Our Design Thinking Process

empathy

We developed surveys to receive feedback from students and faculty/staff members of ODU on the issues pertaining to Black and Latinx students.
We held Zoom sessions with students and faculty to get their insights on how they feel about the connection between students and teachers.

"Require instructors to bring in diverse bodies of work and have instructors be required to complete diversity training explicitly with regards to how they convey microaggressions."

defining

There were a number of themes that emerged from our empathy process. The major themes were:

Not enough professors with a Black/Latinx background
Black and Latinx students experiencing discrimination
Students not believing there are enough resources for Black and Latinx community
Not given additional time with professors
Black and Latinx Students feel they need to conform in a certain way to be taken seriously
Black and Latinx students are not given enough opportunities to excel

ideation

We generated a number of potential ideas to develop and implement through our ideation process. These included:

Develop training sessions for faculty/staff in place for all incoming AA/LX students.
Assign each faculty/staff member to a group of incoming AA/LX students to establish a faculty/student relationship by giving tips/pointers and etc.
Faculty/Staff members should speak at orientation in group sessions to students.
Require faculty/staff member are teaching interactive lessons for students.
Schedule different interest meetings where the students are able to get to know the faculty and staff of the Black & Latinx background.

prototyping

Our group develop a list of potential ideas and went through a prioritization process. We decided to focus on "How might we have faculty and staff better prepared for future incoming and current Back and Latinx students?"
From there, we were able to come up with our prototype "Monarchs Flipping the Classroom" by developing a concept poster, where we defined, described, and analyzed how our prototype will be executed.
As we developed our prototype we also identified potential barriers to success. We want to encourage anyone seeking to implement our idea to consider the following when implementing, in order to ensure success. You should be cognizant that some faculty and staff may be hesistant to implement a student-generated program and find ways to bring them into the program development process. We also want to be cautious that students are not censored in the development of the prorgram, as that may lead to negative feelings about the initiative and lack of buy-in. We feel that being aware of potential barriers prior to implementing our solution will help to create a more viable prototype.

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