Teaching: Sustainability Design Thinking (Part 3)

In Part 2 of this teaching reflection, I had mentioned individual and team as groupings for assignments. There is also the possibility of pairings – in terms of fixed pairs, or speed dating-type pairs where changes in the pairing are made quickly. Pairings could be even more interesting if there was not just equity and parity in the pairings, but we could have intentional mentor-mentee setups.

But the grouping I wanted to really add for consideration in this course is a “committee” comprising students and instructors would serve as mentors. We could form committees of students where they would be responsible for organization and execution. This experience would involved design thinking at a very different level and allow for leadership as well as interpersonal group dynamics lessons.

In YCISL, we formed a committee for the Sustainability in Education Roundtable (oooh, could we have a student-organized roundtable please? Pretty please?). We have also included in our YCISL program proposals, the idea of an editorial committee to publish mini-conference proceedings. This would help us as well to deliver a reference from which we could design accurate and precise resume statements about a student’s experience in this course (use asking-questions design thinking).