Battling “Senior-itis”Challenging Students With Ideation

Through Implementation

Charlie WoodJim Zboja

Claire Cornell

The University of Tulsa

Background

• Employers are seeking graduates with more than just “book smarts”

• They are looking for graduates with experience and the ability to innovate

• Feedback at our university

Peter D. Hart Research Associates

Interviewed 305 employers, 510 recent graduates and conducted three focus groups with business executives.

• 73% of employers wanted graduates to have the ability to apply knowledge and skills to real-world settings.

• 70% wanted graduates to have the ability to be innovative and think creatively.

Peter D. Hart Research Associates

• Both groups believe that higher education institutions should provide students more experience with real-world applications through hands-on learning.

• Surveyed 362,000 students at 564 U.S. baccalaureate-granting colleges and universities about their experience in college.

• 50% of graduating seniors reported that they completed some kind of enriching educational experience during their college career. (practicum, internship, field experience, clinical assignment)

2010 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE)

• 33% of the seniors reported that they had completed a culminating senior experience. (capstone course, senior project or thesis, comprehensive exam)

• Graduating seniors reported a score of 1.74when asked if they had engaged in a community-based project during their 4 years of college. (1=never to rarely; 4=very often)

2010 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE)

• optimistic, cooperative, team players, civic-minded, confident. (Howe and Strauss, 2000)

• collaborative, altruistic, and they value personal creativity. (Josiam et al., 2009)

• utilization of a team-based approach or “collective creativity” taps into millennials’ high esteem for creativity and their collaborative nature.

Characteristics of Millennials

Our goal was to improve student engagement and learning outcomes through collaborative coursework by

providing students with training in innovation and problem-solving and then enabling them to develop creative, real-world solutions that result in societal or

civic improvements.

What we did at TU

StudioBlue

• Studio Blue: a one-of-a-kind resource at the Collins College of Business designed to give TU students practice employing the creative process by solving real-world problems.

• Studio Blue’s benefits are two-fold:

1. Students learn to harness their innovative abilities

2. Actual problems are solved for companies, non-profits and other organizations

Pedagogical Approach

• John Dewey’s 3 Principles

Experience Inquiry Reflection

• Kolb’s Experiential Learning

Experiencing Reflecting Generalizing Applying

•IDEO’s Human Centered Design

Inspiration Ideation Implementation

Undergrad Application The 1894 Challenge

• Project-based course on innovation (inspiration ideation implementation)

• Identify 18 needs in local community, among consumers, and on campus

• Develop set of 5-6 feasible solutions to each problem

• Implement one per student

Corporate Projects Community Projects Campus Projects

Corporate Projects Community Projects Campus Projects

Welcome  |  About Us  |  Products  |  Contact Us  |  Surveys  |  Buy Online  |  Community

Welcome  |  About Us  |  Products  |  Contact Us  |  Surveys  |  Buy Online  |  Community

http://www.berganexperience.com/

Corporate Projects Community Projects Campus Projects

Oklahoma has the highest rate of female incarceration in the U.S. and 81% of those women have children.

Qualitative Student Outcomes

•“The class taught me that you have to work at being creative and innovative.”

•“This class was refreshing because it took the creativity

that I was used to and extended to the business realm …. I never really thought about a business team having to sit around and brainstorm innovative ideas before this class.

•I got a chance to experience group brainstorming and creativity in a sometimes problematic setting. Not everyone was always on the same page and not everyone was open to every idea…we had to overcome the obstacles of negativity.”

Qualitative Student Outcomes

• “I now look at every problem that I face as an opportunity for innovation. I used to abhor hearing people complain, but now it’s one of my favorite past times because I learned in this class that where ever there is a complaint there is an opportunity for innovation.”

• “The most valuable lesson I learned was that true innovation requires taking risk and action… rather than safely talking about what would be innovative.”

Qualitative Student Outcomes

• “One of the best classes I have taken; completely different from anything I've ever seen in a classroom before and a total breath of fresh air. This class imitated the real work environment more than any lecture style course.”

• “Traditionally when I found a problem in society I would just complain about it. Now, I take these problems as a challenge to find a better way to accomplish my goals…. By learning how to better identify not only problems, but creative solutions is one of the lessons that I am personally most proud to have been able to take away from this class.”

Qualitative Student Outcomes

“The course introduced me to something that I had not experienced before since probably elementary school. Throughout my education …any ideas that I had would always be shut down to where I did not want to speak anymore. I felt like the more creative I was the more wrong I was.

This course has made me realize that I still have my creative thinking process, it was just stored away.”

MBA Course

• Project for a local nonprofit

•Students conducted qualitative research in order to discover the needs of the target market.

• Brainstormed as a group to develop the most effective promotional ideas for a marketing campaign.

•Creating a direct mail campaign that was printed and mailed to 200 area businesses.

•The result was twice as many interested businesses in hiring the graduates of the non-profit’s job training program.

Quantitative Student Outcomes

• Self-report questionnaire on their impressions of how well- equipped they felt they were to help a local small business

• Pre- and Post-tests

•Seven of the twenty study items displayed significant improvement from the pre-test to the post-test stage.

•The most distinct improvements: “How to understand customers and gain insights into their needs” and “Ability to design solutions that are practical.”

• Nearly all items showed incremental, if not statistically significant, improvement.

Where do we go from here?

• More precise testing of the benefits of the HCD framework

• Impact on student learning (e.g., creativity tests)

• Impact on innovation quality of new hires (survey hiring managers)

• Frequency of internship and job placements as a result of student projects.

The University of Tulsa

THANK YOU!