IGE: Enhancing Graduate Education in Systems Thinking and Multi-Stakeholder Design through a Co-Creation Toolkit

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Major global challenges often require convergent, inclusive approaches that involve science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) professionals. Training students to work with multiple stakeholders, such as non-profit organizations and local populations could better prepare them to address problems that involve multiple disciplines or perspectives. For example, humanitarian organizations are engaging both STEM professionals and members of affected populations to design innovative interventions for refugee relief and response. This National Science Foundation Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) award to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) will train STEM graduate students to adopt more collaborative and inclusive approaches to problem-solving within the humanitarian response context. MIT D-Lab, which focuses on Development through Discovery, Design and Dissemination, will expand its contributions to the humanitarian relief sector through a novel approach to teaching graduate-level design and systems thinking courses. The goal is to train future STEM leaders to incorporate a more inclusive and participatory approach to problem solving. MIT D-Lab will develop, pilot, and evaluate a multi-week module on how to effectively facilitate co-creative design sessions that include both humanitarian organizations and affected populations on the design team throughout the entire process. While the module is being developed and tested within the context of D-Lab?s humanitarian efforts, it has applications in many other settings, both in academia and in the field.Researchers will develop and pilot elements of the design and systems thinking module in D-Lab, the Systems Design and Management program and the Urban Risk Lab at MIT; in the Humanitarian Engineering program at Oregon State University; in the Program on Forced Migration and Health at Columbia University; and in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. In parallel, students will work on a semester-long project with a partner organization (such as Oxfam, UNICEF or the Red Cross) to develop a co-creative activity between the organization and an affected population. After the class, students will have the opportunity to work with D-Lab staff and partners in the field to deliver the co-creative activity. The researchers will measure learning outcomes for the curriculum and identify changes in the students? skills, knowledge, and attitudes. In addition, researchers will determine the effectiveness of co-creation processes and will compare the activities developed as part of this project to the current process for identifying solutions and engaging users in the humanitarian sector. By comparing these processes, the team will be able to identify important hypotheses about effective ways to teach co-creation and participatory principles as well as the effects of a co-creation process on students and refugees. The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) program is focused on research in graduate education. The goals of IGE are to pilot, test and validate innovative approaches to graduate education and to generate the knowledge required to move these approaches into the broader community.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.