Update from the Student Experience Lab Team

Posted by Melissa Withers on June 12, 2009

In the days following BIF’s announcement that we had launched a new Student Experience Lab (thanks again, Lumina Foundation!) we received dozens of emails, Twitter tweets and calls from people who shared our belief that the current post secondary education system is in deep trouble.  From financial woes to the appalling barriers adult learners face in accessing the education and training they need to compete in a rapidly changing economy, people from across the BIF network came out in support of the effort.   

Bolstered by the support, we set our sights on an aggressive first phase of effort that would 1) create an accessible and enlightening characterization of the current experience of post secondary learners and 2) create a collaborative environment where new ideas for improving the college student experience a can be designed, tested and refined in a real-world laboratory with direct student engagement. 

A few weeks ago the project officially got underway with the addition of Chris Finlay to the BIF team. Chris, who joined us from New York City, has spent most of his career focused on creating meaningful change in the world by leveraging the power of people, business, and design to create innovative products and services. Chris has a BFA in graphic design and advertising from the School of Visual Arts, and a Master of Business and Master of Design in Innovation Planning at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He has also studied at the Culinary Institute of America.  

With the fanfare of his arrival behind us, Chris now has his hands full as the project lead on one of BIF’s most ambitious and meaningful projects to date.  Chris has been challenged to ‘come up the curve’ on BIF’s mission and methodology quickly.  Lucky for us, his approach to user-centric design pairs seamlessly with BIF’s commitment to systems-level innovation and obsession with building actionable platforms for experimentation. 

In this first phase of work, Chris and the Student Experience Lab team will create an "Experience Map" of the environmental and human factors that are the most significant drivers of the post secondary student experience. The team will use a combination of observational and ethnographic research, self-reporting, surveying and secondary research to characterize the experience of current, former and prospective post secondary education students at various ages and from diverse racial and socio-economic backgrounds.   

The team will package findings from this phase of work in a highly visual and interactive form that uses video, audio, photography and first-person narrative to tell the story of the postsecondary student experience in a manner that allows experts and non-experts to understand the human, environmental and systems-level factors that most impact degree attainment. 

This approach enables stakeholders to see the experience through the lens of the student, better appreciate the dynamics of the whole system and more readily identify opportunities for innovation and intervention. 

The team has been working furiously over the last few weeks to get their research plans finialized, define key questions to be tackled, and grow the team with a few key hires.  Chris is joined on the team by Julianne Gauron (who also works as a lead designer on the Nursing Home of the Future project) and James Hamar, BIF’s trusty digital media guy and resident twenty-something.  Joining soon will be a second designer and a handful of interns from all over the U.S.  

Looking ahead, I am already gearing up to present results from the first phase of effort at the BIF-5 Collaborative Innovation Summit on October 7-8, the fifth annual gathering of BIF’s national network of innovators and thought leaders from across industries and sectors, which may explain our motivation for helping the student experience lab team swing into action so quickly. 

We put a high priority on capturing field notes on all project work.  These informal reports chronicle the work of the team, as opposed to their findings, which tend to get the most attention.  We think a quick glance will give you come interesting insight into the personalities behind the team and a peek into what they discover as they move forward. You can read the field notes here: www.businessinnovationfactory.com/weblog

Stay tuned for more information. The team tells me that next up is a launch of a virtual community where people with interest in the lab can connect with the team and get an advance look at work in the lab.