Documentation:Design Your Life and Career/Prototype Workshop for Facilitators

From UBC Wiki

Context

CTLT facilitators offered a series of 2 prototype workshops for 20 colleagues (facilitators, learning designers, leadership) to introduce the group to some of the methods involved in the design your life approach. We did this in 2 mornings over 2 weeks in January of 2019. We used an experiential approach so that participants could "try out" some of the methods used in the "Designing Your Life" curriculum that was recently introduced to us as a way to support students in claiming agency in their life and career decision.

Our main goal was to get feedback from our colleagues (experienced facilitators) about some of the concepts/ approaches we introduced them to and to identify aspects that require some re-thinking, adaption or revision if we were to continue to develop this workshop for faculty and learning designers.

Note: prototypes are experiments and reflect works in progress. They are intended to gather feedback and new information based on what we tried out with our colleagues. Please adapt with that in mind and review the discussion page for a synthesis of the feedback we received and our further questions.

Our questions

We were hoping to learn:

  • how might these approaches make an impact on someone's life/career building? What does it really take (in terms of time & practice)?
  • what aspects of the methods were generative for people?
  • where are the pain points with the content, processes used?
  • how might the content be adapted for different audiences?

Since our audience are people who are experienced designers and facilitators in a variety of learning contexts, we are mindful that the feedback we are getting is from a place of deep expertise.

The session

The workshop consists of two sessions:

  • Session 1 focus: Wayfinding - with an emphasis on starting where we are: empathy building, acceptance and defining/reframing problems or limiting beliefs.
  • Session 2 focus: Exploring - with an emphasis on building forward: generating possibilities, attending to our life needs (balance, engagement and energy and making decisions.

Workshop participants are engaged in activities that are intended to:

  • Introduce them to some of the methods used in the DYL approach
  • Offer an overview of design thinking - which is the foundation for the DYL methods.
  • Engage them in thinking about their own lives and careers as a way to experience the approach.
  • Provide a venue for feedback on the approach - perhaps to guide further iterations of this workshop for faculty.


Slide Decks: Google Slides


  • Open speaker notes: by clicking the gear icon on the bottom of the slide deck.
  • Re-use and modify : open and save the slide deck in your own google account.


  • Open speaker notes: by clicking the gear icon on the bottom of the slide deck.
  • Re-use and modify : open and save the slide deck in your own google account.

Resources

Overview


  • Note that the "overview resources" were not used in either session but are available to participants for further exploration.

Session1: Wayfinding

Session 2: Exploring

Our learning

See the discussion tab associated with this page (in development). Here are some highlights:

  • the "history" of design thinking - while helpful for faculty audiences - needs to be re-worked into a pre-reading with an associated workshop activity to help build disciplinary connections.
  • framing/re-framing - needs more consideration of impact on identity; there are risks and trade-off with this activity and require more foregrounding - otherwise risks superficiality.
  • prototype questions - preparing a good question from which to generate prototype experiences would benefit from a bit more scaffolding. How do you get specific enough - yet general enough to invite idea generation?