Design Activity #1

Design Principles for Whole Student FormationShift faculty culture from “critique” to “construct and connect”

Student voices needed in this process

What do we need to

UNLEARN to do this?

Do these design principles form a part of an alternative worldview

that is emerging?

“Myth bust:” “staff” can be educators too!

Multiple ways of learning

Bridge between residences, civic

engagement, academic

disciplines

Use reflection as way to make connections

We need to understand better how we value, not just what we value. Axiological practices

are too little understood

We need to flip some orthodoxies

We need to flip some orthodoxies

Innovation and risk rewarded

Identify and leverage “positive deviance” (cf. A Gawande)

Local/ global; political/ personal;

theory/ practice

“Peripheral centrality:” “the center is nowhere… the circumference is

everywhere.” Wisdom that comes from margins – want to do “both / and”

Empower connection – stimulate don’t just

stipulate

Living and learning; intergenerational learning; learning across disciplines

Opportunities for narrative analytics, discourse analytics

Get past the fear of putting student data

in the hands of students

Your work is your badge

The most important questions have yet to be asked because they fall between disciplines

(paraphrased Alasdair McIntyre)

What if we evaluate the quality of our

engaged community

Shared Responsibility for Whole Student Formation

Use disciplinary accrediting bodies to set standards in line

w/ whole person goal

Inter- and trans- disciplinary courses and majors where shared outcomes for students are imagined

Interdisciplinary programs (minor, major, programs) with co-taught courses and faculty shared across departments

Is “disciplinary teaching and learning” really the most relevant

model to put formation at the center? Why assume its

continuation??

Reflection arc of: “what?” “so what?” “now what?”

Global learning beyond or

beneath study abroad /away

University funding for community-based learning coordinators at community partners where students are deployed / placed for credit courses

Shared language across the

institutional silos

Agree on shared language of formation Integrity! We taught them how to bring down the system

Faculty development opportunities focusing on designing for formational outcomes e.g. GU Summer Institute sessions on designing for formational outcomes

This shared responsibility should

be across universities, phases of educators

and across countries in the world

“Habits of Mind and foundational concepts” (designed a common university-wide language to talk about curriculum)

Shared responsibility = shared opportunity

People in buildings and grounds can

be interdisciplinary

educators

Linking” service, learning, research,

community, engagement

Move the Margin to the Center

Challenge the autonomy of “theory” by shifting student language to hypothesize before they theorize from a too-limited

standpoint / context

Experiential learning = “sustained project;”

explode the semester model!

Some practices have widely disparate levels of access. Formation and deep learning can’t be the domain of the privileged few

Learning from the history of experimenting colleges and

universities in the 20s 30s 60s

Gallup “Great Jobs Great Lives” report

could help with this; create momentum

for this focus Student-built open-

web personal learning networks = experiential learning in the digital world @

VCU

Faculty need experience with

experiential learning -> HIPs ->

formation (LaGuardia FYS)

Share info about

granting agencies

that support

this work

Seeing all of us in the “academy” as learners

Students facilitate learning on either common areas of

interest for a common issue / cause or creative

imagination

Mentoring is often at the margins in a faculty system that rewards “teaching” and “scholarship” – time to move mentoring into this equation -> teacher-scholar-mentor

Agency is

oftenat

the margins

Mentoring. Parker Palmer asks not

“what made your mentor great?” but what was it about

you that made your mentor want to

mentor you

Teach people how to DO – model that

Knowing students as individuals –

distinctly different – would help

Who decides the impact measures; who collects and

analyzes and interprets the data?

Class contracts / graduation contracts where students take

responsibility for narrating

Connect What Hasn’t Been ConnectedFlipped orthodoxy – “are

students ready for college” -> “are colleges ready for students”

This project takes forward thinking and risk taking

administration, which is all too rare

Need to change the way staff and

faculty are valued and rewarded

differently

“I’ve been in this really great MOOC

for the past 20 years – its called the

internet” – Patrick Masson

We need to create integrated databases that connect curricular and co-curricular data to model whole person development

We are doing this at LaGuardia -> it takes a culture shift on both sides

Connect: e.g. Spit4Science researchers and practitioners all focused on college behavioral health

Align student community on a set of “21st century”

values. Not only what adults hand to them

Philosophy across the curriculum

Work study program as High Impact

Practice

Measuring impact outside the

classroom in cost effective manner

Teach learners (faculty & students) how to unknow as much as how to know

Advising teams

connecting faculty and

student affairs

New Common Book program @ VCU aligned w/ QEP

Curriculum and co-curriculum all designed together and iteratively with students at center of feedback loop