Archive for the ‘Lessons’ Category

A couple of days ago, I uploaded the syllabus for Summer Quarter 2024 CEE 176G/276G Sustainability Design Thinking onto syllabus.stanford.edu. For that syllabus, I included a section on the design projects in the course. This was based on the design of and experiences with the project assignments in Summer 2023 and Winter 2024. The descriptions are intentionally brief and written in an academic bulletin style.

Design Project 1: Independent Project. Emphasis on learning the systematic design thinking process, & changing human behavior. Ideation and design of a single product to influence an individual’s sustainability behavior & mindset. Delivery of a presentation & spec sheet.

Design Project 2: Team Project. Emphasis on supporting programs & initiatives that promote sustainable behaviors within a community. Ideation & prototyping of a space, service, activity or program. Involves interacting with others using interviews & surveys to identify opportunities & resources. Delivery of a presentation & spec sheet.

Design Project 3: Independent or Team Project. Emphasis on sustainability in the future. Design using anticipation of needs & innovative technologies in the future. Involves rapid prototyping & human-centered storytelling. Delivery of a presentation & spec sheet.

I like to think there is YCISL-style design thinking in these concept statements about the assignments. The Who? element is answered by the words “Independent” or “Team.” The Emphasis Areas summarily describe the What? of the course content. The When? is subtle in that we specify “future” in Design Project 3 leaving the other projects more in the now. And the deliverables of the presentation and spec sheet give us the How? the design thinking journey will be communicated for evaluation. Hopefully, the When? & Why? are apparent from the teaching part of the class.

This is just further evidence that design thinking (as well as emotional intelligence) is essential to teaching design. I feel it helps me in building courses that are consistent with Stanford’s reputation for entrepreneurship and innovation. Should design thinking perhaps be a component of teacher education? I’ve always wanted to try a teacher workshop for the YCISL creativity program.

I am preparing for an upcoming Popcorn with Colin where students at an IB school have been invited to discuss their ideas for an extended essay. The IB Extended Essay “…is an independent, self-directed piece of research, finishing with a 4,000-word paper” and a mandatory part of the IB Diploma program. I have an interest in this activity because I was an IB Diploma student when I was in high school, and still have vivid memories of my extended essay project work.

The plan for the Popcorn session is to open with a discussion about “what is research?” for the purpose of shared viewpoints and expectations.

Then we would move into a reveal-type segment where we explore the ideas that the students have for their extended essays. We would tease these ideas for creativity, connectedness & design thinking. Our discussion about creativity could look into personal curiosity, originality & innovation where concepts such as comfort zone, out-of-the-box thinking, and uncertainty. Connectedness would deal with awareness of published scholarly literature as well as personal experience, and how to support/justify a research project. And design thinking would be about sketching a human-centered problem statement and vision using the YCISL Innovators Toolkit method.

The third component of our session would be on the suggestion of the need for a research plan & the design elements; this is intended to encourage good documentation habits as well as methodical forward-thinking skills.

That’s probably plenty for our 90-minute session where I hope to have plenty of reciprocal learning.

It’s been a couple of days since I initially wrote up some notes about preparing to co-teach Sustainability Design Thinking this summer. Another thought just popped up. It relates to the YCISL equation:

KI + EI -> LI

For this equation, we posit that the limiting factor is EI (emotional intelligence) which explains why there is so little LI (leadership intelligence) around. KI (knowledge intelligence) is relatively abundant, but variable in quantity and quality (thinking for a moment about Salman Khan’s idea about teaching for mastery as well as Jef Raskin’s thoughts about issues with knowledge).

That said, if we are to push EQ with regards to the course, we need to utilize the students’ existing KI as a base resource. There are two channels we could use: (1) academic learning, especially recent learning, and (2) personal experience. We should have students list their academic topics in the past year (active recall) and significant personal experiences in the past few months (waggle dance reasoning). Students could then research any of the items on the list to deepen their understanding. This may quickly lead to a useful KI so that we can move on to focus on EI.

In Part 2 of this teaching reflection, I had mentioned individual and team as groupings for assignments. There is also the possibility of pairings – in terms of fixed pairs, or speed dating-type pairs where changes in the pairing are made quickly. Pairings could be even more interesting if there was not just equity and parity in the pairings, but we could have intentional mentor-mentee setups.

But the grouping I wanted to really add for consideration in this course is a “committee” comprising students and instructors would serve as mentors. We could form committees of students where they would be responsible for organization and execution. This experience would involved design thinking at a very different level and allow for leadership as well as interpersonal group dynamics lessons.

In YCISL, we formed a committee for the Sustainability in Education Roundtable (oooh, could we have a student-organized roundtable please? Pretty please?). We have also included in our YCISL program proposals, the idea of an editorial committee to publish mini-conference proceedings. This would help us as well to deliver a reference from which we could design accurate and precise resume statements about a student’s experience in this course (use asking-questions design thinking).

I have been invited to be co-instructor for the course CEE 176G/276G Sustainability Design Thinking in Summer Term 2023 at Stanford. This is not a new connection, but I will have greater-than-before involvement with instruction this time. I thought I would write three ideas for my part of this course.

1. Engagement of the EQ (awareness and action) senses in design thinking projects with sustainability in mind.
2. The concept of nudging into sustainability at an angle to be persuasive and human behavior changing will be explored.
3. The Art of Environmental Sustainability Communication. Using the idea of “Sustainability has a PR Problem,” we can get students to practice communicating ideas over various modes. Perhaps we could use the YCISL DezignBläst framework for students to practice writing proposals for sustainability products, spaces & services.

These components will involve creativity where we will hope and expect that students can advance through rapid prototyping and brainstorming, and develop their design thinking skillset.

This week, I participated as a volunteer mock interviewer for high school students in Career Technical Education programs offered through the Sequoia Union High School District. I met with 7 students in total that day. We practiced engaging in a discussion about skills and experience as well as reviewing a resume.

As I reflect on that experience, one of the main talking points was the listing of interests and activities. This really gets to the core of the YCISL program with the Proof stage representing the high school level of the YCISL leadership objectives. First, let’s list 20 ideas for interests and activities that could be on a high school student’s resume as Proof.

1. Sports (Recreational)
2. Sports (Competitive)
3. Community Service/Volunteer Work
4. Tutoring
5. Clubs
6. Science, Math & Engineering Competition
7. Fundraising
8. Work/Internship/Shadow
9. Music (Individual/Group)
10. Art/Graphics/Photography
11. Drama/Acting
12. Social Media/Blogging/Vlogging
13. Video Production
14. Writing (Technical)
15. Writing (Non-Technical)
16. Journalism/Newspaper/Yearbook
17. Travel
18. Computer Programming
19. Website Design
20. Small Business Entrepreneur

Next, so that any of these interests or activities become a part of your personal story, practice EQ and asking-questions design thinking so that you can include it in your storytelling resume. As an example, one of the students I met at the SUHSD interviews had included an experience where he helped an aunt with a catering business at an event. His resume had only functional points describing his role. We discussed the scene and activity to color the story. We started with Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How? Then I asked about anything particularly memorable or an opportune learning or growth opportunity. Finally, we talked about the emotional senses before, during and after the event to gauge motivation and mindfulness. If we had more time, we probably could have gone deeper to find the hook words, keywords and action words that best represent this experience on the resume.

By this method of developing a mind view, I hope high school students can find more value in their early experiences and discover memorable moments of success and happiness for their personal story.

I have an idea for a YCISL Divergent-Convergent Thinking Exercise. Along with DCT, this exercise also involves brainstorming, rapid prototyping, fast thinking, design thinking, creativity and eq. We could also add an elevator pitch component with storytelling and your personal story elements.

Overview: In Canva, create a desktop wallpaper. We could assign various scenarios based on purpose and context.

Instructions: Divergent Phase: In Canva, set up a blank desktop wallpaper template. Add your text. Play with the font styles coming up with various prototypes. With the font prototypes, play with various color schemes for the text and monochrome background. As a last step, create versions with background images. Convergent Phase: Identify up to three prototypes that you think resonate the most. The criteria are up to you. Pitch Phase (optional): Design a 90-second elevator pitch around these selected prototypes providing a feature list, a story and an explanation of how it connects to your personal story. Assess the level of creativity, growth and mindfulness involved in this exercise.

I may have a chance to try this exercise out this summer in Sustainability Design Thinking. In the meantime, I will describe my experience reflected by the 9 designs in the gallery above in this wiki entry.

• I started off with a black background to have lower computer screen glare. I also think a black background has a sophisticated vibe.
• I chose three words related to the YCISL and intentionally selected words that rhymed so that they bounce around in the head together. I also feel the expression has a connected 3-step progression so there is an element of active listening (hearing, listening & understanding) involved.
• I actually created 16 prototypes based on font type. The three font types shown in the gallery at the top are Courier Prime, Garamond and Agrandir Thin representing the more common type styles.
• I then made a copy of the set of 16 prototypes and changed the background to white. As I started working on this WordPress entry, I found that I preferred having some contrast between the wiki image and the wiki background, and made another set with an off-white background (#f5f5f5). I feel both the white and off-white background sets work well. Putting a little red, blue or green tint would have been an interesting expansion, but I didn’t do it. That’s because I like to design exercises with sets of 3, and the 3rd step in this exercise is to…
•  Use images for the background. Again, I did actually create 16 prototypes with various backgrounds, and the three shown in the gallery above are just by chance the ones for the three basic font typefaces. Still, I like the variability represented here where the water has a cool and dynamic feel, the orange slices image touches most of our senses, and the scenery background denotes place and time.

Another important note is that even with 16 font typefaces and three variations on the background, there is learning happening in this exercise. Preferences, new ideas and intrinsic motivation are being exposed. So if there is enough time in this exercise to conduct a second DCT cycle, that would be consistent with the way we do the Spaghetti Tower Marshmallow exercise (“Fail Early, Fail Fast”) as part of rapid prototyping.

On my way to play some tennis this morning, I came up with an idea for the next YCISL e-book. It’s about Hard Work. The idea springs from Alison Ledgerwood’s 2013 TEDxUCDavis Talk “Getting stuck in the negatives (and how to get unstuck)” which was somewhere along the way re-titled to “A simple trick to improve positive thinking.” In that talk, she says “We literally have to work harder to see the upside of things.” That statement links to another which I do find more resonating which is “It’s all hard work. Nothing comes easily” – spoken by Richard St. John in his 2005 TED Talk “8 Secrets of Success,” but credited to Rupert Murdoch through an interview.

So I think I will work on an e-book with maybe eight examples of creativity and hard work.

1. “We literally have to work harder to see the upside of things.” Alison Ledgerwood. TEDxUCDavis. 2013.
2. “It’s all hard work. Nothing comes easily.” Richard St. John. TED. 2005.
3. “It’s very, very simple to get what you want. But it’s not easy.” Mel Robbins. TEDxSF. 2011.
4. Work = Force x Distance. An equation to describe the Growth Mindset. The YCISL Personal Story & Roadmap.
5. Push. Pull. Center. Mindfulness. Sweat Equity. Stress & Strain. About YCISL EQ.
6. Active Listening. Filters. A YCISL conversational topic.
7. “Must try harder.” Sir Ken Robinson. TED. 2006.
8. Creativity. Fast Thinking. Divergent-Convergent Thinking. Self-Edit. Self-Doubt. The YCISL Creativity Model.

That’s probably enough for the kind of short e-book I have been publishing. Hopefully, I can make it interesting for readers. The structure goes from ideas to concepts to a model.

Looking forward to getting started.

A moment ago, I received an email from Coursera with the Subject line “How to get a job with no experience.” There are 8 steps listed in the email. Let’s see if we can create a similar (and better, more EQ-enabled) list using YCISL ideas.

HOW TO PREPARE TO GET YOUR FIRST JOB – THE YCISL WAY

1. Active Listening. Showing that you can hear, listen and understand may be the most important factor in an interview as well as mentoring for a new hire. Your sense of timing, word choice and expression (facial, hands & body language) reflects on your emotional intelligence and is your chance to earn initial trust.
2. Shared Problem. Sharing a problem closes the distance between you and the person you are talking to in an elevator pitch. Ask about the problem related to the job and discuss how the new hire is expected to solve the problem. How do your interests and skills connect to the problem and solution?
3. Business Card, Mind & Heart. Show an understanding for the job functions (perhaps written in a job description), intelligence requirements, and the intangibles that may make the work fulfilling and meaningful.
4. Opportunity. From personal experience, timing is everything. Demonstrate flexibility and adaptability. Be aware of the timeliness as well as “currents” and “cross-currents.”
5. Team. You must show that you can work with others and contribute as an individual. Do you have group, social and empathy skills? Demonstrate composure and leadership potential.
6. Growth Story. In YCISL, we like to think about Your Personal Story. How would you grow in the job? How does it connect to your past and future? Make sure you are the main character in your story. Do describe the chapter scene at the prospective workplace. Make it interesting for the “reader” using success and happiness, two fundamental positivity features.
7. Intrinsic Motivation. Highlight the many ways you are motivated and self-motivated. What aspects of the job has the potential to make you feel rewarded emotionally and perform well sustainably? Helping people? Learning from others? A balanced work-social life? Flexible work hours? Practice divergent-convergent thinking here.
8. Promise. Show that you can make and keep promises. Be clear on what you are sincerely promising if you are granted the job role. You can echo and resonate the promise in your follow-up (thank you) note as well as when you start your first job.

This is why the YCISL tagline is “Life Lessons in EQ.”

Good luck!

I just watched a YouTube video titled “New US Vit D research” by Dr. John Campbell, and wondered about a possible connection between Vitamin D and the thinking skills in the YCISL program. Could creativity, EQ, growth mindset, mindfulness, positivity & fast thinking be enhanced by Vitamin D (also called “sunshine vitamin” by some)? A Google search led me to the Scientific American article “Does Vitamin D Improve Brain Function?” written by Diane Welland and published November 1, 2009?

The article mentions information-processing speed, cognitive impairment, and cognitive losses – all of which affect our creativity. It does mention one study of “3,100 men aged 40 to 79 in eight different countries across Europe” which sets up a huge knowledge gap open to a YCISL Innovators Toolbox Filling & Crossing Gaps analysis.

This is one of those “Hmmmmmm?” moments. A pause to reason (or imagine) this out. An opportunity to ask “What if…?”

Should we discuss a possible YCISL-Vitamin D link in a Popcorn with Colin? We could explore a youth perspective about Vitamin D as well as a need to improve brain function. Do students notice any brain function performance difference between seasons, between night and day, between indoors vs outdoors, or anything else related to light exposure?

Should we create YCISL projects around Vitamin D healthcare? Besides a physician telling a patient to take Vitamin D supplements, is there anything else that can be done to improve Vitamin D healthcare? Could a person’s Vitamin D be measured without a blood test making it more convenient? Is there any program that could be designed so that people would take Vitamin D supplements consistently? Is there a software app that could change human behavior to improve Vitamin D levels? I imagine there are many possible innovations.

Should we ask YCISL participants about their Vitamin D levels? As part of an EQ-framework, should we assess self-awareness about Vitamin D levels as well as boosting and supplementation? Should we also complete the EQ-framework with a design thinking discussion about resources and how to connect with those resources?

While writing this, I took a Vitamin D3+Vitamin K2 supplement. Let’s see if it worked.