New student orientation is absolutely worth the time, resources and energy. Some of us may be required to prove this on an ongoing basis and are asked the dreadful question: “Where is the return on investment?” The answer lies in the immeasurable impact that well-crafted orientation programmes continue to have on student engagement levels, student success rates and the ability for universities to connect and inspire loyal, engaged students. How then can we ensure that our student orientation programmes attain maximum impact?
Enter design thinking, a structurally creative and human-centred approach to problem solving. This philosophy and methodology emerged from the world of product design but has since found its way into higher education programme development and experience design. Integrating the guiding principles of this process in our planning can transform and elevate the student orientation programmes we develop and the ways we deliver the first-year experience. Here’s how, in five steps.
1. Understand your students’ needs
We need to put ourselves in the shoes of new students at the very start of the orientation planning process. One way of doing this is to engage current first-year students in meaningful dialogue, whether through focus groups, informal conversations, surveys or any method that will allow for the open sharing of their expectations of the university.
In these conversations, let go of any assumptions and instead allow students to tell you what they are really feeling and what matters to them from the orientation experience, so that you can uncover their true needs. The answers you get might surprise you. For example, you might hear that students prefer evening experiences or want more opportunities for skill-building during orientation. It is important to be open and non-judgmental, all while taking copious notes and making observations.
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2. Define the problem
Name the challenges in simple terms. Document the insights that you are gathering, analyse the information carefully and identify the main themes. Formulate problem statements or prepare a list of focused questions that represent what students are hoping that their participation in your orientation programme will address or help solve. For example, “How can we provide more ways to help students better navigate the campus?” or “Orientation feels like information overload. More digital support is needed.” This approach will help to give direction on what to prioritise and should also challenge you to seek out solutions for the problems identified beyond simply reusing orientation event agendas from previous years.
3. Brainstorm to find ideas
Engage a diverse cross-campus team of staff and students in a series of fun, structured ideation sessions (as many as you need) to identify innovative ideas. Use tools and techniques such as SCAMPER, mind mapping and worst idea to generate as many ideas as possible. The SCAMPER method helps you generate ideas by encouraging you to ask seven types of questions, which will help you understand how you can innovate and improve existing offerings by looking through different lenses.
In the case of our new student orientation programmes, the SCAMPER technique challenges us to examine what we already do or have and ask ourselves what can we substitute, combine, adapt, modify (also magnify and minify), put to another use, eliminate and rearrange.
Worst idea empowers team members to think outside the box, confidently and without judgement. In practice, this method challenges group members to come up with as many “bad ideas” as possible. Other team members must then list all the elements of said terrible ideas. For every bad idea listed, other team members must identify and list what makes the worst of them so bad. The next step is to then challenge team members to search for the opposite of the worst attribute of the worst ideas and suggest a substitute. Lastly, this method encourages the mixing and matching of various “bad ideas” to see what happens.
The only rule for these methods is: no limits on creativity.
4 and 5. Prototype and test
Prepare drafts of proposed event agendas, programme briefs or even mock-ups of new offerings that you might want to pilot based on the ideas that emerge during your sessions. For example, you might want to launch a peer mentorship programme or produce a new student handbook.
In these final stages of the process, you should share and test your ideas for feedback early so that you have the opportunity to tweak and improve where needed and ultimately avoid investing in anything that may not be of use to students. The saying “Don’t let perfect become the enemy of good” becomes critically important in this stage of the process.
As student-facing university staff, our roles are strategic and involve coaching, problem-solving, curating, designing and strategising in response to the varying needs of our incoming student cohort. Design thinking helps us take a student-centred approach to transition support to build effective orientation programmes.
Jarell Alder is manager of student engagement at The University of the West Indies St. Augustine Campus.
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