
How might we better understand, design for, & demonstrate the impact of design thinking pedagogies?
Forge 2022 featured the visionary and strategic efforts of Jeanne Liedtka, Pierce Otlhogile-Gordon, Lesley-Ann Noel, Omari Souza, Adam Royalty, Eugune Korsunskiy, Carlye Lauff & more!
April 2022 Schedule

Thursday, April 7th, 2022
11:00 – 12:00 pm
Pre-Forge Virtual Visioning Talk
Your Super Special Skill Set – and its Shadow: Imagining, Evaluating, and Practicing Justice in Social Change Design Work with Pierce Otlhogile-Gordon
1:30 – 2:30 pm
Pre-Forge Virtual Interactive Workshop
What is Your Story? What do you want your story to be? How might we design our way there?with Adam Royalty
3:00 – 4:00 pm
Register for one of three “Choose Your Own Adventure” Sessions
I. Designing with or Designing for? Stories and Strategies for Inclusive Pedagogies
Design (Re)Thinking: Actionable Steps for an Anti-Racist and Horizontal Methodology with Gaby Hernandez
&
Open Design for Transformative Pedagogy with Aria Chernik
II. Expanding Your DT Pathways to Enhance Your Learning Goals
Teaching With, About, and Through Human-Centered Design with Saad Shehab
&
Problem Theory, Logic Models, and Human-Centered Design: Getting the most out of your innovation design with Steve Knotek and Meghan Greene
III. Co-Creating through Design Thinking
Applying Design Thinking Strategies to Co-Create & Re-Create your Courses with Liz Chen
&
Critical Making with Community with Kelsey Dufresne

Friday, April 8th, 2022
9:00 – 11:30 am
Opening Keynote & Interactive Workshop
Designing & Assessing for Doing & Becoming: Cultivating Holistic Learning Journeys with Dr. Jeanne Liedtka & Featured Panel
Experiencing Design Thinking Pedagogies: Student and Teacher Perspectives with The Design Thinking Teaching & Learning Collaborative
1:30 – 3:00 pm
Story & Strategy Session
Research for Activism: Redesigning Higher Education for Justice with Dr. Omari Souza
&
Critical Utopian Action Research: How might we assess codesign pedagogies? with Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel
3:30 – 4:30 pm
Interactive Workshop
Stories and Strategies for Translating DT Pedagogies across Disciplines and Programs Facilitated by Eugene Korsunskiy Featuring stories strategies from SNHU, Tulane, and Elon University

Saturday, April 9th, 2022
9:00 – 9:50 am
Register for one of two “Choose Your Own Adventure” Sessions
I. Catalyzing DT Pedagogies across disciplines and departments: Stories and Strategies
Deepening Design Thinking Pedagogies Across Disciplines : Elon’s Community of Practice with Tracey Thurnes
&
Innovating Across the Curriculum: Participatory Design & Assessment for Project & Studio Learning with Lynn Murray-Chandler
II. Stories & Strategies for Designing with Students
Co-Designing with Students: Advocating for Equity and Social Justice across Campus with Soniyah Robinson
&
Interrupting the (Cause-and-Effect) Relationship Between Learning Design (Thinking) and Creative Development in Higher Education with Dr. Layal Shuman
10:00 – 11:30 am
Closing Keynote & Interactive Workshop
Strategies for Assessing & Articulating the Value of Iterative Design with Carlye Lauff
Forge Facilitators
Day One: Thursday, April 7th

Your Super Special Skill Set – and its Shadow: Imagining, Evaluating, and Practicing Justice in Social Change Design Work
Designing for sustainable, socially just systems-level change is harder than you think. Drawing on his successes and failures as an innovation catalyst, interdisciplinary researcher, community evaluator, and social change consultant, Dr. Otlhogile-Gordon’s Visioning talk features stories and strategies for marrying social justice with design thinking and evaluating for capacity building. Attendees will get the chance to learn about inclusive and equitable design , as well as assessment practices to help explore how they might design and assess for inclusive and equitable social change.

What is Your Story? What do you want your story to be? How might we design our way there?
What are you currently doing to understand, design for, and demonstrate the impact of your design thinking projects? Story is evidence — What don’t you know? How might you explore the gaps? What kind of evidence might you gather? How might you more inclusively and fully understand the impact of your efforts over time? In this session, participants will map out a brief narrative of their existing design thinking work and generate a set of individual questions and goals to bring into the Design Forge convening.
Day Two: Friday, April 8th

Designing & Assessing for Doing & Becoming: Cultivating Holistic Learning Journeys
Dr. Liedtka’s keynote features the latest research and recommendations from Experiencing Design: The Innovator’s Journey. Participants will get the chance to explore a competence-based approach to design thinking, self-assess their own competency profile, and consider the opportunities and challenges this creates for teaching and learning.

Research for Activism: Redesigning Higher Education for Justice
How might we assess and redesign for equity and inclusion? Design scholar, teacher, and activist Omari Souza shares how he has leveraged his research on the barriers to diversity, equity, and inclusion across design education into teaching and service endeavors that are transforming unjust educational practices.

How to use Critical Utopian Action Research in Design Education
In this session, participants will be introduced to the theoretical groundings of Critical Utopian Action Research, a futures-focused method for encouraging citizen participation. They will discuss examples of its application in design education and civic innovation. Finally they will be guided on how they can use practice as an emancipatory method and for greater engagement and participation within their own curriculum.
Day Two: Friday, April 8th

Stories and Strategies for Translating Design Thinking Pedagogies across Disciplines and Programs
How might design thinking engage faculty and deepen student learning in a variety of academic subjects? How might allies from all corners of our campuses be authentically invited to participate and collaborate? In this interactive session, we’ll hear some inspiring mini-stories, and think together about how design thinking can be brought successfully into courses and programs in the humanities, sciences, and beyond.

Deepening Design Thinking Pedagogies Across Disciplines : Elon’s Community of Practice
How might we enhance design thinking pedagogies across the curriculum? This session outlines a flexible framework and set of practices from an institutional, interdisciplinary faculty community of practice, highlighting the value of relational, iterative, and experiential design practices for supporting the infusion of more robust inclusive intentional pathways for engaged, experiential learning designed to resiliently address wicked problems.

Innovating Across the Curriculum: Participatory Design & Assessment for Project & Studio Learning
How might we support the design, facilitation, and assessment of high impact, experiential learning projects that generate diverse pathways for students across the university? How can design thinking help faculty across programs cultivate viable and valuable projects within our communities under resource constraints? This session shares stories and strategies from SNHU’s 2020 Project-Based Learning initiative, designed to support place-based experiential learning opportunities across the university for under $10,000. Dr. Murray-Chandler highlights initial findings from the first year of this initiative and notes the impact of these curricular changes on students, faculty, and staff across the university.
Day Three: Saturday, April 9th

Strategies for Assessing & Articulating the Value of Iterative Design
How might we design, support, and assess iterative prototyping in our courses and workshops? Dr. Carlye Lauff answers this question and more through an interactive design session that highlights key research on the value and challenges of prototyping and iteration in educational settings and engages participants in designing assignments and assessments for their curricular goals.
About the Forge
Who
The conference is for educators, design practitioners, changemakers, and thought leaders
What
Designing opportunities for higher education to more inclusively and collaboratively address wicked problems
Why
Strengthen collaboration between communities & search for opportunities for DT to enhance transformational learning