Abstract
In 2020, Old Dominion University was awarded a State Council for Higher Education for Virginia grant in order to re-imagine the future of experiential learning at the institution. This campus-wide effort is led by a taskforce to create a vision, framework, and plan for the future of experiential learning at Old Dominion University. The taskforce is composed of stakeholders that include students, faculty, administrators, and community and business partners. In this chapter, the authors report on process and progress, with particular attention to the first three phases of the design thinking process. In the empathy phase, they have engaged in design thinking sprints, hosted monthly taskforce meetings, engaged in an exhaustive review of current experiential learning activities, and deployed surveys of relevant stakeholders. During the defining phase, they analyzed initial data, synthesized their collective empathy work, and identified root issues to craft their “How might we” questions to inform the ideation work. In this chapter, they also share the results of the ideation phase.
TopBackground And Campus Context
ODU is located in Norfolk, VA and is a public doctoral research university with more than 24,000 students, 37% of whom come from underrepresented ethnic groups. The University is nationally known for coastal resilience, modeling and simulation, bioelectrics, cybersecurity, and port logistics and maritime engineering. More than half of the faculty are involved in funded research projects providing research opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students. Further, we have a strong commitment to high-quality pedagogy, providing a variety of enriching learning opportunities for students on and off campus, and partnering with businesses and communities to attracting top talent, nurturing investment and business start-ups, generating high-paying jobs and improving the quality of life for Norfolk and all of Virginia. Examples of these initiatives include the following.:
Key Terms in this Chapter
Experiential Learning: An active process in which the learner is guided through an intentionally designed activity to gain practical experience, self-awareness, and transferable skills.
Ideation: Process of brainstorming solutions to identified problems.
Design Thinking: Creative and human-centered approach to solving complex problems that involves understanding the challenge through the lens of the user, defining the actual root problem(s), coming up with many ideas or solutions, selecting the solution(s) to develop, prototyping the solution(s) and testing the solution(s).
Prototype: Proposed solution to problem that has been identified.
Internship: Work-based learning activity that promotes and assesses the application of curricular knowledge in a professional setting.
Design Thinking Experiential Learning Sprints: Short design thinking exercises addressing different parts of the design thinking process.
Defining: Moving from a general understanding of the problem to more specifically defining the actual challenge that needs to be addressed.
Testing: Acquiring feedback from stakeholders, as well as implementing pilots of our prototypes.
Empathizing: Understanding the problem through the lens of stakeholders.