Community Engagement and Public Service Activities

A case study of design thinking in education considers how two educational organizations—a university graduate program and a public zoo—develop and enact design thinking processes in relation to one another. It also examines how this inter-organizational design thinking project contributes to a “center without walls,” or collaboratory (Wulf, 1993), pursuing an aspirational vision: to support interest-driven learning while also connecting youth to a wider landscape of formal and informal learning opportunities among educational organizations in a major US metropolitan area. As an initial step in pursuit of this vision, the work of the collaboratory concentrated on one of the zoo’s community-focused education programs called Overnight Adventure. Over seventeen weeks, the project involved the collaborative efforts of two faculty and twelve students from a college of education, and three full-time staff and nineteen part-time instructors from a zoo education program across ten inter-organizational events and observations of five Overnight Adventures. To characterizer inter-organizational design, the case employs contiguity-based connecting strategies to analyze design thinking across four timescales. Findings describe the structures and processes of inter-organizational design thinking and the role of cultivating relational agency.

As schools closed in Arizona and school-based internships and residencies were suspended until further notice, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College launched Sun Devil Learning Labs in spring 2020 to support teacher candidates and P-12 learners. Sun Devil Learning Labs provides students in teacher certification programs with additional professional experiences that fulfill academic requirements for graduation and teacher certification. Professional educators, faculty and our teacher candidates are working in teams to develop these free, online resources. Initial offerings included educational livesteams and tutoring support. This summer, Sun Devil Learning Labs exclusively offers educational lessons via on-demand streaming video.

Arizona State University in conjunction with State Farm aims to prepare learners of all ages to succeed in a transformed workplace. The program provides individuals with the skills to remain competitive and relevant in today’s ever-changing workforce. Pathways for the Future makes college programs more affordable, accessible, and impactful than ever for hardworking students.

Pathways for the future was designed the following learners in mind:

• Recent High School Graduates &
• Current High School Students 
• Community College Students
• Career Professionals

Work with communities and youth in South Mountain to collaboratively imagine and create a school that reduces the impact of trauma in its student’s lives. This project includes human-centered research, facilitation of creative work sessions, learning and environmental design. The class wll be held on Thursdays 9:00 am- 10:15 am. 

The Case Critical series responds to time-sensitive sustainability concerns at the local, national and global level. In August 2020, Phoenix broke its record for the most days at 110-plus degrees, while being the world's hotspot for coronavirus. This case critical discussion brings together ASU, the City of Phoenix, as well as a local nonprofit and a national NGO, to discuss the compounding crises of extreme heat and COVID-19.

In light of the increased prevalence of cyberbullying among teens on social media and the devastating consequences that cyberbullying can have, the development of tools that help parents identify whether their teen is being bullied online is critical. A core goal of our interdisciplinary project is the design, implementation and evaluation of automated cyberbullying identification tools for social networks. Several of these tools are available through the BullyBlocker mobile app. Our work integrates psychology results about the nature and prevalence of cyberbullying and the development of computational predictive models.