Shannon Dowling is an architect, space analyst, and educator who focuses on creating research-driven and student-centered learning environments. Equipped with an extensive knowledge of educational trends and challenges, Shannon always works with the physical and psychological needs of students in mind. She collaborates closely with educators, students, and administrators to create inspirational yet functional space in which every student feels comfortable, safe, and ready to succeed.

Listen and learn from Shannon on, "Building Equitable & Accessible Post-Secondary Spaces & Experiences," episode one of our Back-to-School MIM sub-series

Learning happens everywhere. How we capture it is a hot topic.

Not only is how we capture learning shapeshifting but so too is the recognition of what is captured and what is means.

There are brilliant minds in higher education, data, and technology doing the thinking that will shape the future of badges, credentials, and recognition.

Laura Hilliger, Noah Geisel, and Doug Belshaw are a few of these individuals and they sat down with Dr. Bill Heinrich, Director of Mindset, to discuss the underpinnings and possible uses of badges and credentialing, the hurdles to implementation, their work to-date, and how we can use badges and micro-credentialing to empower learners and validate their experience.

To quote Laura, "How do we change a system from within a system, and what are the types of work that go into it?"  

What is post-secondary Student Affairs? Why is it a practice? What is researched and what are important discoveries in Student Affairs? 

This podcast helps to contextualize the field of Student Affairs, the research, and the impact it can have to support learners.

Why do big change projects within institutions organizationally fail more than succeed?
 
Jeff Grabill attributes barriers to change with the discomfort that humans inherently feel in the process. Academically, we like the idea of change but in practice we are all on a bell-curve of discomfort while the change is taking place. 

Redefining a school's curriculum and charting meaningful work takes group participation and a willingness to break down campus cultural hurdles that can hinder strategic steps forward. Or, as Bill references in this podcast, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast". Well, it can but with the right work it won't. 

Jeff Grabill is the perfect speaker to address the ways digital acceleration can work alongside culture to innovate and prototype higher ed for the future. Prior to joining the University of Leeds, Grabill was at Michigan State University (MSU) in the United States for nearly 20 years. He served Michigan State University as the Associate Provost for Teaching, Learning, and Technology. In that role, he was responsible for facilitating innovation in learning and educator professional development via his role as Director of the Hub for Innovation in Learning and Technology. Grabill’s research focuses on how digital writing is associated with citizenship and learning. That work has been located in community contexts, in museums, and in classrooms at both the K-12 and university levels. Grabill is also a co-founder of Drawbridge, an educational technology company.

In this episode, you learn about things like 'a lifelong learning provision', aligning economic incentives with modular learning, short and stackable courses, and the thinking driving future approaches to designing learning experiences around the needs of students. Says Jeff, "I think people need to design, in any given design instance, what the experience is. It could be welcome, induction, and transition. It could be, a course, or a class, or a module. Within the context of that, it could be very specific things like the scaffolding of a syllabus or online course." 

We're joined in this episode by Dr. Robby Ratan, Associate Professor and AT & T Scholar, Michigan State University, Department of Media and Information, and metaverse expert.

A few things you will learn in this episode:

•  what (the heck) the metaverse is, and why you should care,
•  how it will prospectively empower and enhance experiential learning, 
•  considerations when assuming ‘avatar identities’ (from bias to personal association with our avatars and personal safety)
• how the metaverse could evolve student reflections on what’s learned, peer reviews, study abroad experiences, and graduate employment opportunities, 
•  how the face of post-secondary will evolve through the metaverse, and MORE.

Lara Hof is an experienced student conduct administrator who now runs Hof & Associates, a student conduct administration consultancy for post-secondary institutions across Canada. Her work is regarded by peers as trailblazing in its understanding of the practice of student conduct administration and procedural fairness. She has managed hundreds of student conduct cases, often complex, and served as the primary campus investigator for incidences of gender-based violence. In this episode, Hof shares her insights on best practices for post-secondary student conduct administration, how to build cultures of care for learners and teams, and the ways we can overcome student conduct administration obstacles challenging post-secondary institutions today.

Experiential Learning is a philosophy of education that encompasses a large swath of hands on and reflective practices across postsecondary--there are many paths. Social, racial, environmental, and economic justice outcomes are possible, and even probable, in EL, but we have to focus on designing for those outcomes. Who we include in our community, as designers, educators, and learners, has everything to do with achieving justice outcomes in experiential learning. In this episode of Mindset in Motion we talk about designing post-secondary experiential learning to support social justice, with Mario D'Agostino and Patrick Green.

Julia Allworth leads the Innovation Hub at the University of Toronto. The Hub is an on-campus consultancy that supports building better student experiences using design thinking,  Julia is also the author of a book entitled, "Design Thinking in Student Affairs: A Primer".

Join Bill and Lesley D'Souza, as they explore storytelling with data and how design thinking can be bridge equitable approaches to assessment at the post-secondary level.