The Experiential Learning Design Accelerator: Integrating Human-Centered Design With Student Learning Assessment

Background

With the ethos that “learning happens everywhere” in mind, in mid-2014 the Vice Provost for Academic Initiatives and Student Success at the University of Arizona, a campus with nearly 47,000 students located in Tucson, Arizona, convened a campus wide “100% Engagement Task Force.” Working intentionally across the boundaries between student affairs and academic colleges, thirty academic administrators, faculty, student affairs staff, and assessment professionals participated in the effort. The task force undertook to operationalize a strategic plan to provide “a learning experience tailored to individual students’ needs” that will “graduate future leaders who have the skills to apply their knowledge and solve the world’s grand challenges.” This initiative, called 100% Engagement, would 1) define the University of Arizona’s commitment to high-impact, quality learning practices 2) suggest actions to ensure equity in reaching 100% of undergraduate students with at least one deep learning experience within or beyond the classroom and 3) recognize the learning taking place across a variety of educational contexts, both at the level of the student and at an institutional level. The then-President of the University would report progress toward reaching 100% of students as a key institutional performance metric.

In 2015, 100% Engagement was cataloged within academic policy as a campus-wide initiative to “ensure that all undergraduate students engage within and beyond the classroom in transformative educational practices that impact their personal and professional lives.” Building upon the taxonomy of high-impact experiences outlined in Kuh’s work, the policy sought to layer the point of view of the learner, considering broadly what the learners will do and learn within an experience when selecting where to engage her time and mental effort, over the many discipline and registration-centric signifiers that students typically navigate when selecting courses. It called for faculty and staff to attach to their courses and co-curricular opportunities digital tags indicating to students the Activity they would engage in and the key Competencies (see Appendix 1) that the experience would support them to develop. These were informed by the Association of American Colleges & Universities VALUES (AACU, 2021) framework for the essential graduation-level learning outcomes “that all students need for success in work, citizenship, and life.” The Activity and Competency notations apply equally to all experiences, whether curricular or co-curricular, that faculty identify as including at least 45 hours of experiential or applied learning and student reflection aligned to learning objectives for at least one Competency. A Student Engagement Record supplements the official university transcript to reflect student engagement in these experiences and their corresponding Activities and Competencies. As such, the Activities and Competencies required faculty to think expansively about undergraduate learning objectives across disciplines.