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Design Thinking in Education

Design Thinking is a mindset and approach to learning, collaboration, and problem solving. In practice, the design process is a structured framework for identifying challenges, gathering information, generating potential solutions, refining ideas, and testing solutions. Design Thinking can be flexibly implemented; serving equally well as a framework for a course design or a roadmap for an activity or group project.

Download the  HGSE Design Thinking in Education infographic  to learn more about what Design Thinking is and why it is powerful in the classroom.

Design Consultation for projects, session, and courses, including active learning and facilitation strategies.

Brainstorming Kits including Post-it notes, Sharpie markers, and stickable chart paper.

Physical Prototyping Cart with dozens of creative, constructivist supplies, including felt, yarn, foil, craft sticks, rubber bands, Play-Doh, Legos, and more.

For more information about TLL resources or to check-out brainstorming or prototyping materials, contact Brandon Pousley .

Other Resources  There are dozens of ready-made activities, workbooks, and curricular guides available online. We suggest starting with the following:

Stanford — d.school  and the  The Bootcamp Bootleg IDEO — ' Design Thinking for Educators ' and the  Design ThinkingToolkit Business Innovation Factory —  'Teachers Design for Education'  and the TD4Ed Curriculum Research —  Design Thinking in Pedagogy  —  Luka, Ineta (2014). Design Thinking in Pedagogy. Journal of Education Culture and Society, No. 2, 63-74.

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Design Thinking in Education: Perspectives, Opportunities and Challenges

The article discusses design thinking as a process and mindset for collaboratively finding solutions for wicked problems in a variety of educational settings. Through a systematic literature review the article organizes case studies, reports, theoretical reflections, and other scholarly work to enhance our understanding of the purposes, contexts, benefits, limitations, affordances, constraints, effects and outcomes of design thinking in education. Specifically, the review pursues four questions: (1) What are the characteristics of design thinking that make it particularly fruitful for education? (2) How is design thinking applied in different educational settings? (3) What tools, techniques and methods are characteristic for design thinking? (4) What are the limitations or negative effects of design thinking? The goal of the article is to describe the current knowledge base to gain an improved understanding of the role of design thinking in education, to enhance research communication and discussion of best practice approaches and to chart immediate avenues for research and practice.

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Design Thinking for Leading and Learning

How do we prepare K-12 students and learning communities to be as successful as possible? Come explore these questions and more in Design Thinking for Leading and Learning.

About This Course

How do we prepare K-12 students and learning communities to be as successful as possible? If future jobs require creativity, problem-solving, and communication, how do we teach these skills in meaningful ways? How do we bring together passionate school leaders to create systemic solutions to educational challenges? Come explore these questions and more in Design Thinking for Leading and Learning.

This course has been authored by one or more members of the Faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Its educational objectives, methods, assessments, and the selection and presentation of its content are solely the responsibility of MIT.

This course has been funded by Microsoft and is part of the  Microsoft K-12 Education Leadership  initiative developed to provide resources to K-12 school leaders around the world as they address the unique needs of their schools in a changing educational and technology landscape.

Course Overview

The course is organized into three sections that combine design thinking content with real-world education examples, as well as opportunities for learners to apply concepts in their own setting.

Unit 1: Meet Design Thinking.

An introduction to design thinking through the perspective of designers at MIT. For the first assignment, learners will take on the role of a designer and complete a small design project. This unit serves as a foundation for upcoming work in Units 2 and 3.

Unit 2: Design Thinking for Students.

Examples of how and why PK-12 educators use the design thinking process to enhance student learning in their classrooms. Learners will develop a hands-on design challenge to experiment with the process in their own classrooms or workplaces

Unit 3: Design Thinking for Schools.

Examples of how and why PK-12 institutions and their partners use design thinking to address systemic change. Learners will develop an action plan to experiment using the design process to address a problem in their own school communities.

What You'll Learn

• Process of design thinking
• Why the design thinking process is helpful for 21st century learners and schools
• How design thinking is applied in a variety of educational settings
• Ways to apply design thinking as a strategy for improving schools and systems=

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Design Thinking for Leading & Learning: Course To-Go

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Design Thinking for Leading & Learning: Starter Kit

Design Thinking for Leading & Learning: Readings & Resources

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Design Thinking in Education: Empathy, Challenge, Discovery, and Sharing

As a model for reframing methods and outcomes, design thinking reconnects educators to their creativity and aspirations for helping students develop as deep thinkers and doers.

"Design thinking gave me a process to weave through all of the project–based learning experiences I create with my kiddos."

"As a leader of a #NextGen school, design thinking is our continuous innovation process."

"Design thinking reminds me all the time why I became an educator; it all starts with empathy."

An Oasis for Educators

The quotes above -- full of insight and affirmation -- are just some of the many that I've heard from educators taken by the power of design thinking and moved to bring it into their practice. When we started the @K12lab at Stanford's d.school back in 2007 we began with a hunch that design thinking would be a great tool for educators to deploy in their classrooms and schools, and that ultimately, it would be a useful process for kids working through interdisciplinary challenges. What we found in our initial prototypes -- launching an innovation lab space, creating a design thinking professional development experience, and running student-facing design challenges for middle- and high-school classes -- was that the design thinking process functioned as a kind of oasis for educators, reconnecting them to their creativity and aspirations for helping students develop as deep thinkers and doers, not just as test takers.

In the last few years, the field has witnessed an explosion of interest in design thinking, nationally and internationally. You can literally see its growth mapped on the Design Thinking in Schools map and in the internationally booming Design for Change student challenge platform. The spread of design thinking also shows up in new national efforts like IDEO’s Teacher’s Guild platform and the very active Twitter chat community built around #DTK12chat . Educators are also supporting each other as design thinkers in regional collaborations like Atlanta’s #AK12DC, a collection of 30 public and independent schools working to accelerate design challenges, and Henry Ford Learning Institute 's work in Michigan to gather regional enthusiasts and design thinking leaders.

As the movement for design thinking in education broadens and deepens, many practitioners are flexibly customizing the design thinking process in their own contexts. Coming from the d.school, I particularly love seeing the teachers and leaders with whom we work sharing how they moved from the process we taught them (empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test) to language that works in their own context. For example, check out Mary Cantwell’s DEEPdt or Urban Montessori's incorporation of design thinking in their core values .

4 Modes for Developing Your Practice

If you're considering how to embrace design thinking in your school culture, I believe you should focus on four critical modes underlying the process:

1. Lead with empathy.

Empathy is, of course, the root of human-centered design. Leading with empathy builds on the classic definition of "walking in someone else's shoes" to get us out of our own heads and into the lived reality of others so that we can understand the implicit needs and root causes of the situations in which we work. Leading with empathy means pushing yourself to get closer to people, and to do so consistently, publicly, and with conviction.

How do you do it? Listen more; talk less. Immerse yourself in how others experience your school or program. Adopt a beginner's mind and use all of your senses to notice what's happening around you. At the d.school, we believe in these practices so much that we're issuing a Shadow a Student challenge from our School Retool project to illuminate the power of leading with empathy. If you want to step into empathy, it will be a great way to get started.

2. Challenge assumptions.

This is the opposite of "keep calm and carry on." Challenging assumptions means that when confronted with a problem, you seize the opportunity to do better than you've done before. Useful phrases to build into your lexicon are "What if. . . ?" and "How might we. . . ?" Just the simple act of introducing the language of possibility can start the shift from how we've always done things to the potential for a reframe. Reframing is critical for innovation, but it's also a way of moving from a deficit point of view to an asset focus. Challenging assumptions lets us see what both children and adults are truly capable of doing. Harnessed for good, challenging assumptions steers you in the direction of more effective policies and practices because you're willing to see things differently.

3. Make experiments happen.

Here's the rub. "Just do it" is more than a pitch for selling sports gear. It means try something and learn from it. We can tangle ourselves in all kinds of knots about "embracing failure," but what really matters is trying something, letting people know that you're trying it, and generating opportunities for feedback. You'll learn the most from what doesn't work.

When you find yourself sitting in one more meeting to make a plan for a plan, just stop and say, "What could we try in order to figure this out?" This sets you on the path to experiment with quick hacks and low-resolution prototypes. Whatever you try will point you in the direction of what's next. At the d.school, we call it a bias toward action : Don't talk -- do. And when you do, then you observe, reflect, and try again to get it right.

4. Share your process.

Design cannot thrive in isolation. As you share your empathy work or your experiments, share what's hard, not just what's shiny and new. You can share those things as well, but we'll all learn more when you share your process, warts and all.

I invite you to investigate how leading with empathy, challenging assumptions, and making experiments happen can deepen your teaching or leadership practices. And as you do, please share what you've learned -- you may have discovered what we've yet to imagine.

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The Right Way to Lead Design Thinking

• Christian Bason
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The authors studied almost two dozen major design-thinking projects within large private- and public-sector organizations in five countries and found that effective leadership is critical to their success. They focused not on how individual design teams did their work but on how the senior executives who commissioned the work interacted with and enabled it. To employees accustomed to being told to be rational and objective, design-thinking methods can seem uncomfortably emotive. Being asked not to quickly converge on an answer can be difficult for people accustomed to valuing a clear direction, cost savings, and finishing sooner rather than later. Iterative prototyping and testing call on employees to repeatedly experience something they’ve historically tried to avoid: failure. Consequently, those who are unfamiliar with design thinking need guidance and support from leaders to navigate the landscape and productively channel their reactions to the approach. The authors have identified practices that executives can use to stay on top of such innovation projects and lead them to success.

How to help project teams overcome the inevitable inefficiencies, uncertainties, and emotional flare-ups

Idea in Brief

The challenge.

Design-thinking methods—such as empathizing with users and conducting experiments knowing many will fail—often seem subjective and personal to employees accustomed to being told to be rational and objective.

The Fallout

Employees can be shocked and dismayed by findings, feel like they are spinning their wheels, or find it difficult to shed preconceptions about the product or service they’ve been providing. Their anxieties may derail the project.

Leaders—without being heavy-handed—need to help teams make the space and time for new ideas to emerge and maintain an overall sense of direction and purpose.

Anne Lind, the head of the national agency in Denmark that evaluates the insurance claims of injured workers and decides on their compensation, had a crisis on her hands. Oddly, it emerged from a project that had seemed to be on a path to success. The project employed design thinking in an effort to improve the services delivered by her organization. The members of her project team immersed themselves in the experiences of clients, establishing rapport and empathizing with them in a bid to see the world through their eyes. The team interviewed and unobtrusively video-recorded clients as they described their situations and their experiences with the agency’s case management. The approach led to a surprising revelation: The agency’s processes were designed largely to serve its own wants and needs (to be efficient and to make claims assessment easy for the staff) rather than those of clients, who typically had gone through a traumatic event and were trying to return to a productive normal life.

• Christian Bason (@christianbason) was for eight years head of MindLab , a cross-governmental innovation unit in Denmark that involves citizens and businesses in developing new solutions for the public sector. Since November 2014 he has been chief executive of the Danish Design Centre .
• Robert D. Austin is a professor of information systems and the faculty director of the Learning Innovation Initiative at Ivey Business School. He is also a coauthor of The Adventures of an IT Leader (Harvard Business Review Press, 2016).

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Design Thinking for Leaders—Made Possible by Innovation and Agility

• First Online: 13 April 2022

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• Selina Mayer 3 ,
• Flavia Bleuel 4 &
• Christina Stansell 4  

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Education neither begins nor ends with formal schooling. Learning is an ongoing process. Leadership is an ongoing learning process—as are the values and skills that underpin them. Over the years, we have worked with a variety of leaders from a wide range of industries. Despite the differing contexts, we have found many commonalities when considering the issues of innovation, transformation, and agility within organizations. In this chapter, we describe four key practices that leaders apply to foster innovation and agility: create and communicate a clear vision, build systems to learn and experiment, enable autonomy, and foster psychological safety. Furthermore, we give a brief overview of the Design Thinking mindset and how the mindset elements are connected to the four practices. We then provide a starting point for practitioners to apply these insights in their own contexts by posing questions that trigger self-reflection, as this lays the foundation for changing how we behave. Overall, this chapter can help leaders take the first actions towards agility and innovation.

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Mayer, S., Bleuel, F., Stansell, C. (2022). Design Thinking for Leaders—Made Possible by Innovation and Agility. In: Meinel, C., Krohn, T. (eds) Design Thinking in Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89113-8_11

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• TRANSFORMING LEADERSHIP EDUCATION UNDERGRADUATE ADVISING: Incorporating Growth Mindset and Design Thinking

Addison Sellon, M.S., Hannah Sunderman, Ph.D., L.J. McElravy, Ph.D. 10.12806/V22/I2/A2

Introduction

Academic advisors play a critical and constant role in the lives of undergraduate students (Hunter & White, 2004; Mann, 2020; Museus, 2021; Spratley, 2020). The advisor and student connection centers around high levels of investment and support to encourage students to make the most of their undergraduate experience. Engagement between students and their academic advisors has been found to encourage students to actively participate in academic experiences while simultaneously expanding and developing those experiences (Mann, 2020).

Regardless of the apparent advantages of the advising experience, advisors have broadly voiced challenges that can arise within the advising environment, namely maintaining a student-centered focus and finding a best practice that all view as vital to student learning (Aiken-Wisniewski et al., 2015; Hunter & White, 2004). The leadership education department at a four-year, large, Midwestern university identified additional areas of improvement within their advising practices, including a desire to create a more streamlined and unified approach to advising and to incorporate leadership theories into their advising experiences. With these aims in mind, growth mindset and design thinking were identified as key leadership theories to address both field-wide and department-specific challenges to academic advising. Notably, recent studies have successfully explored the potential outcomes of incorporating growth mindset and design thinking into the advising process, further encouraging their application in the present study (Banter, 2020; Kyte et al., 2020; Mann, 2020).

With the recognition of the challenges inherent in academic advising, we developed two manuals (i.e., a student manual and an accompanying faculty manual) that integrated growth mindset and design thinking within the context of academic advising. The goal of the student manual was to provide structure to the academic advising process while simultaneously enhancing leadership education students’ confidence and independent problem-solving. A faculty manual was also developed to enhance the overall advising experience and complement the student manual, thus creating cohesion and unity for advisors and their students. Both manuals provide leadership education students and advisors with a general framework of the concepts and specific tools that allow for practice, collaboration, and guidance during the academic advising process. After the manuals were generated, they were implemented into a pilot study and focus group to collect feedback on their potential impact on advising. This manuscript further explores the potential impact that growth mindset and design thinking can have within leadership education academic advising while further clarifying the role of the advisor (Spratley, 2020). Through this exploration, we hope to provide leadership educators with the framework and tools to incorporate both practices into their advising relationships, enhancing the time and interactions they have with students.

Background and Related Literature

In the current application manuscript, a leadership education department at a four-year, large, Midwestern university expressed their need to enhance their advising practices. Specifically, the department wanted to create a unified advising experience while simultaneously remaining rooted in a personalized approach that meets students’ needs and contributes to the department’s purpose of “developing the human potential (“Agricultural Leadership, Education & Communication Strategic Plan 2017-2022,” 2022) Further, the department’s vision is to be “a leader in providing innovative programs to develop extraordinary teachers, leaders, and communicators” with one aspect of the mission being to “[provide] innovative strategies that support excellence and best practices in teaching, research, and engagement” (“Agricultural Leadership, Dducation & Communication Strategic Plan 2017-2022,” 2022).  In line with the mission and needs of the department, two connected manuals (i.e., a student manual and a companion faculty manual) were formatted to address both the local and broad challenges within the field of leadership education academic advising. In so doing, we sought to create a united approach to academic advising within our department that would aid department faculty in their advising role.

To enhance student empowerment through the academic advising process, the concepts of growth mindset and design thinking were identified and combined due to their links with student motivation and self-confidence (Dweck, 2015; Hochanadel & Finnamore, 2015). These concepts have also been connected to empathy, creativity, and problem-solving (Goldman & Kabayadondo, 2017; Karpen et al., 2017, Mann, 2020). The department’s aims, along with the recognized challenges of academic advising, were incorporated with the constructs of growth mindset and design thinking to develop student-centered advising manuals for both students and advisors.

Growth Mindset.  Growth mindset, as defined by Dweck (2006), is the belief that one’s “basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts, your strategies, and help from others” (p. 7). This concept is formulated around how an individual approaches and interacts with problems as well as processes failure. The opposite of a growth mindset is a fixed mindset, a mindset in which an individual views their intelligence and abilities as stagnant, rather than as something that can be grown and developed (Dweck, 2006). When applied to academic settings, whether the introduction came from an instructor, parent, or guardian, a growth mindset was found to increase students’ abilities to overcome challenges by providing enhanced motivation and self-confidence (Hochanadel & Finnamore, 2015; Dweck, 2015). Specifically in the context of academic advising, Kyte et al. (2020), found that sending micro-messages formulated around a growth mindset to struggling students encouraged them to feel more motivated to face their challenges. Additionally, the incorporation of growth mindset has been linked to students overcoming challenges and achieving their goals (Cairncross et al., 2015).

Design Thinking.  Design thinking is a framework that emphasizes a human-centered problem-solving process. Following the framework developed by the British Design Council (2019), design thinking is generated from four unique phases: (a) Discover; (b) Define; (c) Develop; (d) Deliver. The Discover phase takes place when the individual is seeking to understand and recognize the problem at hand (Mann, 2020). The Define phase occurs when the specific challenge is identified after analyzing the information gathered during the Discover phase (Mann, 2020). The Develop phase represents when the individual begins to conceptualize and build solutions (Mann, 2020). Lastly, the Deliver phase takes place when the proposed solution is executed while feedback for adjustments is simultaneously received (Mann, 2020). When implemented in a higher education setting, design thinking has been found to encourage students to trust the process at hand, find a balance of control and freedom, not be afraid of failing, and focus on development throughout the process rather than the result (Coakley et al., 2014). When incorporated into academic advising, design thinking has the potential to provide individuals with a framework to process and overcome challenges through open communication, processing, and planning.

Growth Mindset and Design Thinking.  Past studies have demonstrated the benefit of utilizing design thinking and growth mindset to foster student success (Banter et al., 2020; Spratley, 2020). By employing growth mindset and design thinking, advisors can encourage their students to view learning and their collegiate experience as a multifaceted process that expands and evolves (Lowenstein, 2013). Equipping students with design thinking opportunities and implementing growth mindset in their advising experience will allow for student success in their future as they will have experiences with problem-solving and not be discouraged by potential failure. Through these applications, students will be prepared to confront obstacles as they come and continue growing throughout their undergraduate experience and beyond.

Additionally, previous research has uncovered how the collaboration between students and the advisor allows for students to be actively engaged in their academic growth while working with their advisor to expand and develop their experiences (Mann, 2020). The utilization of growth mindset-centered language by advisors towards students has been found favorable to students as it made them feel encouraged and recognize that they had growth opportunities when faced with a challenge (Kyte et al., 2020). Advisors can prepare students to overcome obstacles and reach their goals by nurturing their growth mindset (Cairncross et al., 2015). In sum, applying design thinking techniques encourages creativity and collaboration in the student’s advising experience, while growth mindset encourages students to persevere against challenges and potential hardships during their learning experience. When combined, students have a growth-centered perspective of their goals along with a framework of how to achieve them.

Growth Mindset and Design Thinking in Leadership Education Academic Advising.   Unique to academic advising within the field of leadership education, Banter et al. (2020) implemented design thinking practices into the leadership education academic advising process. One piece, in particular, that was developed was “curriculum roadmaps that detailed students’ progression in the program” (Banter et al., 2020, p. 72). This gave leadership students the chance to design their path and play a key role in their learning experience. Academic advisors play a crucial role in leadership student learning by, “generating awareness and connecting students to leadership education opportunities” (Spratley, 2020, p. 43). Advisors are a resource and a tool for students to utilize as they seek to grow in their undergraduate leadership experience.

Combining growth mindset and design thinking into the academic advising experience has a variety of potential advantages for leadership education students (Spratley, 2020; Banter et al., 2020). During the advising experience, advisors help their students grow and seek new opportunities. Through a growth mindset and design thinking, advisors can connect and collaborate with their students to explore and identify specific opportunities that are best suited for the student. Lowenstein (2013) also states that a growth mindset and design thinking can encourage students to perceive their education and college experiences as an ever-evolving multilayered process. When combined, the frameworks allow students to shift their thinking to a focus on growth and process while also providing steps in which they can engage with and overcome the problems they face. By so doing, students can work towards their success and take charge of their advising and education experiences.

Encouraging students to be in control of their advising experience also enforces the notion of student autonomy through self-directed learning. Student autonomy encourages students to have a sense of ownership in what they are doing and take control of their learning (Smith & Darvas, 2017) while self-directed learning fosters a sense of responsibility (Wilcox, 1996) and lifelong learning (Kreber, 1998; Van Woezik et al., 2019). The concepts of growth mindset and design thinking naturally encourage both student autonomy and self-directed learning as focus is on the student, their needs, and their growth. Through these concepts, students can take control of their own learning and continue further incorporating both concepts throughout their lives.

Growth mindset and design thinking have previously and can presently provide great value to undergraduate leadership education students and their advisors. Research has begun unveiling the benefits and support that these concepts can provide for students during the advising process (Banter et al., 2020; Mann, 2020; Spratley, 2020). The current study aimed to further explore the impact that can be had through incorporating growth mindset and design thinking into advising meetings. Through both manuals, tools are provided for academic advisors, specifically those working in leadership education, to integrate both concepts into their practices. Growth mindset and design thinking are both rooted in a rich history of research and implementations in various academic settings and, when combined, can help facilitate continued growth, ownership, and confidence for undergraduate leadership education students. Additionally, these resources provide advisors with a unique and structured framework to streamline the advising process while fostering engaging and collaborative environments for their students.

Description of the Application 

In response to the challenges of academic advising, recognized both within our department and generally in the field (Hunter & White, 2004; Spratley, 2020), we composed two advising manuals. The first manual is centered around the student and designed to be a tool and space for the student to learn, reflect, and grow by applying growth mindset and design thinking to their college experiences. The second manual focuses on the advisor and serves as a complementary piece to the student manual to enhance undergraduate academic advising sessions. Both manuals were generated to be adaptable and formattable to best enhance the advising needs of that specific student and to cultivate student autonomy through self-directed learning. These manuals were then implemented within a leadership education program at a four-year, large, Midwestern university.

The first manual was generated to serve as a tool specifically for students and focuses on introducing both theories, interactive growth activities, yearly worksheets, and reflection questions. The learning objectives for this manual are that students will understand growth mindset and design thinking, know how to approach challenges by using growth mindset techniques, and be able to apply the steps of design thinking to frame their goals. The overall aim of the manual is to introduce students to these concepts during their meetings with their advisor in hope that overtime they extend these tools beyond advising and throughout their educational experiences.

Section One of the manual introduces a growth mindset and design thinking to the student. The pages within the first section include definitions of the overall concepts and the phases of design thinking (see Figure 1). Section One also provides figures and visuals of growth mindset and design thinking along with a portion describing the benefits of combining the concepts. These visuals enhance the general definitions of the terms to help students conceptualize both concepts. We recommend that Section One is introduced to the student before the first advising meeting to allow them to familiarize themselves with the concepts before meeting with their advisor. Once the student has met with their advisor, they can discuss the frameworks and process questions about growth mindset and design thinking.

Section Two of the manual incorporates three growth activities that allow students to apply a growth mindset and design thinking to their present lives. These activities were generated to increase student familiarity with a growth mindset and design thinking and to provide an opportunity for students to recognize how both concepts can relate to their personal experiences. The first activity focuses on a growth mindset (see Figure 2) while others address design thinking and future planning. In the growth activity featured in Figure 2, the student is asked to connect factors of a growth mindset and fixed mindset to a challenge they are facing. Connecting the theories to current difficulties allows the student to begin actively applying the concepts to their life and introduces a frame for approaching and addressing challenges. All the growth activities in Section Two can be completed at any stage of the undergraduate experience and completed as often as desired. There are certain times within the manual when students are asked to complete specific activities; however, that is not the only time the activities can be applied. It is also important to note that the activities and exercises throughout the manual were not generated to be components required as homework, though advisors can decide how to address each exercise. Rather, the exercises were made for students to engage with as they see as most beneficial to them and their college experience.

Figure 1             

Terms and Phrases of Concepts 

Growth Activity 1, Page 1

Section Three of the student manual focuses on conversations and concepts for the student and advisor to discuss relative to the year the student is in, which includes class schedules, selecting a minor, studying abroad, internships, and careers. Section Three follows a pattern of having three subsections for each year (i.e., Year One, Year Two, Year Three, Year Four): (a) expectations before the advising meeting, (b) expectations during the advising meeting, and (c) expectations after the advising meeting. This pattern provides structure, allowing the student and advisor to be prepared and understand the expectations for the advising meeting. Having expectations that are understood by both the student and the advisor allows them to initiate strong interactions and make the most of their time spent together. For example, the third year of the manual is centered around internships. Expectations of students before the meeting include completing the third growth activity, researching locations they would be interested in interning, attending a career fair, and preparing a resume. During the meeting, it is recommended that students be prepared to discuss the third growth activity, Growth Activity 3, with their advisor. This specific growth activity focuses on future planning and incorporates elements of design thinking (see Figure 3). Growth Activity 3 provides students with the space to reflect on their current and future jobs, what environments they might prefer, and how they may find long-term fulfillment in their careers. After the advising meeting, the manual asks students to complete the personal reflection questions, which are aimed to prepare them for the internship process (see Figure 4). Providing students with the space to begin thinking about and researching potential opportunities of interest to them before their advising session enables them to begin their advising session at a more intentional and specific level.

The final section, Section Four, of the student manual is a reflection at the end of each year for students to complete. These components aim to allow students to think about the previous year: what they enjoyed, where they saw growth, and what they would like to continue and adjust moving into the next year (see Figure 5). Section Four encourages students to spend time intentionally reflecting on their previous academic year to prepare for the next. This section was generated as a specific opportunity for students to spend time, whether physically written or mentally reflecting on, thinking about their past year, and channeling those reflections into what they want out of their next year.

Growth Activity 3, Page 1 

Year Three, Page 2

End of Year Reflection, Year Three, Page 1

The student manual is presented as a fillable PDF. This format was incorporated after feedback from students who voiced their preference for online material rather than print material. The PDF version of the manual allows ease for students to have all their material in one central location while also providing efficiency for advisors. Offering the manual as a PDF creates a simple sharing and uploading process through learning management systems and other potential cloud-based file sharing systems. Doing so allows the advisor and their students to have a simple and direct way to share information. The online component of the fillable PDF also allows students to always have access to their manual, rather than potentially forgetting a printed copy during their advising meetings.

Our recommended timeline of the advising manual follows the four-year pattern of a traditional undergraduate student. However, the manuals also encourage a flexible and interpretative structure to advise in ways that best meet the needs of specific students. The current manual can be implemented into advising sessions for students on a non-traditional academic path, such as transfer students. For example, the advisor may choose to share the manual with the student before their initial meeting and then work with them to find a starting point that would best suit their needs, completing the manual from that point or selecting specific concepts from various sections that would be the most helpful to the student. We hope that by engaging in this process together, the student on a nontraditional academic path and their advisor will connect and spend time actively finding a place to begin their advising meetings.

The second manual that emerged to meet the needs of the leadership education program is a companion manual centered on the advisor. This manual stemmed from the student manual and is designed to guide advisors who implement the student manual in their advising sessions. This manual follows a timeline similar to the student manual and also includes four sections, one for each year of a traditional student experience. Each of the four sections is composed of an essence statement, timelines and reminders, overall goals, and tips for framing their thinking (see Figure 6). The faculty manual provides advisors with a recommended framework for implementing the student manual within their advising sessions. This manual is more condensed, highlighting ideas and suggestions for advisors to apply but ultimately encouraging advisors to use their preferred approach to advising. It is recommended that advisors also take time before their advising meetings to familiarize themselves with the content their student is focusing on. The advisor manual is similarly presented as a PDF, allowing for the same flexibility and ease for advisors to apply their material to their advising practices.

Advisor’s Guide, Year Two                       

Each year in the advisor manual has a unique focus relative to the student’s year, referred to as the essence statement (see Figure 6). For example, Year One focuses on student understanding, meaning the advisor’s main role at this time is to help their students become comfortable with growth mindset and design thinking. Year Two highlights student ownership of their education process and incorporated growth mindset and design thinking to enhance that ownership. Year Three’s essence statement centers on the student finding structure and independence within their path. For the final year, Year Four, the advisor aims to help their student put motivation into motion as they begin to think about the next steps in their life. Timelines and reminders provide advisors with suggested email content and reminders to share with their students to ensure they are prepared for their upcoming meetings. Overall goals and goal setting are recommended for each year and incorporated into the student manual as well through reflections at the end of each year. Additional information at the end of the faculty manual includes further learning about goal setting. This material can be used by the advisor to familiarize or refresh themselves with the goal-setting theory that is used within the student manual or during an initial advising meeting in conversation with their student.

Each of the Framing Your Thinking sections includes suggested motivational theories that can be incorporated into the advising session relative to the students’ focus at that point in their manual (see Figure 6). In Year One we suggest and provide additional resources to help students better understand a growth mindset. This material is also recommended to be shared with the student if they are having difficulty understanding the growth mindset. The Year Two section suggests incorporating elements of the self-determination theory when interacting with students to encourage them to make personal choices and take charge of their undergraduate careers. Year Three poses optional discussion questions for the advisor to ask their student relative to the sections of the growth activity they were asked to complete. This year also incorporates Herzberg’s (1968) two-factor theory into this phase as students begin to think about future professions and what they may be looking for and value. Similarly, Year Four provides additional discussion questions for the remaining components of the growth activity and encourages conversation about which theories the students felt were most impactful to them and how they can see those theories being implemented in their future lives. At the end of the manual, further content and resources are included for each of the motivational theories for the advisor to explore and apply as they see fit (see Figure 7).

Advisor’s Guide, Self-Determination Theory

Evaluation of the Manuals and Outcomes/Results

The overall goal of the student and advisor manuals was to provide a cohesive framework for students and their advisors to increase student motivation, confidence, and problem-solving abilities. We gathered feedback and evaluations for both manuals using various settings of implementation. First, the manuals were piloted within a leadership education department at a four-year, large, Midwestern university. The pilot group consisted of a faculty advisor and three of their students. One student in the group was a traditional freshman student and the remaining two were considered non-traditional because they had come back to their undergraduate education after time away from higher education. The manuals were incorporated into their advising sessions for one semester, and feedback was then collected at the end of the semester. After utilizing the manuals, the advisor who implemented the manual and one of their students agreed to provide feedback on the manual. Both individuals were asked questions via surveys using response anchors recommended by Seemiller (2013; 0 = Did not increase, 3 = Greatly increased). The survey asked the individuals to respond to the following statements relative to student growth: (a) My understanding of growth mindset; (b) My understanding of design thinking; (c) My ability to implement a growth mindset in situations; (d) My ability to implement design thinking in situations; and (e) My belief that I can face problems and solve them. Utilizing the same response anchors, the advisor was also asked to answer the following statements relative to their experiences in the advising role: (a) Positive/beneficial interactions with my student during our meetings and (b) My preparation and confidence going into advising meetings. The responses from the pilot study are shown in Table 1 below.

The evaluations from the student ratings averaged a score of 8.0 while the advisor rating averaged a 9.0. Both scores indicate that those who implemented the manual, whether advisors or students, identified a level of improvement in the advising experience as a result of the manual. Specifically, the advisor who implemented the advising manuals reported an average score of 2.0 in their evaluation of themself, meaning they felt the strongest increase, after incorporating the manuals, to be within their advising abilities. The limited number of responses received from the surveys presents a limitation to this method of feedback collection. Although the number of respondents was lower than anticipated, the scores received demonstrate an improvement when using the manuals over the course of just one semester rather than the intended time of four years.

A focus group composed of undergraduate students within a leadership education course was also utilized to collect feedback on the student manual. The focus group consisted of five students who independently worked through the student manual with regular check-ins with the primary researcher, who served as a theoretical advisor during the process. After looking over and using the manual, the students shared their thoughts on the following questions: (a) What do you see as strengths/benefits to using this manual during academic advising sessions?; (b) What do you see as challenges/difficulties to using this manual during academic advising sessions?; (c) How could this manual be improved to enhance academic advising sessions?; and (d) What other comments or observations do you have regarding the manual? The students within the focus group met independently from the researcher and collaboratively responded to the above questions. The feedback was then presented to the primary researcher and themes from the feedback were identified from each question.

Responses from Pilot Study

Note. Response anchors 0 = Did Not Increase; 1 = Somewhat Increased; 2 = Increased; 3 = Greatly Increased3 = 

When asked what they saw as the strengths of the manual, a sense of guidance, flexibility, and insight into the material were all identified as strong elements of the student manual. The focus group found the formatting of the manual to be both structured and fluid in nature, allowing students to follow along and engage with the material with ease while avoiding too rigid of a structure. When asked about the challenges and difficulties associated with the student manual, the structure was also identified. The structure, along with needing incentives for completing the manual, was seen by some students as “extra” components to their already present workload. Because the manual is not presented as required work but rather material that can be applied at the student’s and their advisor’s willingness, some students had difficulty recognizing the value of the manual without incentives. One student also asked, “If people aren’t struggling will the growth mindset activities be meaningful?” While a growth mindset can have an impact on individuals regardless of if they are currently struggling, the feedback allowed us to reexamine how the growth activities are presented in the manual to show students that both concepts can be applied beyond times of challenges. This distinction is a conversation that advisors can have with their students during their initial meetings to elaborate on how a growth mindset and design thinking can intertwine with their life.

When asked how the manual could be improved to enhance academic advising sessions, the focus group encouraged us to incorporate more examples and additional information about specific classes and majors. Due to the uniqueness of leadership education programs, it was difficult to add specific classes and examples to the general manual. However, this feedback is beneficial for each independent department to take into consideration when implementing the manual within their advising sessions. The final question we asked participants was for additional comments. The focus group reemphasized the valuable role of advisors and their involvement and passion throughout the advising process. The other comment received during the feedback collection process was to implement the manuals during the fall semester of the school year. Students identified the fall semester as the preferred time to begin the manual and continue the reflections into the spring semester, rather than completing the entire year in one semester. The focus group felt that implementing the manuals in the fall would enable students to better connect with and find meaning in the manual. They suggested the challenge of having students connect with the material as being, “rooted in the timing [of beginning the manual later in the spring semester].” While it was not possible to implement the manual in the fall semester in the current study due to timing, we recommend that leadership education programs begin implementation of the manual at the start of the fall semester.

Collecting assessment data from advisors and students actively implementing the manuals, as well as a focus group of undergraduate students, allowed us to gather a broad perspective. Utilizing both formats encouraged an assortment of feedback on the content of the manuals and how the manuals can be incorporated within a variety of settings and students, particularly with the limited numbers within the pilot group. One of the students in the pilot group was a freshman student at the beginning of their higher education experience with the other two being professionals who have come back to their higher education, whereas the students in the focus group consisted of juniors and seniors. The range of experience and insight created a thorough overview of where and how this manual can fit into and enhance the overall advising experience for leadership education students.

Reflections and Implications of the Manuals.  This project aimed to propose the development, implementation, and assessment of student-centered academic advising manuals to enhance and develop the academic advising experience among leadership educators and leadership education programs. Specifically, these manuals aim to increase student independence and problem solving, while providing advisors with a resource for how to engage students. The manuals also promote self-directed learning and a sense of student ownership in their education, which can enhance overall student autonomy. The implementation and results of the advising manuals have multiple implications for leadership educators.

The first implication of these manuals is that students within the leadership education field will be able to broaden their understanding of growth mindset and design thinking. Studies have demonstrated both concepts’ positive effects on students, specifically enhancing their motivation and innovation (Dweck, 2006; Hochanadel & Finamore, 2015; Kimbell, 2011). We hope that providing the manual as a resource for students to learn and grow through both concepts, will strengthen them in their current academic and future professional lives, such as attaining higher levels of empowerment, commitment, and problem-solving (Banter, 2020; Dweck, 2016). The concepts and activities in the manual were generated to apply to a variety of settings and for repeated use.

The second implication of the two manuals is to enhance the academic advising experience and address challenges surrounding the role of the academic advisor. As previously mentioned, Hunter and White (2004) share the challenge of establishing an academic advising process that everyone involved deems valuable. Additionally, Aiken-Wisniewski et al. (2015) state that while many advisors note that student engagement is a critical element of advising, additional tasks and expectations of the advisor can make it difficult to fully engage the student during their time together. The generated manuals can address both challenges by serving as a comprehensive resource that guides advisors into a student-centered framework during their meetings while allowing for an individualized approach to engaging students. For example, academic advisors and students may choose to work together to select the activities and conversations that most align with the student’s needs and goals. Further, the manuals share expectations and preparation requirements for both advisors and students, allowing them to spend quality and developmental time together during their advising sessions.

The final implication for the manuals is the adaptability and structure that they can serve within the field of academic advising. These manuals can be implemented into traditional leadership education advising formats or within online modules on platforms such as Canvas. The manuals were generated in a way that allows the department and advisors to modify the material in a way that best suits their needs. Beyond how the manuals are presented, they also can be adjusted into programs beyond undergraduate advising. The materials can be reformatted to serve in post-secondary education, such as masters and doctoral programs. Further, they can be utilized within a leadership education introductory course to introduce students to the concepts of growth mindset and design thinking, and the structure of academic advising. Grounded in growth mindset and design thinking, the manuals may contribute value and knowledge at the level of collegiate education (i.e., undergraduate or graduate work).

Recommendations of the Practitioner

Academic advisors within leadership education may wish to utilize only specific portions of the manuals. The manuals were designed to serve as a flexible tool during academic advising sessions that can be incorporated however the advisor and their student find the most beneficial to the student’s learning journey and student autonomy. The advisor can implement the manual in a manner that enhances the advising experience. Moreover, we recommend scholars build upon the present manuals and continue exploring growth mindset and design thinking in academic advising. While manuals are presently incorporated within a department of leadership education, future scholars may wish to expand the manuals on a larger scale within an institution, perhaps including graduate advising. Additionally, we encourage leadership educators who teach an introductory or survey course at an institution of higher education to utilize portions of the student manual to help their students plan for their time in college.

Another recommendation is for future studies to continue exploring the impact of the manuals on advisor and student experiences, particularly examining the approach’s ability to be incorporated into a wide variety of student situations and advising styles (e.g., non-traditional students, transfer students, students with marginalized identities). Due to the limited size of the sample, the present application was not able to determine the level of impact or significance of the manual on advising during the evaluation components of the study. This is considered a limitation of the study. Future studies should further examine this relationship and implement a means of evaluating the significance of the manuals within academic advising practices.

In sum, academic advisors often have strong and long-lasting impacts on the students with whom they work (Hunter & White, 2004; Mann, 2020; Museus, 2021; Spratley, 2020). Given the positive outcomes that have been linked to growth mindset and design thinking, particularly within academic advising (Spratley, 2020; Banter et al., 2020), we developed student and advisor manuals grounded in two well-established theories for utilization in leadership education academic advising. Favorable feedback emerged from our implementations of the manual, with the potential for future leadership educators and leadership education departments to utilize the manuals to strengthen the advising experience and edit the manuals to suit the needs of their students. These manuals in turn can provide leadership education, and academic advisors, with an efficient and time-friendly resource to use with their students to make the most out of the time they spend together

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The power of design thinking in education

Design thinking is not just an educational buzzword having its moment in history; it is a transformative approach that equips students with the skills and mindset needed to solve complex, interdisciplinary problems.

As a Master Teacher in Residence for Technologies at the Victorian Academy of Teacher and Leadership, I’ve been fortunate to work with STEM and Technologies teachers from across the state. In my experience, many have not engaged with design thinking in any capacity, due to a lack of easily accessible and clear information geared towards classroom teachers, both on the process, and its interdisciplinary applications.

Understanding design thinking

As captured by Tim Brown (2009), design thinking is not just a strategy; it is a journey to ‘inspire innovation’ and champion transformative change.

It is a problem-solving approach that focuses on human-centred solutions. It emphasises empathy, collaboration, and iteration to solve complex problems in innovative ways. The design thinking process is iterative rather than linear, meaning that designers might loop back to earlier stages as they gather more information and refine their solutions. (Razzouk & Shute, 2012). The core revolves around the user – understanding their needs, desires, and challenges.

The process can be succinctly described through the 5 stages put forth by the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (d.school, n.d.).

• Empathise: Dive deep into understanding the user's needs and experiences.
• Define: Articulate the problem that needs addressing.
• Ideate: Engage in a brainstorming frenzy, unleashing creativity.
• Prototype: Create tangible or conceptual representations of solutions.
• Test: Trial and fine-tune the solutions.

Bringing design thinking to life in classrooms

Design thinking offers a fresh approach to teaching and learning, emphasising empathy, creativity, and continuous improvement. Given the ever-evolving challenges and dynamics of today's educational landscape, the strategies and mindsets derived from design thinking are invaluable assets for educators and students alike.

Ignite with empathy: As Kees Dorst (2011) compellingly argues, the crux of design thinking is recognising and addressing genuine user needs through a human-centred design approach. It is more than mere observation; it demands engagement. For example, if the task for your students is to design tools for farmers, a visit to local farms or interviews with farmers can provide invaluable insights, and hence becomes an essential part of your planning.

Champion big ideas: The classroom should pulsate with creativity, where no idea is too 'out there'. As Wagner (2012) elucidates, nurturing young minds to become innovators is paramount. This is where leaning into the general capability of critical and creative thinking comes into play, with educators being able to lean into the design thinking model to create those opportunities for creative thinking and play in a structured environment.

The power of prototyping: As Scheer, Noweski, & Meinel (2012) aptly express, it is essential to transform abstract ideas into tangible action. Whether it is crafting a rudimentary model using craft supplies or employing digital tools for a simulation, prototyping crystallises ideas.

Iterate with community feedback: Design thinking thrives on feedback. Involving the wider Australian community, from Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander elders to urban planners, can provide varied perspectives that refine student prototypes. Through prototyping and testing, students come to understand that their initial ideas may need refinement. This iterative approach teaches them to embrace change and persevere when faced with setbacks.

Learning across disciplines: Design thinking does not belong to any one discipline. It can be used across the curriculum. This comprehensive approach promotes interdisciplinary learning, teaching students to see connections across different areas of knowledge. The answer lies in its adaptability and potential for cross-curricular integration. Let us explore this through 2 illustrative examples:

Problem statement 1: ‘ Design a sustainable city for future generations.’

• Mathematics: Students engage in calculations concerning population projections, infrastructure budgets, and resource allocations.
• Science: Delving into sustainable energy, eco-friendly materials, and balancing ecosystems introduces a scientific perspective.
• Social Studies: Here, the focus shifts to migration patterns, governance models, and historical examples of city planning.
• Arts: Visualisation is crucial. Students can create models, sketches, and digital designs to bring their city to life.

Problem Statement 2: ‘How can communities develop sustainable farming practices in changing climate conditions?’

• Biology: Understand plant species, growth conditions, and the impact of pests and diseases.
• Economics: Analyse the market demand for crops, pricing strategies, and the economic viability of organic farming.
• Environmental Science : Explore soil conservation, water management, and organic farming's ecological benefits.
• Civics and Citizenship: Dive into policies supporting sustainable agriculture and the role of community cooperatives.

Myths – what design thinking isn’t

Design thinking’s exponential rise in popularity across various sectors and industries as a problem-solving approach, has also led to some misconceptions emerging:

It's only about design: Because of the term ‘design’, some believe design thinking is only relevant for designers or is solely about aesthetics. In reality, design thinking is a problem-solving framework that can be applied in various fields beyond design, from business strategy to education and healthcare.

It's just brainstorming: Some reduce design thinking to just its ideation phase. While brainstorming is an essential part of the process, design thinking encompasses much more, from understanding user needs to prototyping and testing.

It always leads to innovation: While design thinking can foster innovative solutions, it does not guarantee innovation. The process is about finding the right solution for the problem, which might sometimes be a simple or previously known solution.

Anyone can do it without guidance: Just because the principles of design thinking are widely accessible, does not mean everyone can apply them effectively without guidance or experience. Proper training and practice can help in harnessing the full potential of the approach. Design thinking is a sophisticated tool that reaches its full potential when enacted appropriately.

It's a trend or fad: While design thinking has gained significant attention in recent years, it is rooted in practices that have been developed over decades, such as ‘agile’ and ‘lean’ methodologies, and implemented by design behemoths like Apple and Boeing. It is a tested approach that will continue to be relevant for problem-solving across all disciplines and industries.

Ripple effects beyond the classroom

When classrooms become hotbeds of inquiry and innovation, the implications are profound. Students emerge as:

• Empathetic observers – they learn to listen, observe, and understand, forming the foundation of empathy.
• Critical thinkers – Questioning the status quo becomes second nature. They evaluate, analyse, and synthesise information from multiple sources.
• Collaborative problem solvers – Design thinking thrives via meaningful teamwork opportunities. Students collaborate across interests, personal strengths, and subjects, extracting share insights and crafting holistic solutions.

When design thinking is authentically integrated into our teaching practices, classrooms become crucibles where real-world challenges meet innovative solutions, all woven through a rich tapestry of subjects. And as students navigate this journey, they are not just learning; they are preparing to shape the world of tomorrow.

Anam Javed is a Master Teacher in Residence at the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership. The picture accompanying this article was taken at the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership Design Thinking Space.

Related reading: Teacher Awards 2023: Curriculum Design and Implementation

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Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (d.school). (n.d.). An Introduction to Design Thinking PROCESS GUIDE.

Dorst, K. (2011). The core of ‘design thinking’ and its application. Design Studies, 32 (6), 521-532.

Wagner, T. (2012). Creating innovators: The making of young people who will change the world. Scribner.

Scheer, A., Noweski, C., & Meinel, C. (2012). Transforming constructivist learning into action: Design thinking in education. Design and Technology Education , 17 (3), 8-19.

Are you using design thinking in your own curriculum planning? If not, what are some of the barriers to you using it? Do you have any worries or misconceptions? What resources and professional support would you need to introduce design thinking into your own school?

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Design Thinking for School Leaders: Five Roles and Mindsets That Ignite Positive Change

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Alyssa Gallagher is an experienced public school educator, school and district administrator, facilitator, and educational consultant. She has successfully led districtwide blended learning initiatives, helped schools create integrated STEM programs, and launched strategic plans using Design Thinking. Having worked in a variety of roles—from school principal to assistant superintendent of schools—Gallagher understands firsthand the complexity of educational leadership and is passionate about improving the learning experiences created in schools. She is constantly exploring "What if . . . ?" with school leaders and works to support radical change in education.

Kami Thordarson has worked in many roles as a public educator—from classroom teacher to professional development and curriculum designer. She enjoys engaging students and teachers with learning experiences that focus on authenticity and relevance. Thordarson is involved with the design thinking movement in K12 education and, in her current role as an administrator, works to lead a district in integrating technology into learning and innovating practices that fully move students into more personalized experiences. She values the challenge of helping school leaders develop real-world classrooms where teachers facilitate and lead students through work that empowers them to make an impact on the world.

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Alyssa Gallagher is the Co-Head of BTS Spark, North America, and an education author, leader, and speaker.  She has twenty years of experience in the public education sector serving as a teacher, principal, and most recently an assistant superintendent. In addition to co-authoring Embracing MESSY Leadership, Alyssa has also co-authored two books on Design Thinking for leaders aimed at helping them reimagine student learning experiences. She has worked with a wide spectrum of leaders, ranging from early career leaders in schools to seasoned executives in Fortune 500 Companies. Alyssa enjoys working with leaders to design strategies that leverage everyone on their team's capability, creativity, and intelligence.

Kami Thordarson

Kami Thordarson has worked in many roles as a public educator—from classroom teacher to professional development and curriculum designer. She enjoys engaging students and teachers with authentic and relevant learning experiences. Kami is involved with the design thinking movement in K12 education and, in her current role as an administrator, works to lead a district in integrating technology and innovating practices that fully move students into more personalized experiences through design thinking. She values the challenge of helping school leaders develop classrooms where teachers facilitate and lead students through work that empowers them to make an impact on the world.

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Participants are expected to fully complete all coursework in a thoughtful and timely manner. This will mean meeting each week’s course module deadlines and fully answering questions posed therein. This helps ensure participants proceed through the course at a similar pace and can take full advantage of social learning opportunities. In addition to module and assignment completion, we expect you to offer feedback on others’ reflections and contribute to conversations on the platform. Participants who fail to complete the course requirements will not receive a certificate and will not be eligible to retake the course.

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Beginning in Module 2 of Design Thinking and Innovation, you will apply the tools you learn in the course to an innovation problem that is important or interesting to you, or you can use a provided scenario. In subsequent modules, you will use your earlier responses to build on your innovation project and make each phase of design thinking relevant to your own work.

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The philosophical framework, adult learners, leadership as liberal education, faculty development and curriculum mapping, engaging through design thinking: place- and project-based community collaborations, lessons learned: student, faculty, and community partner perspectives, concluding thoughts: lingering questions and preliminary recommendations, appendix: grand valley state university (gvsu) accelerated leadership program, acknowledgments, works cited, design thinking accelerated leadership: transforming self, transforming community.

danielle lake is an assistant professor in the Liberal Studies Department at Grand Valley State University. Her interests include wicked problems and the processes most conducive to meliorating large-scale, dynamic, and systemic messes, including systemic engagement, public philosophy, design thinking, and participatory action research. Recent publications can be found at https://works.bepress.com/danielle_lake/ .

michael e. ricco is a visiting instructor in the Management Department, Seidman College of Business, at Grand Valley State University. He teaches a wide variety of courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. His research interests include pedagogical enhancement plus strategic alliances. Ricco has extensive international business experience and operates Ricco Consulting, LLC, focused on strategic planning/business development.

judy whipps is a professor of liberal studies and philosophy at Grand Valley State University, where she teaches courses in leadership studies, integrative learning, and feminist philosophy. Her main research interests are in feminism and pragmatism, particularly the work of Jane Addams and Mary Parker Follett.

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Danielle Lake , Michael E. Ricco , Judy Whipps; Design Thinking Accelerated Leadership: Transforming Self, Transforming Community. The Journal of General Education 1 July 2016; 65 (3-4): 159–177. doi: https://doi.org/10.5325/jgeneeduc.65.3-4.0159

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Higher education institutions are continually seeking to recruit nontraditional adult students yet struggle at the same time to meet their needs effectively. The following case study offers strategies to address this situation by documenting the pedagogical design and initial outcomes of an interdisciplinary, nineteen-month leadership-themed liberal studies undergraduate degree completion program at Grand Valley State University. As an innovative, accelerated, hybrid cohort model, it incorporates a wide range of high-impact practices focused on developing the skills leaders use and employers require. The curriculum integrates practices from motivational and experiential learning, community-based learning, and design thinking to scaffold students' learning across their courses. The program thereby encourages students to wrestle with the complexity of social issues in their communities and develop the skills and virtues necessary for addressing those problems. As a case study, this article is particularly relevant for educators and administrators hoping to uncover a means for catalyzing innovative co-participatory engagement projects that engage with the needs of the surrounding community in a format supportive of nontraditional learners.

Adult learners' motivations to return to higher education often differ from those of traditional students. They expect that their education will help them advance their careers and be relevant to their life experiences. They also need an education flexible enough to accommodate busy work and family lives (Knowles, 1984 ; Merriam & Caffarella, 1999 ; Wlodkowski, 2008 ). Because of this, designing a curriculum for adults based on the goals of general and liberal education requires an innovative approach. This article documents one such approach by highlighting the philosophy behind and initial outcomes of an innovative nineteen-month liberal studies degree completion program rooted in community partnerships. We have found that engaging adult learners in community problem-solving projects through design thinking methodologies meets the students' motivational needs and results in deep learning. The innovative design of this program is intended to address the unique challenges of nontraditional adult students, as reflected in the initial findings.

In this program students enroll in cohorts, completing one accelerated five-week class at a time; they earn either a B.A. or a B.S. degree with a major in liberal studies and an emphasis in leadership studies. Courses combine in-seat, online, and community-based coursework. The curriculum draws on courses from management, public administration, and liberal studies. The program integrates best practices from accelerated learning (Wlodkowski & Ginsberg, 2010 ), design thinking (Morris & Warman, 2015 ), interdisciplinarity (Repko, Szostak, & Buchberger, 2014 ), community-based learning (Miller & Archuletta, 2013 ; Wagner & Pigza, 2016 ), and leadership studies (Northouse, 2013 ; Preskill & Brookfield, 2009 ). The faculty select broad social justice–based themes emerging from the community for each cohort. These themes have proved to be a catalyst for actively integrating content between courses and helping students develop deep engagement practices that encourage reciprocity. Such practices break down the divide between knowledge acquisition and knowledge use, providing students with hands-on, real-life opportunities to see the value of their educational efforts. Our experience demonstrates that this pedagogical approach helps students integrate learning across artificial disciplinary divides, wrestle with the complexity of social issues in their communities, and develop the skills and virtues necessary for addressing such issues.

This article documents the applied philosophical commitments underlying the design of the program, its innovative community-based infrastructure, and the initial findings from the first cohorts of graduates, ultimately offering recommendations valuable for those seeking programs, methods, and processes to advance models of collegial engagement on intractable problems. We begin by contextualizing the program, briefly explicating the philosophical and practical commitments behind its creation as well as documenting its basic structure. After documenting the collaborative and emergent process from which the program was created (faculty learning communities, consultations with national experts in accelerated programming, curriculum mapping), we document the experimental pedagogical methods ultimately employed. In the end, we highlight the merits and challenges of this program from faculty and student perspectives, offering a set of recommendations for educators interested in employing a similar approach.

The initial development of the program was unusual in several ways—it emerged from collaboration between disciplines, as well as an essential partnership among faculty, student support/administrative staff, and Instructional Design/Information Technology. In winter 2013, a faculty member from Liberal Studies began meeting with the director of Adult and Continuing Studies to discuss how the institution might assist students interested in returning to college to complete their degree. From these initial conversations, a general framework emerged. With this vision in place, a faculty study group around adult learning was convened using Wlodkowski's Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn ( 2008 ) as a curriculum framework guide. Meanwhile, the proposal for an emphasis on leadership within the liberal studies major made its way through the curriculum approval process. The program ultimately unfolded through a collaborative and emergent process, becoming a unique interdisciplinary degree completion opportunity for returning adult students.

In winter 2014 Adult and Continuing Studies began recruitment, and student support staff and faculty partnered for initial advising. Organizationally, the program follows the university calendar, including application, registration, payment deadlines, holidays, and more. While this is not the case for many accelerated programs nationally, it allows students some flexibility if they need to move back and forth between accelerated and regular coursework. Students maintain three- quarter status for financial aid purposes. The program began offering classes in August 2014, graduating its first cohort of adult learners nineteen months later in April 2016. A second cohort started in winter 2015 (at a regional campus). Since then, the program has admitted a new cohort each fall.

Students enter the program with approximately seventy-two earned college credits. They complete consecutive accelerated five-week courses, meeting one night a week throughout each semester, graduating in nineteen months. While the program is designed for students who have finished most of their lower-level general education requirements, it also fulfills six general education requirements (“Philosophy and Literature,” “Social Science,” “U.S. Diversity,” “Global Perspectives,” and two upper-level “General Education Issues” requirements). The program places heavy expectations on students, asking that they enter ready for hybrid and accelerated learning and requiring that they spend eighteen–twenty-two hours a week on their studies once in the program (see the appendix for an overview of the curriculum model).

The Liberal Studies Accelerated Leadership Program seeks to uphold three core commitments: educational access for adult learners, liberal education, and community engagement. The first commitment is to adult learners, those students who may have started college earlier in life yet, due to various life pressures, left college without a degree. A desire to provide these students with equitable access to college was the starting point for this work, particularly for Adult and Continuing Studies. The second commitment to the transformative power of liberal education for students and communities is central to the values of the academic department. As defined by the program, liberal education includes a broad base of learning, along with depth in a major that prepares students for encountering big questions, teaching the skills of reflection and engagement and developing a base for lifelong learning (Association of American Colleges and Universities, n.d. ; Whipps, Lake, Pettibone, Wendland, & Wolverton, 2013 ). Thus, students in the program learn about the transformative power of liberal education in their first class and continue that dialogue throughout their studies. In fact, this commitment to liberal education is what led to the program's focus on leadership. The commitment to community-engaged learning emerged from the first two commitments and is aligned with the university's mission. We see community engagement as an opportunity for relational and experiential learning where students encounter the complexity of local issues and operate as creative partners in social change (Gallini & Moely, 2003 ; Longo & Gibson, 2016 ).

The Accelerated Leadership Program is intended for adult students (typically defined as age twenty-four+) with two or more years of work experience and junior status. According to 2014 census data (as reported by the Lumina Foundation), 29 percent of state residents had a bachelor's degree or higher, and 24.5 percent of residents over the age of twenty-five had “some college but no degree,” while 10.3 percent of residents had only an associate's degree. That means that nearly 35 percent of our state's population could benefit financially and personally from a path to attain a bachelor's degree (Lumina Foundation, 2016 ). After verifying that the need was there, efforts turned to considering how we could design an educational approach to serve those students' needs. The expertise of the staff in Adult and Continuing Studies was essential in these dialogues.

While the needs, motivations, and best pedagogical practices in adult learning are well documented (see Knowles, 1984 ; Wlodkowski, 2008 ), most traditional college majors and classes are not designed around the needs of adult learners. For instance, due to the busy and competing demands of adult lives, they often crave the predictability of a consistent schedule (Rosenberg, 2017 ). Normal college schedules—with courses that change timing from semester to semester—leave adult students uncertain of whether future courses will occur on a day and at a time that fits within their other commitments; such schedules generate additional concerns about whether students will be able to complete a program once they start. With this in mind, we decided to schedule every class session throughout the program on Tuesday night, ensuring that prospective students knew that they would be busy every Tuesday evening for the next nineteen months, which was helpful for family/work planning.

Scholars have observed that the breadth of learning, along with the skills of citizenship that result from liberal education, is excellent preparation for leadership (Burlingame, 2009 ; Guthrie & Callahan, 2016 ; Wren, 2009 ). Liberal education develops reflective ethical capacities, communication skills, and cultural competence, as well as individuals who can create what Nussbaum ( 2004 ) calls “a critical public culture.” These are also the skills needed for leadership. (Leadership here refers to a positive influence on others at all levels, not only to those in positions of power.) Guthrie and Callahan ( 2016 ) point out that both liberal education and leadership education emphasize the “creation of active, global citizens” (p. 26). In today's environment, the liberal studies program and its students often struggle with the connotations surrounding the term liberal . The term leadership , admittedly also ambiguous, may be a better way of broadly communicating the values of a liberal education. Learning is risky. Leadership is also risky. When we embark on a learning project, we open ourselves to change, to knowing and becoming someone different. When we engage in leadership work, not only do we open ourselves up to change; we work to create change in communities and organizations. Liberal education is about ethics and values, about reflecting on the highest possible good. Leadership is also about values, as it requires constant reflection on the ethical foundations of decision making. Liberal education encounters the big questions, historically and philosophically. Leadership requires that one learn from these encounters in ways that inform our actions in the world. Liberal education has traditionally been a preparation for citizenship. Leadership requires acting as a global citizen in every capacity, with an awareness of the impact of actions on others. Liberal education stresses the importance of diversity and cultural understanding. Without a deep cultural understanding, leadership will ultimately fail. A liberally educated person is a lifelong learner. And in a world of fast-paced change, lifelong learning is a necessity for any contemporary leader.

Leadership Learning Objectives Ethics, Identity, and Values Diversity and Cultural Competency Interpersonal and Conflict Management Skills Creative/Critical Decision Making Problem-Solving Skills Communication Practice-Based Application and Synthesis

With a vision for the program in place, lead faculty applied for and received a $15,000 internal Faculty Teaching and Learning grant, which supported a two-year training process for faculty, including bringing in outside consultants. Faculty meetings were held each month during the 2014 winter term, as we began the process of curriculum mapping. Faculty worked together to articulate course objectives, content, outcomes, assessment, and alignment. A curriculum mapping process led by an instructional designer with expertise in adult learning helped faculty identify where each course in the program introduced, reinforced, or required mastery of the seven learning goals. In addition, faculty read Wlodkowski and Ginsberg's Teaching Intensive and Accelerated Courses: Instruction that Motivates Learning ( 2010 ), discussed adult learning and accelerated teaching pedagogy, and engaged in a full-day workshop with the book's authors. Continuing to meet after the program began, faculty worked together to ensure that cohesive learning objectives were created and to discuss issues/problems as they arose.

Given the impact and the relatively unique nature of our approach to accelerated learning for returning students, we next document how we embedded community engagement throughout the program. In particular, we note the value of selecting broad social justice–based themes for each cohort and harnessing design thinking processes. The value and challenges of this approach are illustrated through a number of examples of student-led community projects. The community-engaged dimensions of the program are particularly worth emphasizing, as it is largely assumed that the challenges and commitments of midlife (such as work obligations, family commitments, burgeoning health concerns) make community engagement impractical (if not impossible). These realities are likely why we have been unable to uncover any other accelerated programs in the United States engaging students in deep and integrated community-based work.

Selecting broad social justice–based community themes for each cohort has proved valuable along two fronts: such themes can generate a shared vision around which faculty can collaborate and curriculum can be scaffolded, while they simultaneously leave room for student and community ownership over the projects that ultimately emerge (Kecskes, 2015 ). For instance, working from a general theme of “Education and Empowerment,” one cohort of students spoke with parents and K–12 students about the challenges to educational attainment in an urban neighborhood that traditionally had low high school graduation rates and low college attendance. After studying and contextualizing the issue in place, a range of student-community projects emerged, including mentoring programs in local schools, bilingual student literacy projects, social media campaigns, and middle school–high school transition connections. As a general theme, the focus on education and empowerment helped faculty see community-based projects as an opportunity to ground course content in the realities of the surrounding community and to practice (and thereby test) course skills, through “inclusive, collaborative, and problem-oriented work” (Saltmarsh, Hartley, & Clayton, 2009 , p. 9). Both our own experience and the experience of other seasoned engagement practitioners (Kecskes, 2015 ) have shown that extended and flexible opportunities to enact such projects throughout a program increase the likelihood of mutually beneficial, sustainable outcomes.

The use of design thinking processes also proved valuable as a mechanism for extending community projects over the course of the nineteen months. As an iterative, project-based, and collaborative problem-solving process, design thinking begins with empathetic listening, observation, and immersion. The students then integrate those insights into brainstorming, prototyping, and testing (Fernaeus & Lundstrom, 2015 ). While it shares practices with many other methodologies, in this program we utilize design thinking to teach a process of collaborative problem solving that fosters the ideals of liberal education and leadership (Crouch & Pearce, 2012 ; Miller, 2015 ). The faculty engaged in the process especially value its emphasis on empathetic listening (imagining oneself in the place of the other), integration (connecting ideas and skills from across diverse perspectives), ideation (collective brainstorming), and action (Morris & Warman, 2015 ). As a pedagogy rooted in the complexities of each unique situation, it demands that instructors and students honor the context of the specific community in which the situation arose. By doing so we seek out spaces where nonacademic expertise is valued (in our example this meant local K–8 students, their parents, teachers, administrators, and neighborhood residents). We encourage students to move from consumers of information to producers and public actors, not just conducting research and presenting presentations or final papers but also generating community-specific projects designed to be shared with community partners.

By staging students' engaged work, design thinking has provided critical support over the course of the program, allowing students to integrate and apply both concepts and skills learned from each course into their engagement projects. For instance, the three general education courses required in the first semester of the program ask students to learn about but also enact the process, ultimately cycling students through its five stages (empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test) over the course of fifteen weeks. In the first course, Reflect, Connect, and Engage: Introduction to Liberal Education ( lib 100), students harnessed the empathize and define stages of the design thinking process by touring the local elementary school and learning about its history as well as its mission, vision, and values firsthand. They then reflected on what they had learned, integrating their insights with research about liberal education. In the second five-week course, Diversity in the U.S. ( lib 201), students conducted secondary research in order to better understand the complexities around creating a college-going culture (ideating and redefining the situation). Contextualizing their research, students next designed, facilitated, and analyzed dialogues with students, parents, and staff at the school (empathizing, integrating, and revising their understanding of the situation). In the third course, Leadership for Social Change ( lib 341), students moved through the last three stages of the design thinking cycle—ideating, prototyping, and testing—by identifying root causes, researching additional contextual factors, and then prototyping interventions in and with the community. In Team Building ( mgt 345), the fourth course in the cohort series, students refined their ideas based on their previous testing with community members while honing their skills as members of diversified teams.

Because student teams were provided with more time to evolve their design thinking projects, students were able to take their projects further: testing their ideas in the community, refining their rough prototypes, and—in some cases—implementing new programs and initiatives in partnership with the community. Although we incorporated design thinking in some of our courses early in the program, it was only in the fourth cohort that the faculty intentionally scaffolded the design thinking methods over multiple courses. The increase in the quality and sustainability of the community projects has been significant. For example, students have responded to issues of gentrification and exclusion in the neighborhood around the local school by supporting efforts under way to generate awareness of—and access to—local resources and programs. In collaboration with a neighborhood organization, one team created Housing Resource Kits, which document all available resources in English and Spanish. A separate team partnered with the urban school on a Walking School Bus program, while yet another created an initiative designed to provide motivational support for K–12 teachers at a local middle school.

Our experience has shown that the viability and sustainability of such projects require opportunities to continue them throughout the program. And while not every five-week course sets aside time and space to move students' community projects forward, a number of courses do, explicitly offering opportunities for students to meet course learning objectives through the extension of their community projects. For example, the dialogue course—scheduled midway through the program—provides students with opportunities to facilitate community-directed dialogues that can enhance or extend their project work. Similarly, the course on team building offers students the chance to design and enact collaborative processes through next-step project planning. In addition, students are provided with opportunities to extend their work through their internship and capstone requirements supervised by faculty. Hoping to generate a supportive and flexible model that best meets the needs of each student and course, students and faculty members have been encouraged to decide whether they should pursue new and different projects or continue project work begun in earlier courses. Also, the support of a committed faculty and staff adviser as well as the creation of a student-community liaison have helped students and faculty navigate such decisions. Despite the general assumptions around returning adult students, accelerated learning, and community engagement, this dimension of the program has—in our experience and according to students—been one of its most important and impactful components.

This section explores the challenges and successes of the program from student, faculty, and community partner perspectives. Given the experimental and innovative nature of this program, we have continuously engaged in reflection about best practices and the barriers students are facing. Faculty experiences, student learning, and community partner perspectives were elicited through multiple approaches. One of those approaches was an optional, informal pre- and postsurvey instrument delivered to students via SurveyMonkey. The survey included a request for limited demographic data and questions intended to capture students' changing perspectives on curriculum, the quality of instruction, program climate, and applied leadership. Administered during the first week of the program and again after students had completed their final course, the surveys included closed-ended, open-ended, and Likert-scaled questions, capturing students' changes in perspective over the course of the program. Students were invited to complete the optional survey via e-mail. To ensure that feedback did not negatively impact their work, final results were analyzed after students completed the program. The survey analysis focused on noting themes, preliminary statistics, and relevant pedagogical and learning implications.

Additional insights were captured via two supplementary approaches. Students provided program suggestions and other input via a student-led feedback collection process. The students cited here gave permission to share their conclusions via publication. We also derived insights from comparing the lived-experience observations of students, faculty, and community partners. The themes arising from these layered approaches were then triangulated through a review of students' final program e-portfolios, community partner feedback, comments from instructors in the program, and students' reviews of this article. Collectively, the captured insights drive our current conclusions, recommendations for going forward, and preliminary advice for other institutions.

Students' final projects, the optional program surveys, and faculty and community partner observations demonstrate that students felt not only that their leadership knowledge and abilities were enhanced over the course of the program (in the survey 78 percent strongly agreed) but also that they were able to put their leadership styles into practice, increasing their comfort level in taking on leadership roles in the workplace (from 70 percent pre- to 100 percent postsurvey). Additionally, their confidence in their ability to positively affect their organization rose significantly (from 48 percent to 78 percent). They also noted that the program pushed them to become active learners, encouraging them to discuss how their own experiences related to the content of the courses. Furthermore, all students indicated that they understood the purpose of each course and the relationship between the face-to-face and online components (a strong indication that the intensive planning processes implemented for the program were valuable). Students also reported that they came to recognize the critical importance of generating trust, working across differences, and leading by example in their leadership practices over the course of the nineteen months. These preliminary findings are very encouraging.

A student-generated report designed to identify cohort learning outcomes and offer program improvement recommendations highlighted the value of the design thinking process for fostering leadership and team-building skills, increasing opportunities for reflection, and creating positive mind-sets. Design thinking applications across multiple courses created a greater sense of empathy. Students reported that understanding others was a valuable ability to purposefully nurture. Prototype creation and testing further added to the skill set captured and exercised. Indeed, the self-reported outcomes closely match the learning goals identified in the program curricula plan. Additionally, students shared that their perspectives fairly consistently changed to a “do something mind-set” due to the program, attesting to the fact that they were taught in this program to take action. By combining all of these skills, the students felt equipped to take the initiative and make a difference in their organizations and communities.

Faculty review of the students' e-portfolios and final reflective “Integrative Statements” provided evidence that students experienced enormous growth—personally, professionally, and intellectually. These assignments documented the impact of liberal education, integrative learning, and community engagement. They also demonstrated that students found skills developed through the program to be immediately useful in their careers. In general, these findings align with the research on the value of such high-impact learning practices. Indeed, research shows that these practices tend to foster empowerment and leadership, yield higher-quality student work, increase students' ability to apply course material to the real world, and deepen students' commitment to their community (Cooks, Scharrer, & Morgan, 2006 ). This model has also resulted in significantly higher retention rates than in the university-wide nontraditional student population. Within this program, the fall-to-fall retention rate is 84.6 percent (averaged over three cohorts), while the fall-to-fall retention rates for adult transfer students in the university is 65 percent (Center for Adult and Continuing Education, 2017 ).

Despite these successes, students faced many challenges within this accelerated program. We asked them to commit twenty hours a week to their coursework; most students were able to do so, but time management has been a recurring issue for everyone. Additional concerns about the quality of their work also meant that some students spent far more time on assignments than faculty expected or allotted. While some students had tuition reimbursement through their employment, others encountered unexpected financial struggles. Although students often pointed to community engagement as one of the most valuable parts of their learning, particular aspects of it proved stressful. Work and family commitments as well as the limited hours of operation for most community organizations made scheduling and managing community projects challenging. However, students discovered that by relying on teamwork, they could relegate tasks based on individual schedules and make it work. Faculty had to be flexible as well.

We have identified a number of unique challenges in developing and implementing this curriculum. Indeed, the consistent nature of these challenges has been confirmed through informal feedback from faculty in the program, planning meetings, faculty and staff reviews of this article, and our own experiences as faculty teaching in the program.

To begin, the program combines the challenges of online and hybrid learning with accelerated education, in addition to the increased potential for challenges emerging from engaging with returning adult students and local community organizations. Some faculty members were initially skeptical, wondering how they would meet their course learning objectives, build in reflection-driven revision opportunities, and foster transformational learning in cohort students in just five weeks per course. As findings from student data and coursework results verified, these objectives can be—and were—met. We conclude that a number of key factors have been particularly critical to our success on this front, including (1) the peer curricular planning process, (2) cohort relationships, (3) community- and project-based learning opportunities, and (4) consistent contact with students through multiple venues (in class, discussion boards, prompt assignment feedback, e-mail communication, and weekly announcement updates).

The intensive nature of the program design phase presented faculty with challenges as well. Integrating the coursework from more than one department required a high level of communication between faculty members. Multiple coordination meetings took place, including hybrid course development training using Quality Matters standards ( http://www.qualitymatters.org ). Course design presented the new challenge of condensing existing courses into five weeks, converting them to a hybrid design, and customizing each course to the cohort themes in an integrated manner. Additionally, for some faculty, it was the first time they were teaching their respective course and implementing an accelerated format, working with returning adult students, integrating the design thinking model into a course, or employing community-based learning. Through multiple drafts, peer reviews, and dedicated technical guidance, courses were sequenced following a cohort learning outcome map. In alignment with research findings on collaborative curriculum design processes, it has been our experience that the intensive and collaborative nature of the design and implementation phases strengthened faculty relationships (Cooks et al., 2006 ), deepening our commitment to students and the community (Mason & Davenport, 2006 ).

Community Partners

The decision to start each cohort with a single “anchor” community organization as a partner and to provide flexible, scaffolded curricula provided students with opportunities to either extend and enhance their earlier projects or start new projects. The goal of this approach was to increase the possibility for alignment and mutual benefit between student and community interests. The branching out of community partners, topics, and issues over the course of students' studies provided opportunities for them to pursue either narrow or broad areas of focus as well as long- or short-term projects. This flexible approach has led to a wide array of community projects addressing a range of place-based issues. For instance, one cohort—exploring themes around finding, developing, and retaining talent in the area—completed a wide array of projects. While some students worked with a local lgbt community center, others recruited people and materials in order to build a ramp for an elderly homebound community member, and yet another set of students implemented a team building project for a senior care center. True to the notion of authentic learning tasks/assessments, many students passionately exercise and realize their personal control of learning and the benefits thereof. On the other hand, the freedom and flexibility given to students to pursue the projects that most resonate for them has meant that key community partners may not benefit from or find merit in the student projects. This flexibility has also meant that some projects end prematurely, failing to yield sustained benefit. For instance, the mentoring program between a local college student group and the inner-city middle school ended soon after it began once the college student volunteers found themselves facing additional challenges due to travel, timing, and other schedule commitments. On the other hand, some projects continued over subsequent cohort courses, with new student groups picking them up. We have found that the opportunity to pick up and build upon earlier work increases the chances of yielding valuable community outcomes.

Community partners experienced challenges that reflect consistent findings within the national research on community engagement initiatives (Howe, Coleman, Hamshaw, & Westdijk, 2014 ; Kecskes, 2015 ). For example, challenges around the availability of representatives to meet with students, changes in staffing, limited funding, and the timing of students' proposed projects were consistently noted. Informal conversations and community partner assessment surveys both indicated that community partners generally welcomed student projects, saying that they supported efforts to address their organizations' hurdles. In each case the partner was frank and realistic, which helped student teams empathize and understand the issues. Moving forward, it is our hope that the program will grow and thrive through its interdisciplinary and community-based collaborations.

This project grew out of a desire to provide access for adult learners and began as a pilot, a prototype, hypothesizing that a continued commitment to liberal education under a different structure would be more relevant and accessible to adults. We are very much cognizant of the experimental nature of the program. We thus conclude by highlighting questions we are still grappling with and offering preliminary recommendations for others interested in pursuing a similar program.

Our experience has shown that focusing on the community as a site of learning and drawing on the student's own life experiences enabled them to learn and grow in ways they never expected. And while this article has not addressed all the challenges and rewards of learning in cohort groups, students reported that many of their gains came from working together in a cohort over those nineteen months. We have heard many of their professional success stories and, even more so, have seen and heard much about their personal growth.

Yet questions and challenges remain. Student final reports, surveys, and our experience as faculty in the program give us good indications that community engagement is messy and unpredictable. Our conclusions emerge from our own lived experience, and—given the size of the program at this stage—we do not seek to provide “conclusive evidence.” Indeed, as a narrative of our own experience and a single program, our conclusions cannot and should not be generalized. While this approach does not provide firm answers, it does raise critical questions and outline collaborative, reflective strategies for sustained engagement.

We are still learning and growing as a program. One recurring issue emerges from faculty workload commitments. Most of the faculty are full-time, meaning that they often teach two or three other semester-long courses at the same time as this intense accelerated course, and faculty have found that difficult.

As this is an interdisciplinary program, course requirements come from a variety of departments and colleges across the university. This dimension of the program can be challenging administratively, since the priorities of other departments can shift in ways that affect course scheduling.

We continue to use and develop design thinking methodologies as ways students can approach problem solving in the community and as resources for their future career goals. However, this is an extra step of training for faculty, and not all of the faculty teaching in the program embrace the design thinking process. This is understandable given the types of coursework appropriate to different courses, but sometimes students are left with incomplete projects started earlier in the program.

Finally, we face challenges around recruitment, given that the benefits students gain from liberal education are not always immediately apparent to prospective students who have career-enhancement goals. We continue to iterate, listen carefully, redesign, and rethink together as a team of faculty and staff to improve the program.

Students appreciate the accelerated hybrid format but have suggested some program improvements we are currently exploring. They said that they could benefit from (1) receiving more information on the designated community partner earlier in the program, (2) more time in the ideation stage of their projects, (3) additional technology training, and (4) increased funding to cover appropriate expenses to develop community projects. Another suggestion was (5) to create a part-time position established by the university to help with starting, supporting, and coordinating relationships with various community partners. Last, (6) students suggested that a wider array of community partners willing to participate over the course of the program should be vetted in advance.

In response, we are now more directly emphasizing the community projects early in the advising process. To assist with community projects, the dean's office has established a $2,000 fund that students can draw on for their projects. We also established an internship role staffed by an original cohort student that has been invaluable in efficiently facilitating community partner–student meetings and interactions. We hope to offer this internship to subsequent students for future cohorts.

We postulate that the value of this program lies along at least three dimensions: First, the community and project-based work has been the common thread linking students' intensive five-week courses together. The community work strengthens the student-to-student relationships in the cohort model, and the high levels of engagement empower students to act as leaders in the classroom and the community. Student-and-community-designed projects sustain collaborative learning opportunities that span the nineteen-month program.

Second, the focus on leadership in the community has been the grounding force by which various theories, skills, and tools are put to the test, moving students from a traditional focus on passively acquiring knowledge to experientially creating and implementing knowledge with others. These projects open opportunities for leadership development—defined by students as “reflective and action-oriented” integrative thinking that fosters “the ability to transform, empower, and adapt.” As one student noted in the final survey instrument, “I have benefited more from community-engaged learning in this cohort than any other educational experience I have ever had.” This student went on to say, “I have a newfound sense of responsibility as a citizen of the … community.”

And third, design thinking has made program-wide opportunities to engage the surrounding community integral to the learning process, helping students integrate, ideate, and innovate across the artificial divides created by traditional university structures (such as disciplines, semesters, and courses). Echoing this sentiment, one of the alumni wrote that “without my experiences visiting the Literacy Center, Challenge Scholars Schools and the West Grand Neighborhood Organization, I might not have really understood that leadership comes from patience, understanding, dialogue, and walking with others.” While many students found the rigor of the Accelerated Leadership Program to be intense, they also found the real-world grounding of their coursework and the opportunity to apply it to be truly transformational. “For me,” one student wrote, “bearing witness to my community encouraged me to ask deeper questions…. Our classes have allowed me the freedom to ask questions of myself, my family, my community, my colleagues and especially my boss.”

These pedagogical strategies empower students to wrestle with the complexity of social issues not just by studying curricular content and skills but by putting them to use in collaboration with the surrounding community. Experiential learning works. As one student wrote: “Community engagement has made a tremendous difference in my learning experience…. The tools that I now possess in my educational toolbox have been sharpened…. It is real life experience.” Confirming the transformational impact of this work, an alumna said that she had originally thought that just getting her bachelor's degree would be enough. Six months after graduating, however, she found that liberal education, through this program, “has left me with a need to give back, to use the degree I've achieved.”

General education programs have the opportunity to apply many of the curriculum strategies and insights, the design thinking model, and the community engagement practices outlined here. The findings over the past three years support the idea that added effort needs to be made to boldly experiment on behalf of all stakeholders. Partners in need exist in all communities. Nontraditional students provide mature minds and hearts to learn and apply such learning in practical and meaningful ways.

This program offers students the opportunity to influence local issues, address place-based needs, develop community partnerships, and establish networks potentially valuable to their life after graduation. Engaged, project- based, intentionally scaffolded programs can be a factor in shifting the momentum around community issues. They also reframe the way students think about the purpose of education, coming to value themselves as potential change agents in their work and community lives.

GVSU's curriculum design model.

The success of this program is due to the hard work of many people, primarily Simone Jonaitis, executive director, and Kate VanDerKolk, student service coordinator, as well as Lisa Miller, in the Center for Adult and Continuing Studies. The creative support of Glenna Decker, instructional designer, has been essential to the curriculum and the preparation of faculty to teach in the program. Student Julie Keller was invaluable as the community liaison for two cohorts. Community partner Gwen Heatley at Harrison Park School was always there for our students. Director of Community Engagement Ruth Stegeman was critical for establishing the initial partnerships from which students' community-based projects emerged. Faculty in Liberal Studies, Management, and Public Administration have contributed many hours and resources to the design of the curriculum and the achievements of the students.

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