A summer of teaching educators and innovators, from Oslo to Olin

This summer, I taught in three short-form programs with three very different audiences: master's students in Oslo and educators visiting Olin from around the world.

Global Innovation Challenge, BI Norwegian Business School (June 22–July 3). The Global Innovation Challenge is an alliance of eight business schools that send master's students into intensive two-week courses. In those courses, multicultural teams tackle a real challenge from a partner organization. This year, BI's course was Digital Solution Design and Transformation, coordinated by my collaborator Professor Christian Fieseler of the Nordic Centre for Internet and Society and co-taught by Mark Boons, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Students learned to design digital services that create real value while remaining ethical and inclusive. They moved from user research and design thinking to prototypes, implementation plans, and ethical analysis for their partner organizations. I taught design thinking and innovation practices, helping students to think big and to be empathic about both the client and their customers. 

Learning by Design, Olin College (July 8–10). Learning by Design is a three-day institute for educators from liberal arts colleges, minority-serving institutions, community colleges, K–12 schools, and engineering programs. They come to adapt Olin's approach to student-centered, project-based learning for their own institutions. I taught a workshop on meeting students where they are and how to design for the knowledge, motivations, and identities students actually bring, rather than the ones we assume.

Summer Studio, Olin College (July 13–17). Summer Studio brings teams of faculty and staff to Olin for an intensive week on a high-priority teaching and learning initiative from their home institution. I taught a workshop on AI and, alongside Olin Professor of Anthropology, Caitrin Lynch, mentored a faculty team from KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) as they developed new approaches to bringing AI into their programs. 

Across all three programs, I kept returning to the same question: how do we design learning, and technology, that starts from where people actually are? Whether the learners are business students reinventing digital services or faculty reimagining their curricula, empathy is at the core of my teaching approach.