformative learning themselves to develop their regenerative leadership abilities. This regenerative leadership is seen as the ability to guide collective learning processes towards more sustainable futures. In this post, we will go into some depth on the educational design that we have developed based on the reflections from the students and teachers, as well as co-creative sessions with the regions we worked with and will be working with moving forward. As always, this post constitutes working-out-loud and thinking-out-loud in the spirit of open science and may contain language or content errors. In openly sharing these design ideas, concepts, considerations, and thoughts, we hope to inspire and share the knowledge and content that we are developing so that other universities can adjust and adapt it for their own use. Please note you are welcome to do so. You are also welcome to reach out if you want more of the content or insight, some of which are still heavily under development.
Before we dive in deeply here is an overview of some of the major changes and assumptions:
- We assume a hybrid constellation will be possible, which results in 1 physical day as an entire course.
- We will use a few different IT solutions throughout the MI course and prepare guides for each of these. Roughly speaking, Microsoft Teams will be used as the general co-working and collaboration space, Miro will be used for the group-based tackling of the transition challenges and a Notion template will be used for the creation of the personal learning journals.
- All classes, workshops, and events will still be public with the exception of those limited by space, COVID-19 rules, or materials (such as arts-based sessions).
- We focus on collaboration within and between groups instead of competition.
- A massive reduction of guest lectures/workshops in favor of clear courses that touch upon the skills required by leaders to engage with this form of regenerative leadership.
- The incorporation of three distinct (but connected) course lines: Creative Action Research through Design (CARD), Leadership for Regenerative Futures (LRF) and Personal Sustain-abilities.
- Design is seen as a process to develop and make future(s) tangible and is not limited to products, systems, or specific degrees.
- More supportive structure in the form of design sprints as well as more clearly defined personal journal/portfolio that still allows for creative individual engagement to create psychological safety for embracing the uncertainty of complexity.
- Stronger integration of the region in the teams themselves by asking a few ‘spider in the web’ people to be part of the sprint teams.
Structure
One of the major improvement points, but also a difficult design challenge, is that of structure. As it was very often referenced and identified as something that would really have helped if more of it was present. Simultaneously, the very act of adding structure reduces the complexity of reality and wicked sustainability problems. This requires a shift from one end of this continuum where there is almost no structure to one where there is just enough structure on supporting the process that it remains doable to work as a learner with the course and the complexity of the problems. In this regard, much can be learned from design agencies, who are used to working with agile approaches. Although in my experience a great many of these looks more agile than they actually are when changes in context emerge. The incorporation of design sprints to guide the process of embracing complexity seems like a logical thing to do. So, what will this look like for Mission Impact v0.2?
Starting from the second week, we will be working on design sprints of three weeks. Each of which follows the same general outline of a kick-off meeting to work on the backlog and/or to decide what will be done for that specific sprint and then a retrospective at the end of the period to look back at the teamwork and the progress. In addition, we will hire a teaching assistant to do daily stand-ups with the teams and guide them that way. We hope that by incorporating a stronger focus on supporting and scaffolding the process (or strengthening the hull to continue on the metaphor used in the previous post) that provides enough help to dance with the complexity of wicked problems for longer songs.
Two projects
In the Mission Impact course, the students will engage with two interrelated research projects. The first, is the transition challenge within the regions we will be working with. The second, is a personal transformation learning journal that the students will co-create throughout the semester. Both working on the external transition challenge, as well as the internal transformation unfolding, are seen as equally important projects worthy of serious embodied inquiry. Particularly, the combinations and relationships between external and internal working on sustainability transformation. In this personal learning journal the students will be guided through a series of creative reflective assignments to capture their own lived-experienced.
The personal learning journal, which will be prepared in Notion, will incorporate mini-assignments from the two main workshop series (CARD & LRF) where we will prepare mini-assignments that further the content of the courses through individual practice. In addition, every week the journal incorporates either a personal or a collective reflective exercise that is either self-guided with instructions or facilitated by my colleague Gaby or myself. As such, this portfolio will consist of both personal reflections and experiences as well as more content-specific learning. This combination is designed to allow for the development of abilities required to work on the larger wicked problem while also facilitating the capturing of the personal unfolding. This combination will also be explored through storytelling nights every fifth week of the minor. The goal of these sessions is to translate the experience and reflections on it into a story, seeing the creation of this narrative as a form of analysis. These don’t have to be spoken stories necessarily, it could also be sung for example. The first of these sessions will be private within the course in an intimate setting so that the students can get acquainted with this type of setting. The second and third sessions will be in the areas that we will be working with and the final session (which also closes Mission Impact) will be a public event in one of the partner museums that we work with. I am already super excited to experience all of these storytelling nights.
Introduction Week
One of the main outcomes of the pilot, was that there was a need for a more community building and engagement, particularly at the beginning of the course. Right now, and this is still under construction, we see a four day first week as a nice balance between getting used to the course, as well as getting to grasp with the goals of this experiment. As such, the Monday will start in one of the many natural areas around The Hague where we will engage with the how, what & why of Mission Impact and T-learning. On Tuesday we will start working on storytelling through two workshops. The first will focus on the power of stories and their centrality of creating new stories for more sustainable futures as well as a crash course in how to tell visual stories about one of the wicked problems that the learners feel passionate about. On Wednesday and Thursday we will go on excursions to the two regions we will be working with, where besides a guided tour by some of the people working there the students will be challenged to do a Derive as an early exposure to creative methods. We aren’t sure yet if we want them to produce the same output for each of these excursions or if we will try multiples out, such as painting for Wednesday but poetry on Thursday. The last day the students will get started on working on their personal portfolio by sketchnoting their life story up to the Mission Impact course and write a farewell letter to their grandchildren.
Design Sprints
To support the process of engaging with the complexity of wicked problems in the regions. We will be working with design sprints in the minor. Now, these are not formal scrum sprints in the strictest sense of the word. But they are definitely inspired by agile ways of working. In which I have been trained in a previous life. Roughly speaking, there will be six sprints of three-weeks each that start with kick-off sessions and conclude with retrospectives. During the sprint, there will be bi-daily standups with a teaching assistant. The representatives of the region(s) will be invited to join the kick-off sessions at the start of each sprint so that (a) the connection to place remains strong throughout the process and (b) so that more learners can develop their regenerative leadership capacity by engaging with wicked problems.
Guest Lectures/workshops
In the pilot of the course, there were more than thirty guest lectures. While this resulted in a breadth of classes, workshops, and lessons it also resulted in a lack of depth on key topics. Perhaps more importantly, we ran into issues with underdeveloped leadership and research skills across the board (in the pilot there were students from about ten different bachelor programs but most of them came from STEM backgrounds and were not really prepared in their previous studies to engage with wicked problems or (non-quantitative) research. Because of this need for more depth directly related to tackling wicked problems, the number of guest contributions going forward is reduced quite drastically. The aim now is to include one guest contribution on average for each sprint (six in total). But to make sure that whoever we invite really connects with the goals of this educational experiment and that can create educational experiences with the transgressive nature we are going for.
Closing week
The final week, much like the first week, will also be quite different. As it will be the week that the students have to deliver their final portfolio, research reports and etc. It is also the moment they will co-host an exposition of all of the work from the regions. We are hoping to organize this as a public event with a local museum that is one of our partners. In this exposition, we will also host the final Mission Impact Storytelling Session, where each of the students will share their experience in the form of a story (which can also be musical in nature!). These stories will serve a dual purpose as facilitating active reflection on their learning of the past twenty weeks as well as looking forward to what they will take with them moving forward. In addition, it serves as rich aesthetic data in narrative and performative forms to explore this type of education and what it asks from the learners involved in such a regenerative learning ecology.
Context:
In the first iteration of the minor, we were lucky to work with the Binckhorst. An industrial area with a long past that is in the process of transitioning towards a more circular and inclusive co-working and living space. After the summer, we are very happy to continue working with them. In addition to this amazing urban environment, we will start a collaboration with the Greenport West-Holland. Where we will join a quest to learn towards a circular metropolitan area that can sustainably feed the megacity of the future. I am very excited to work with both cases and am also curious to experience which the students will prefer. As our intention is to organize excursions to both places in the introduction week and ask the students to tell us what their preferences are for tackling. Hopefully, that will result in a fairly even split so that we can assign everyone to their preferred place. In addition, besides an even distribution in the number of students, we will also be distributing them so that the teams are as transdisciplinary as possible, which may result in someone not getting their preferred option. What is particularly interesting is that these two contexts, or regions, as living labs, are quite different. Where the Binckhorst is highly urban, industrial even. The Greenport is quite rural. Where the Binckhorst now mostly includes creative industries, the Greenport is the breadbasket of the Netherlands. But both are struggling with trying to learn towards more sustainable futures where the regions can continue to thrive. I am sure we will learn a lot about connecting with living labs by working with two at the same time. And if all goes to plan we can then scale the number of places we connect with only limited by the number of students we attract in the course. To help the students, as well as the regions, in their collective learning process this time we are developing specific courses that are designed to nurture a base level of regenerative leadership in the students so that they can flourish as catalysts of change.
Course 1: Creative Action Research through Design (CARD)
The first of these courses is called CARD and consists of a ten-week series of workshops, reading, and mini-assignments. The main purpose of this course is to introduce the students (or people from the Binckhorst/Greenport who are interested in joining) to the basic research and facilitation skills required to guide collective learning. These workshops are designed from a T-learning perspective and include learning with the hand, heart, and head. Because we will start the course by exploring creative & action research approaches before moving on to how to combine this with designerly ways of doing, we believe that we can make it interesting and meaningful for students with all backgrounds, including designers. At the end of this course, students should be able to prepare, conduct, facilitate, analyze and conduct creative workshops and translate these findings into artifacts that can trigger further learning. Where we maintain a broad few design artifacts so that they can include any type of format that fits with the context and the specific talents of the individual. As this is something they will have to do as a team to tackle the transition challenge, by integrating this as a guided learning experience within the course we hope to scaffold their learning process and improve the ability to engage with the uncertainty of the complexity of wicked sustainability challenges and sustainability transformations. To strengthen the connection with the regions, whenever possible the workshops in each of the courses will be given in the Binckhorst or the Greenport.
Course 2: Leadership for Regenerative Futures (LFR)
The second course, shown partially below, focusses on leadership for engaging with regenerative futures and as such consists of a combination of competences that need to be developed, such as the ability to think in system’s, as well as more attitudinal aspects like learning to embrace the uncertainty of complexity. Just like the previous course, we engage with these topics in a designerly way, through materiality. We do this for two reasons, the first pragmatic: the course is offered as part of our industrial design engineering program. The second, I believe that engaging with materiality and complexity requires the iterative and opennature of design. When design is seen in the broadest sense of its interpretation as the creation of new connections within existing systems of relationships that can lead to alternative more desirable futures.
Course 3: Student-led Masterclasses
In addition to the two courses above that will be primarily taught by myself and my direct colleagues. The students themselves will also co-create a series of workshops for each other and participants from the regions as part of their training. This follows a flip-the-classroom approach and each week two teams will be challenged to design and teach such a class. For the first few of those sessions the materials are pre-defined and directly derived from the pilot, such as Bravery and Reflexivity. The remainder will be up to the students and the unfolding context. To be co-created in the moment.
Journal/ Personal portfolio
As this course attempts to combine working the external and internal dimensions of sustainability. A large part of the course consists of introspective exercises that are maintained in a personal journal. A template for this is currently being co-designed with a team of students and myself. This journal will also include small individual exercises based on the above courses in addition to the autoethnographic fieldnotes that the students will be challenged to maintain. This combination will act as data for the storytelling events that we will organize every fifth week of the course. In these sessions, which will start with the community of the Mission Impact course and gradually expand in scope and openness, we will challenge the students to explore their development by sharing the story of how they are unfolding as regenerative leaders.
The (Re)generative Education Podcast
I am soon going to start recording a limited podcast series about regenerative education and learning constellations. In this podcast, which will be published in September 2021 I will talk with leading practitioners and educational scientists to explore and map the current state of practice of education that connects to and co-creates to sustainable futures. For example, educators that connect their teaching with living labs and see education as unfolding processes or living assemblages. I look forward to these chats and to sharing this series with you all. Because I think we will learn a lot. It is also exciting and a bit nerve wrecking because I am quite self-conscious about this. For example, will people want to listen to these chats or even just to me? Am I an an interesting enough speaker and host to make it worth others people’s time.
Looking forward
I am fucking nervous, I always hate this in-between space when I don’t know yet if we will attract enough students who are going to do the course so that we can actually run (we need about 20) and it’s not really clear until May if we can reach that. This means we have to continue prepping like we can start but there is always a risk that we may not. And it’s one of the few times in my life when I really dislike uncertainty. Perhaps there is a good lesson for me in this uncomfort that can also be translated to the redesign of the minor. If we start from a positive assumption and say that we will have enough students to run the next semester I look forward very much to this next iteration. Because I truly believe that we are making great steps towards enacting the type of education that connects to and co-creates regenerative learning ecologies. This would not have been possible without the students, the colleagues, the people in the wild that have dedicated their time to support the Mission Impact project.
As always if you want to reach out for a chat or collaborate you are welcome to do so. Sharing and clapping is appreciated :).
