By: Anwulika Okonjo
I am most excited about working on issues that affect students and the future of learning. I think this is a really important area that hasn’t seen much serious innovation in a while, but there are so many possibilities. I’m excited about what I might learn and how I could apply it to learning innovation in Nigeria and across Africa in the future. Coming from a place where people’s narratives are often distorted or their voices are typically ignored, open design matters a lot to me because it centers on the experiences and perspectives of the people we are trying to help.
Unfortunately, a lot of initiatives that are intended to improve people’s lives often end up doing the opposite because they don’t actually take in what the people who they’re trying to help think about the project (as crazy as that sounds). One of my favorite things about human-centered design/open design is journey mapping and designing impact measures. I think re-imagining learning means taking a different approach to understanding student’s journey through educational institutions and beyond, and rethinking what the purpose of learning is and what it means to be a teacher or student. It means coming up with new ways of assessing the impact education has had on people beyond their income post-graduation or their job position.
I’ve personally had a really unique journey at Duke, and I would say that my education and time over the last few years has extended well beyond the boundaries of Duke’s physical campus. I want other students to also feel like even if they made some mistake, they have a strong understanding of who they are and what they want to become once they leave Duke. And they feel fully equipped with the skills and resources they need to do whatever they want to do