Transforming Emergency into Opportunity: Unleashing the Creative Potential of Student-Faculty Collaborations to Prototype Better Educational Futures in Response to Crisis

Abstract

AbstractThis design case offers a response to the pandemic crisis that cuts across pedagogical, technological, disciplinary, and administrative boundaries within a university in an effort to foment mutual learning and change. A team of five faculty from different disciplines joined forces to imagine a new online course that could contribute to novel educational redesigns. Titled “The Future of Learning at JMU,” the course was sponsored by the university administration and presented innovative ideas to key stakeholders across the institution. Undergraduate and graduate students collaborated in multidisciplinary teams and worked with faculty to engage stakeholders from across the institution via interviews and participatory presentations. This constituted a novel learning partnership that radically reconceptualized a university course as a design space that can participate in transformational institutional change.