By: Drew Flanagan

I have and continue to be most excited about the prospect of us making meaningful change as it relates to learning at Duke. I have found our “understand” phase particularly intriguing because it has given me the opportunity to learn about some of the challenges, expectations, and assumptions that exist within our current educational model. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to reconsider some historic practices and conventions as well as ask the questions: why do we do what we do and is it the most effective way to reach our goal?

As we continue to think about our work beyond the “understand” phase, the concept of “showing your work” is a value of open-source design that has connected with me. I think documentation is crucial to building coalitions of support around innovations. Learners and teachers alike want to be able to understand the reasoning for doing something. This makes design human-centered rather than process or outcome-oriented. “Showing your work” also allows people to build off your findings, which ultimately leads to more innovation and robust discussion about what educational models can and should look like.

I hope to work with my team to design something that can have a tangible impact on the experience of students and faculty (the users) this Fall. I think the area of biggest opportunity is how to balance the hands-on and interaction specific portions of learning with the content-driven piece. To me, content does not always need to be delivered face-to-face – in some cases, like a lecture, for example, in-person delivery is inefficient compared to video modules or other modes. However, when we do not deliver content in-person, there is a loss of some of the by-products of interaction that increase engagement and intellectual curiosity. I think there is room to balance efficiency with purposeful interaction going forward. I think the flipped classroom is something worth further exploring.

I’m looking forward to continuing our “understand” phase into next week and more thoughtful conversations with stakeholders.