Re-Imagining the Future of Experiential Learning Through a Campus-Wide Design Thinking Initiative

Abstract

In 2020, Old Dominion University was awarded a State Council for Higher Education for Virginia grant in order to re-imagine the future of experiential learning at the institution. This campus-wide effort is led by a taskforce to create a vision, framework, and plan for the future of experiential learning at Old Dominion University. The taskforce is composed of stakeholders that include students, faculty, administrators, and community and business partners. In this chapter, the authors report on process and progress, with particular attention to the first three phases of the design thinking process. In the empathy phase, they have engaged in design thinking sprints, hosted monthly taskforce meetings, engaged in an exhaustive review of current experiential learning activities, and deployed surveys of relevant stakeholders. During the defining phase, they analyzed initial data, synthesized their collective empathy work, and identified root issues to craft their “How might we” questions to inform the ideation work. In this chapter, they also share the results of the ideation phase.