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A Coordinated Suite of Grand Challenge Courses Project Summary by Barrett Colombo and Dan Philippon Background The team initially proposed to revise two existing Grand Challenge Curriculum (GCC) courses, develop at least three new ones, and coordinate all of these courses within and across semesters. The goal was to fulfill the need expressed in the “Grand Challenges—Curriculum Report of the Strategic Planning Workgroup” that the primary focus of Grand Challenge training should be a foundational set of competencies (knowledge, skills, and values) that prepares students to effectively engage a broad range of grand challenges. Project Team • Bill Arnold, Professor of Environmental Engineering, Dept. of Civil, Environmental, and Geo-Engineering, CSE • Barrett Colombo, Associate Education Specialist, Institute on the Environment • Vincent deBritto, Senior Lecturer, Dept. of Landscape Architecture • Jason Hill, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering, CFANS • Julian Marshall, Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering, Dept. of Civil, Environmental, and Geo-Engineering, CSE, and Co-founder of the Acara Program [now Professor of Environmental Engineering, University of Washington] • Dan Philippon, Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies, Dept. of English, CLA • Cheryl Robertson, Associate Professor, Population Health and Systems, School of Nursing • Fred Rose, Co-founder and Director of the Acara Program • G. David Tilman, Regents Professor, Dept. of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior • Elizabeth Wilson, Associate Professor of Environmental Policy and Law, Humphrey School Implementation and Results Because of changes to team-members’ teaching schedules, the team eventually coordinated three GCC courses and an affiliated Landscape Architecture course during Fall 2015: • GCC 3001 - Can We Feed the World Without Destroying It? o Profs. Jason Hill (CFANS) & G. David Tilman (CBS) • GCC 5003 - Seeking Solutions to Global Health Issues o Prof. Cheryl Robertson (Nursing) and Fred Rose (IonE) • GCC 5005 - Global Venture Design—What Impact Will You Make? o Prof. Julian Marshall (CSE) and Fred Rose (IonE) • LA 3003/5003 - Climate Adaptation for Minneapolis o Vincent deBritto (CDes) Goals and Curricular Structure The project team shared the belief that, despite the differences between particular grand challenges, students required a common set of trans-disciplinary skills to develop solutions to these challenges. While taught by separate instructional teams, and designed according to the goals of those instructors, all courses were to feature the following common four core elements:





2 1. Knowledge to Impact Skills Lab: A new “skills lab” featuring modules focused on different trans-disciplinary skills, to be integrated within each course, or taught separately as a 1credit option. 2. Development of solutions appropriate to the challenge: Within each course, interdisciplinary teams of students would work in a studio environment, coached by instructors and mentors, to create solutions that could potentially be implemented. 3. Common workshop event across multiple GCC courses: All courses would emphasize early feedback for student teams through studios and presentations. In addition, all students would present at a final workshop event, including students from other challenge courses, and proposals would be reviewed by experts drawn from UMN faculty and the MSP professional community. 4. Support students in developing solutions beyond the class: Students would be guided toward funding to implement their ideas, other courses at the University, etc.

These goals and this curricular structure remained largely intact, with some modifications: 1. Knowledge to Impact co-curriculum We developed and piloted the “Knowledge To Impact” (KTI) curriculum to prepare students with skills and frameworks that would enable them to use the knowledge gained in their GCC course to create plausible solutions. Solutions could take varied forms according to the needs of the challenge, including sustainable business or non-profit models, public policy, public health interventions, media, or technical solutions. To more easily meet the needs of varied GCC course structure and timelines, KTI was developed in a modular fashion, with each module focused on a different trans-disciplinary skill. The only prerequisite for KTI was that students were currently enrolled in another GCC course.

Table 1. A GCC co-curriculum to complement training on a particular grand challenge Knowledge to Impact Co-Curriculum: Trans-disciplinary skills common to addressing all grand challenges

Core GCC Course Design: Interdisciplinary grounding in a particular grand challenge Example from GCC 5005: Seeking Solutions to Global Health Issues

TTTT Design Thinking

Organizational Development

Communications

Stakeholder Engagement

Health System Structure

Governance & Development Policy

Emerging Animal Health Issues

Climate Change Impacts, Water and Land Use

Table 1: Like a GCC course that covers a myriad of topics and their complex interactions relative to the grand challenge at hand (the vertical part of the “T” in this visual), the KTI likewise introduced a suite of capacities necessary for acting on these challenges (the horizontal parts of the “T”). Clearly a one-credit class (or equivalent) cannot begin to cover all trans-disciplinary capacities required to meet a challenge in any significant depth, as each is a discipline in and of itself. However, the intent was to introduce these skills so students could gain basic competency, apply these skills to the problem at hand, and most importantly, gain awareness of how to use these skills to tackle big projects in the future.



Tuesday, March 29, 16



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2. Development of viable solutions Our project team shared the following learning outcomes. Students will: • understand the path from idea to impact and apply this knowledge through a project in their GCC course • apply design thinking to identify a suitable program relevant to their Grand Challenge • identify a problem they wish to focus on, and create an actionable problem statement relevant to their Grand Challenge Table 2. Curricular Structure for Team Project Development

Thinking Design

Organizational Development

Interdisciplinary teams (3-5 students)

Customer/ Beneficiary

Impact Solution

Path to Impact

Empathy

• Theory of

Change • Social Value Proposition • Financial Value Proposition

Proposal Pitch (Common workshop)

• Policy

Model • Business Model • Activist Plan

Communications

3. Common workshop event across multiple courses Tuesday, March 29, 16 Our end-of-semester KTI workshop event featured approximately 125 students from across three GCC courses, plus the participating LA 3003 course. The goals of the workshop included: • students’ awareness of their participation in the University’s broad effort to address society’s grand challenges through teaching and research • an emphasis on providing feedback for refining each teams’ projects A video, produced by University Relations, featured GCC students preparing for and participating in the event.





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4. Support students in developing solutions beyond the class The UMN Strategic Report on Grand Challenge Curriculum notes that students ultimately require an arc of opportunities for developing their capacity and knowledge. To move toward this integration, our suite of courses adopted the following strategies: • A Grand Challenge Studio Session: Scheduled office hours with instructors/mentors to review developing proposals. Mentors were drawn from the MSP professional community, and available to interested students beyond their particular course. • Deliberate efforts to make students aware of other course and non-course opportunities (i.e. funding competitions, co-curricular opportunities, etc.) at the University. Evaluation We engaged Dr. Jim Toole (Social Work) to develop and implement common evaluation questions of students in the three GCC classes. Six themes emerged from this evaluation: 1. “Challenging.” The most common word students used to describe the Grand Challenge Courses was “challenging.” Twenty students across the three classes wrote “challenging” and others added a host of similar words such as “stressful,” “overwhelming,” “intense,” and even “nerve wracking.” Although the term “Grand Challenge” may have originally been meant to describe big, hairy global problems, it simultaneously came to represent the steep learning curve that many students faced in these courses. 2. “Eye-opening.” The Grand Challenge Courses opened some students’ eyes to new perspectives on themselves, the world, and how change really happens. A number of students found the classes to be innovative (8), eye-opening (7), thoughtprovoking (5), provocative (3), and similar words, including “mind-blowing” and “gamechanging.” When these students placed their post-it notes describing their GGC, we asked if similar words would describe most of their other UM experiences. In each case, they quickly responded (sometimes with laughter) that they would not. Verbally, many shared that it changed how they saw themselves and what it takes to change the world. 3. “Inspiring.” The Grand Challenge Courses motivated some students to be global change makers. Some students’ words reflected that they were personally inspired by the GCC. They found the experience “inspiring” (9) and used other related words such as “beyond important,” “meaningful,” “character-building,” and “empowering.” As one student shared: “I came to the class having an idea of how complicated the problems are, and was curious how the class would break down those problems. What changed for me personally was the idea that complicated problems can be addressed if we work on them relentlessly.” 4. “Enjoyable.” Some students expressed that they enjoyed the experience. Multiple students found the Grand Challenge Course format enjoyable. Despite the experience being sometimes “stressful,” students expressed that it was “fun” (6), and similar words such as “engaging,” “refreshing,” “amazing,” and “rewarding.” 5. Unconventional Class Structure. Twenty students, especially in the “Feed the World” class, chose to comment that they found the class format to be “unconventional.”



5 Students also selected words indicating that the structure of a GGC was different from the norm. They called the GGCs “unorthodox,” “unconventional,” and even “crazy.” There were also a number of words commenting on the “collaborative” (5) and “handson” class structure.

6. Metacognitive Class Content. Some students focused their word choices on the type of thinking that the Grand Challenge Courses required. Student words also focused on the metacognitive skills needed to be global changemakers. In the “Feeding the World” class, seven students wrote the class was “scientific.” Other words reflected the need for “empathy,” “creativity,” “ideation,” and “deep thinking.” Limitations of evaluation It should be noted that this report represents a snapshot of student reflections and is not meant to substitute for a formal class evaluation. Also, the students presented their feedback with the instructors, which may have constrained critical comments. What students did share, however, reveals important thoughts about the Grand Challenge Course potential that should be combined with the SRT survey to gain a fuller view of the GGC progress and challenges. As one student commented: “We really are the guinea pigs of the university Grand Challenge Courses. It’s neat to be part of the beginning!” Future Directions Curricular ideas • Adapt the curriculum to other kinds of challenges, especially non-environmental grand challenges. • Encourage teams to develop other types of “products” where a social venture plan, policy intervention, etc. are not appropriate, but that are equally likely to create change, including narrative pieces (i.e., videos, articles, photo-essays, etc.) and epistemologies for approaching those challenges. This would mirror the approach of a pilot GCC course, HCOL 3805H - Our Common Waters: Making Sense of the Great Lakes, taught by Prof. Dan Philippon (CLA) and Prof. Deborah Swackhamer (School of Public Health and Humphrey School). Implementation ideas • Replicate the core aspects of this project as described above during Fall 2016 in GCC 5005 - Global Venture Design—What Impact Will You Make, which will be taught by Fred Rose and Stephen Kelley (Humphrey School). • Adjust the quantity of KTI content to fit instructors’ needs—where possible, integrate further, and where it’s competing with other priorities, reduce the number of hours devoted to KTI.