Spring 2020 marked my first semester teaching a full course at the University of Portland. Spring semester also coincides with the start of a new cohort of students in the Innovation Minor and spring 2020 is the official start of the first cohort (Cohort ’21) of students.
Fall 2019 Promotion: Building Cohort ’21
Prior to Spring semester, Fall is dedicated to recruiting students through an on campus promotion and marketing campaign. Fall 2019 promotion campaign was conducted by in-class presentations. I visited approximately 23 courses across all schools and college, focusing on first and second year students. Each visit consisted of a 3-minute elevator pitch, followed by a Q&A, and concluded with handing out a PDF flyer.
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In addition to the folder flyer, a simple 8.5 x 11 inch single page flyer was distributed to Student Activities to have posted on all poster boards across campus.
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For buildings with digital displays a 1920 x 1080 static image was provided to various administrative staff to cycle through the digital displays across campus.
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Cohort ’21
The promotion effort resulted in approximately 15 applications with several applications coming from upper class students who, because of the unfolding of the innovation courses, would be unable to complete the program. Nine students were officially approved to join Cohort ’21.
Teaching
There are four courses that make up the Innovation Minor:
- INV200: Introduction to Creativity, Design, and Innovation
- INV300: Empathy, Observational Research, and Human-Centered Design
- INV350: Making, Sketching, Prototyping
- INV400: Innovation Collaborative Practicum
INV200 and INV300 are offered every Spring semester and INV350 and INV400 are offered every Fall semester. With Spring 2020 marking the start of the innovation program, only INV200 was offered.
INV200 – Spring 2020
Cohort ’21 kicked off the “teaching at UP experience” in a great way. UP students are inquisitive, critical, and very intelligent. Having never worked with any of these students before, I applied a couple of qualitative sessions to gain a better understanding of their expectations from the course and from the innovation program as a whole. This understanding led to the adjustment of a few assignments and the decision to remove all quizzes and exams from the course. It became very clear as to why this program is designed as an “experiential learning program.” An exam is not experiential learning. The course was quickly adjusted to project-based work.
Projects
For INV200 SP20 there were four main projects and four sub-projects.
Main Projects included:
- Innovation Journal (weekly written journal connecting minor to major)
- Collaborative Physical Mapping
- Empathy and Design Thinking (an IoT platform with mobile app & physical device)
- Radical Innovation:
- Radical Everyday Things
- Radical Technologies through UN Global Issues
Sub Projects included:
- Impossible Remote
- Product Box
- Everyday Micro-interactions (flow diagrams)
- Physical Modeling (for Project 3)
Reflection
Spring 2020 was a great semester despite the last four weeks introducing quarantine and isolation due to COVID-19. The change in plans have thwarted all visions of what the experience will be for the very first cohort of students in the Innovation program. This program is founded in a time when innovation is being thrusted upon everyone. COVID-19 initiated a call to action that created and continues to create new ideas and approaches to your everyday teaching and learning experiences.