This project proposes an instructional design training tailored for NYU graduate students within an educational institution (NYU). Targeting graduate students across various disciplines, this project aims to address the pressing need for cultivating a growth mindset, a crucial factor for academic and professional success. By equipping graduate students with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to embrace challenges, persist in the face of setbacks, and continuously pursue growth and development, this project seeks to empower students to thrive in their academic endeavors and beyond. 

• Context: New York University (NYU)

• Target Audience: NYU graduate students

• Benefits: Having a growth mindset affects confidence, motivation, anxiety, and overall performance, and is a very important skill to have when entering the workforce.

In the US education system, as well as education systems around the world, a fixed mindset is built-in to the popular standardized grading system. A fixed mindset is one that tends to result in a learner assuming that they cannot go beyond a static point in terms of mastering a skill or knowledge and that there will unlikely be growth or improvement over time (Niederjohn, American Psychological Association, 2022) . An example of this would be a student receiving a 50% on a math test at the beginning of the year. The student may believe "I'm not good at math", when in reality they are excelling at multiplication and addition, but need more practice and support when it comes to division. With this fixed mindset that accompanies the standardized grading system when it comes to learning, it can affect "levels of motivation, anxiety, and overall performance." 

Graduate school students are very likely to be carrying their own fixed mindsets based on their experiences in standardized education systems, yet the goal of graduate school is to learn and develop very specific skills, knowledge, and abilities that directly prepare them for a work environment, which does not depend on receiving a clear A+ for exceptional work. As found by Brandon Joel Tan (2023), students with lower letter grades are more likely to take classes they deem to be easier and are less likely to take educational risks compared to students who maintain higher grades. Additionally, in her book Design for How People Learn, Julie Dirksen quotes Dweck: "praise for intelligence tended to put students in a fixed mind-set (intelligence is fixed, and you have it), whereas praise for effort tended to put them in a growth mind-set (you're developing these skills because you're working hard)" (Dirksen, 2016). Therefore, a growth mindset motivates students to focus on learning and being curious, while a fixed mindset results in students focusing on receiving a high grade.