A real-world lab for enabling experimentation and innovation in education

Sarah is among many students who worked with the BIF Student Experience Lab. For many students like Sarah, being in a “one size fits all” educational environment creates many barriers to success.

BIF Student Experience Lab: Why the Student Experience Matters

The conversation about innovation in education includes advocates, academics, policymakers and community leaders who all care very deeply about the future of education. This conversation includes a lively debate across a broad spectrum of perspectives about where we are, how we got here and what we need to do to transform education in America.

But, what is missing in this conversation is the voice that matters most: The voice of the student. To hear this voice you must tune into a dif-ferent channel—one that most institutions and policymaking bodies do not understand. As a result, too many conversations about education reflect the perspectives, needs and agenda of institutions and not those of the students they serve. Despite our best intentions to give students what (we think) they want and need, we often miss the mark.

The Business Innovation Factory’s (BIF) Student Experience Lab was created to put the student and the student experience at the center of our country’s efforts to transform education.

Central to BIF’s nonprofit mission is our work to help partners from across the public and private sectors focus on solving problems by designing and testing new solutions in a real-world environment. It was a natural transition for BIF to apply its methodology to understand and improve the student experience.

Student Experience Lab Fast Facts• Established in 2009 to create a new platform for understanding and improving the student experience

• Focus on documenting the student experience through the lens of the student

• Emphasis on connecting innovators across all sectors and disciplines to work on transforming our educational system

• Committed to creating systems-level change that puts the student at the center of the educational experience

• Building a network of experimenters who are committed to designing and testing new solutions in a real-world environment

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Building a Real World Lab

BIF launched the Student Experience Lab in 2009 with an initial phase of work focused on illuminating the college student experience and identifying opportunities to enhance the college student experience and improve the effectiveness of the U.S. higher education system. Although the Lab has since initiated efforts to expand into other areas of the educational continuum, initial work in the post-secondary arena was an ideal place to start.

We embarked on this first phase of work under the premise that the current U.S. post-secondary education system does not deliver, at suf-ficient scale or at an affordable price, a high-quality college experience that prepares all students with the skills they need to fully participate in the 21st century global economy. As a result, too many students are left with their educational and economic needs unmet.

The Lab’s approach is straightforward: Bring the student experience to life in a way that makes their voice more central to our conversation about transforming education. With this mission, the team created an “experience map” of the environmental and human factors that are the most significant drivers of the college student experience. The Lab’s design researchers used observational and ethnographic research, in con-junction with secondary research, to illustrate the experience of current, former and prospective students at various ages and from diverse racial and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Working with students at more than 40 schools from across the coun-try, the team gathered thousands of data points related to the students’ experiences with the academic, personal and financial components of the higher education system. We captured their story using video, audio, photography and narrative to shine a new light on the human, environ-mental and systems-level factors that have the most significant impact on their success.

The team also interviewed dozens of education experts and advocates from all sides of the debate and created a unique visualization of the most significant historical and policy-related events in higher education history.

thanks to the lumina foundation for educationBIF was honored to receive a grant from the Lumina Foundation for Education to launch the Student Experience Lab in 2009.

In alignment with Lumina’s specific interest in post-secondary education, the Lab launched with an initial phase of work focused on illuminating and improving the college student experience.

Building on this foundational phase of work, the Lab has begun expanding to include all parts of the educational continuum.

What did we find? Students are making decisions with tragically little information about their options or the long-term consequences of their choices. Students are maxing out on debt and uncertain how to turn their dreams into a fulfilling career. And, schools are struggling to deliver affordable services that meet demand. To effectively educate Americans at the scale and speed that we need, we must aggressively explore and experiment with new solutions that enable more students to get the education they need.

BIF’s approach enables stakeholders to see the experience through the lens of the student, better appreciate the dynamics of the whole system and more readily identify opportunities for innovation and intervention. This deep understanding experience also enables BIF and its partners to identify specific elements of the experience where investment in innovation is likely to yield the greatest return.

Lab outputs from this phase of work can be viewed at: http://www.businessinnovationfactory.com/sxl/

The Lab is continuing its work in the higher education space and has initiated efforts to move into the K-12 arena. The team is also work-ing with advocates in the workforce development space to explore how BIF’s platform can be leveraged to support the expansion of programs that enable lifetime learning and worker retraining.

The Lab’s methodology offers a powerful tool in ongoing efforts to understand the student experience–at all grade levels–and accelerate the design and development of new solutions.

get engaged in the bif student experience labThe BIF Student Experience Lab packages its findings in a highly visual and interactive format that uses video, audio, photography and first-person narrative to tell the story of the student experience in a way that reveals the human, environmental and systems-level factors that most impact degree attainment.

Please visit our website to explore lab findings.

You can also join our virtual lab and provide input directly to on-going work.

Foundations

Chasing the Dream

Planning the Future

Navigating the System

Managing Finances

Institutional Fit

Being in Class

Relationships

Leaving School

In its first phase of work, the BIF Student Experience Lab team worked with students at schools across the country to gather thousands of data points about the college student experience. While every student experience is in many ways unique, the Lab’s design researchers identified nine experiential themes that span demographics, geography and school and student-type. In mapping the student experience, the Lab team used video, audio, photography and narrative to bring new visibility to the human, environmental and systems-level factors that have the most significant impact on student success. You can explore these themes in full, and from the perspective of the student, at www.businessinnovationfactory.com/projects/sxl

First generation college students are in a unique position in their families. They often must seek external support to guide their decision-making about education. Hearing stories from students like Henry and Victor illuminates the complex dynamics of this reality and the unique challenges they face in achieving academic success.

Valerie is one of dozens of students in the Lab who shared their stories about balancing the demands of work and school.

Why Experimentation in Education Matters

We need in education, as we have in most industries, R&D platforms that enable systems-level experimentation; where disruptive ideas can be tested in real-world conditions but in a manner where risk can be managed and the scale-up of proven ideas accelerated. There are some glimmers of this spirit of experimentation in education, but we need to multiply the effort.

What is unique about BIF’s approach is our belief that transforma-tional innovation in education begins with a deeper, more personal understanding of the student experience and a willingness to experiment with new models of delivering education that put the students—not the institutions who serve them—at the center.

BIF’s unique non-profit platform creates an ideal setting for collaborators, including those from within education and those from other disciplines, to work together to explore and test new ideas. Building a strong articulation of the actual student experience, collaborators in the Lab are better positioned to design and develop solutions that directly enhance the student experience.

In establishing the Lab, BIF has created a national network of individuals, organizations and students who share our belief that experimentation is key to creating deep transformational change. This network, in conjunction with BIF’s platform for real-world experimentation, forms the foundation for a living laboratory where new ideas for improving the student experience can be designed, tested and refined with direct student engagement.

partnership opportunitiesBIF welcomes participation in the Student Experience Lab from industry partners, education innovation advocates and foundation funders who share our passion for student-centered solutions that enhance the student experience.

To partner in the Lab, please call us at 401.270.7906.

A strong academic and personal foundation, good study habits and the ability to work in teams are essential skills that students need to succeed throughout their academic careers. Students in the BIF Lab speak often about the challenges of being deficient in foundational skills. This is an area of opportunity ripe for experimentation.

Business Innovation Factory60 Valley Street, Suite 25Providence, Rhode Island 02909(401) 270-7906

www.businessinnovationfactory.com