A Design Thinking Approach to Higher Education
I recently came across the idea of a premortem when reading Steven Johnson's wonderful book, Farsighted. Cognitive scientist Gary Klein coined the term in a 2007 Harvard Business Review article. Drawing on research that found that imaging that an event has already occurred increases the ability to identify future outcomes, Klein and his colleagues developed... Continue Reading →
I recently wrapped up teaching Designing Your Georgetown, a course I have taught for the past three semesters to incoming transfer students at Georgetown's Capitol Applied Learning Labs (CALL). The CALL allows me a lot of freedom in how I structure and teach the course, and each semester I take the opportunity to try out... Continue Reading →
Justin Lorts For any career or "intro to college" class that I teach, I love beginning with a values activity. I find that having students articulate their values early on in the process not only puts them in the right frame of mind, but also gives them a reference point that they can use throughout... Continue Reading →
Next week marks the start of the Fall semester at Johns Hopkins. A lot has changed on campus over the past several months and this Fall semester - even more than previous Fall semesters - offers the opportunity for students to reimagine both themselves as well as their Hopkins experience. With this sense of possibility in mind, I would like to offer five Life Design-inspired tips for approaching the Fall semester.
Photo by Ekrulila on Pexels.com Lately, I've been thinking a lot about how the knowledge and expertise of those who work in co-curricular spaces is understood, organized, and shared with students and the broader university community. I know from my own experience that there is a wealth of knowledge across campus, often hiding in unexpected... Continue Reading →
History Futures in a new series based on interviews conducted with History PhDs who are pursuing interesting and fulfilling careers outside of the tenure track. The idea for this series came out of a series of conversations with current doctoral students in the Department of History at my alma mater, Rutgers New Brunswick. It is... Continue Reading →
For this class, I adapted some of the excellent work from my colleague Smiti Nathan's blog, Life Design Log. Smiti is a big proponent of the use of stakeholder maps (as well as the Rose, Bud, Thorn exercise) and uses them regularly in her own courses and presentations. For my students, who are imagining lives... Continue Reading →
“I love commencement for many reasons, but there is one reason that is special. On that day, all students are successful. They may have taken a thousand paths to get to that moment, but they are united by ritual, celebration, and uniform… For those brief hours, everyone – graduates, parents, faculty, friends, family – all... Continue Reading →
I think one of the biggest challenges for college students - particularly in the first year - is formulating a healthy definition of success in college that is aligned with their values and purpose. At a school like Hopkins, most students viewed their high school education solely through the lens of the college admissions process,... Continue Reading →
In this lesson, I tried to lay the foundation to help students connect their ideas about the meaning and purpose of college ("Collegeview") with a set of values that shape their understanding about the larger world ("Worldview"). Even with the Worldview activity and the various analog and digital values sort activities out there (I used... Continue Reading →
Education * Designed 