The Society for Experiential Education Definitions and Principles Design ProjectPhase 1 Summary
Bill Heinrich and Patrick Green
In co-chairing this process we began a design process to lead the Society of Experiential Education (SEE) toward a new definition of Experiential Education and updated principles of practice, at the request of the Board of SEE. In the context of advancements in experiential education through the lens of new research, updated conceptual frameworks, novel models of practice, and broad institutionalization across higher education, the Board of SEE requested that the Research and Scholarship Committee explore and articulate an updated definition and principles of practice. This request led to a plan for a design process that incorporates the insight and experience of practitioners and scholars across experiential education programs and contexts. You might notice some tentative language in this summary as we are in the first of five stages of a design process, and we are circumspect now about knowing what the process will yield in 12 more months. That being said, we engage this reflective process with open minds and community-engaged posture. We’re modeling a process on IDEO’s human-centered design phases. It’s a simple and robust method focusing on developing solutions in service of people. It provides a fairly functional framework that people can follow, and serves as a map of both progress and reflection. This toolkit explains the process, in abstract. The project phases begin with Empathy building, understanding a common definition of a problem, ideation/brainstorming, prototyping, and testing. We anticipate an iterative cycle of data, sensemaking, and reflection in each phase. The phases are planned in consideration of academic breaks and common work times (i.e. semesters). The test will be the published updated definition and principles. Here are our operating principles. The HCD process includes five smaller investigations or inquiries. Since we aim to share our knowledge, we have established a research project hosted by University of Dayton, led by Dr. Karen Velasquez, and Dr. Michael Odio from the University of Cincinnati. Because this project will progress and change over time, we include the following outline, created in June, 2023, as an historical note. Sharing our thinking helps us remain transparent and reflective about how our thinking about the process of developing a new definition and updating principles changed from our initial plans, and how the outcome of the process is informed by many people and organizations with an interest or perspective.
Another layer of sharing this outline is that we expect our thinking to change. We will document changes along the way and do our best to acknowledge how our reflections and discussions led us to change our paths. This public iterative process, we believe, is essential to an engaging and useful outcome. Finally, to create an inclusive and welcoming conversation at all points, we’ve adopted some principles of action in this process. We want to create a definition and updated principles that are welcome and ultimately informative to SEE members and other experiential educators. The attempts here to document our process serve as a reminder of our commitments to sharing our work as we go through this process.
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Last Updated on Thursday, July 11, 2024 12:56 PM |