A Design Thinking Approach to Higher Education
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.
The following is the transcript of an interview conducted with Dr. Karen Thomas, Staff Historian and the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in January 2021 as part of the History Futures series. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. Justin Lorts: I’m delighted to welcome Karen to this conversation. I've... Continue Reading →
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 →
Photo by Polina Zimmerman on Pexels.com I'm really loving the Rules for Ideation developed by Mark Leung and Nika Stelman at the Institute for Gender and the Economy at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Business for their Human Centered Design for Inclusive Innovation course offered through Coursera. Defer judgementEncourage wild ideasBuild on the... 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 →
Photo by Anna Tarazevich on Pexels.com This semester, I am asking students in my Arrive and Thrive course to create and submit a Resume of Failures as a way to help them embrace and learn from their failures over the past year and a half: the schools they didn't get into, the clubs from which... Continue Reading →
Back in March, Johns Hopkins was one of the first universities in the country to shut down its research operation in the wake of the emerging COVID-19 pandemic. Even though research is the life blood of a university, it was the right call and was likely critical in reducing the spread of the virus on... 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 →
Education * Designed 