Good afternoon,
Recently, I discovered a new approach in design for education. Well, it was new to me. How many of you have heard of, or implemented the Customer Centered Design Approach to Service Delivery? I must admit, after reviewing the information presented, I am discovering there is a great deal of this approach that benefits adult education and adult learners. I invite you to review the webinar and resources provided by ION
From the transcripts of the webinar: "So we started thinking about using empathy and emotion to better develop services. And one of the products that we came up with in our long-term unemployed project was this notion that when long-term unemployed – actually, anyone who's unemployed – comes into our One-Stops, they're in various different emotional states. Some people are completely panicked. They're about to lose their car or their apartment. They actually don't need career exploration. They don't need resume writing skills. They don't need job search. They need money, and perhaps the best first service for that person is financial counseling. Someone else might be stalled. They've sent out a million resumes. They don't get anything back from anybody. They just don't know what to do next, and they really need inspiration.
Those are very different kinds of core needs, and typically in many of our One-Stops what we do is we treat everybody the same."
I invite you to explore the webinar and resources. What do you think about the Customer Centered Design Approach to Service Delivery? Do you feel this is new, or is it really combining all of the support services we offer? What are your thoughts and conclusions? How does this information, if at all, change how you may approach designing services.
Sincerely,
Kathy Tracey
@Kathy_Tracey
Comments
Kathy, the Customer Centered Design Approach discussed in the resources you listed translates into education as the philosophy, "Teach the student, not the content."
I agree that providing intake services to adult students, the " empathy and emotion" aspect is often ignored. To me, that is like ignoring the elephant in the room! :)
In student-oriented colleges, students are assigned to trained advisors during the registration process. Where I taught, we, as instructors, were trained to advise and counsel students before before signing them up for classes. Very often, they had no idea of how to plan their futures, even their next day or week! They were too overwhelmed by the stress of present circumstances, as you mentioned.
I wonder what approaches could be implemented in our programs to address the " empathy and emotion" aspect of intake? Should all new staff be required to watch a video on how to ID issues and deal with them? Or maybe have a two-hour workshop with case sample case studies? Anything else? Leecy