The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation has funded the Education Design Lab to lead an intensive one-year Design Challenge beginning Fall, 2017. Four pairs of two- and four-year institutions will develop customized sets of tested interventions that can dramatically move the needle on bachelor’s completion for community college students.
Teams from each institution will participate in three national cohort convenings and another three custom on-site design sessions. They will be provided access to subject matter experts, coaches and design specialists to help redesign the students’ journey from the student’s point of view via a structured process for developing transformative, not incremental, solutions. Pilots will launch in Fall, 2018, and results tracked for the next six years.
Throughout the Design Challenge, participants will:
1. Learn the core fundamentals of design-driven innovation and understand how it can bring diverse stakeholders together to co-create on behalf of student success. It can also help to mitigate the age-old problem: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
2. Meet other administrators and experts from around the country focused on transfer pathways in a hands-on, structured creative process to explore how emerging best practices can meet the needs of their students.
3. Design and iterate prototypes toward one or more pilot plans. Training on rapid prototyping and lean-startup methods will help partners arrive at an implementation and launch and evaluation plan, with funded support from a third party evaluator.
Questions? Want to recommend a community college & university to participate? Contact us at SeamlessTransfer@eddesignlab.org