The first blog post about the first meeting of the first prototype of the first-ever student-run course.
How might we make undergraduate education any bit more meaningful, engaging, and valuable for our peers?
That’s the question Lizzy and I are hoping to answer. Our prototype? This student-run course.
A quick shoutout to the Design Lab, Cognitive Science Department, and Arthur C. Clarke Imagination Center for making this pilot course possible.
What is this course?
A credit-granting class that brings students across disciplines together for three hours every week, so students don’t have to make time outside of class. Local professionals and alumni, who are eager to work with students and impart advice drop in during class hours to give feedback.
This is the first prototype of a class that we hope to continue beyond this quarter.
Who are we?
Amateur.
In French, it denotes, “lover of”.
We’re amateurs.
Lizzy and I are amateur designers at the University of California, San Diego. As far as credentials go, we’re not professors. We’ve still got a lot to learn about our craft. I’m a second year, and Lizzy’s a third year. But we’re aware of just how enriching, meaningful, and exciting project-based learning can be.
We’re obsessed with it, and we believe in its relevancy for anybody who wants to create for people. Thus, we hope to share a chance to practice design with our peers through this student-run course.
We’re here to bring students from across disciplines, guide them in their projects with what we know, and direct them to the right resources for the questions we can’t answer.
Why did we make this course?
UC San Diego.
It’s home to the first-ever Cognitive Science department. It’s also an international powerhouse in STEM research and education.
We have incredible faculty and an incredibly potent student body of engineers, cognitive scientists, programmers, researchers, artists.
However, we’ve made some realizations listening to what students and alumni alike have had to say about their experience here:
- “There aren’t many opportunities for me to put theory to practice”: Our peers often complain about a discrepancy between what they learn in the classroom and how often it is that they’re able to put it to practice. Moreover, they feel they have to sacrifice time for coursework to find the time and space for passion projects.
- “It’s rare to collaborate with students beyond your major”: Yet in our careers, we’ll always be working with people with different technical backgrounds and perspectives.
- “I’m not a CogSci/CompSci major, so it’s rare to come across design courses”: There a few amazing design-related courses available for COGS/CS majors, but opportunities to learn and practice it are currently scarce for students outside of the COGS and CS major.
- “How do I meet mentors?” Alumni and local industry would love to give back to the students and build stronger relationships with them.
Why does there have to be a disconnect between our coursework and the enriching experiences that collaboration, peer-to-peer learning, and mentorship provide?
These realizations spurred the creation of the course.
How we got this course started:
We’ve been working on this course for a quarter.
We began by piecing together our findings from speaking with peers and alumni and crystallizing what we imagined as the ideal learning experience. As we worked with our faculty advisors in mapping out the logistics of the course, this course began to materialize.
Once we got the green light, we had a week to publicize this course. Lizzy and I quickly compiled a student application for the course.
We composed a student-letter that Lizzy blasted on Facebook. I began sending alumni e-mails inviting them to become mentors for the course.
After unleashing the application, we waited a week.
Cold feet. I feared if students would bother with this course at all. Major credit wasn’t even guaranteed for their time in this course. Moreover, Design was a nebulous concept for people who haven’t been exposed to design thinking. “It’s kind of like art, right?” “Oh, so you make posters and fliers and stuff?”
To my relief, applications began to trickle in.
Trickle turned into pour as we received 30 applications by the fourth day. Lizzy and I couldn’t believe our eyes.
The night of the deadline, I checked the application responses. Staring back at me were 55 eager responses of students from all over campus. We originally intended to have 20 students. However, because of so many great candidates applying, we pushed it up to 24.
Shout out to the students in this class that aren’t even expecting credit. That’s passion.
How/Why we choose the teams
We aimed to create interdisciplinary teams comprised of part technical skill and part design skill. On each team, we made sure to have at least two members whom were familiar with design thinking. Some ask why we chose to pick the teams ourselves. We chose teams for a few reasons:
- To avoid mutual friends with similar skills joining forces.
- To create a more industry like environment. You do not always get to choose who you work with and may be assigned a project because of your specific skills.
- For members of different skillsets and perspectives to learn from one another.
We are aware that this could potentially be disastrous or it could potentially work really well. So far, it appears to be the latter.
Shout out to people who have played an integral role
- Teresa Wassum and Thanh Maxwell from the Cognitive Science Department. Never in my craziest dreams would I have expected to have faculty as enthusiastic and supportive as you Cog Sci folks.
- Scott Klemmer, for trusting us young’uns with leading this course.
- Derek Lomas, for patiently walking us through the nitty gritty of fleshing the course out.
- Our terrific mentors, for taking time off your already-busy lives to help out the young blood here.
