Assessing life design and evaluating its impact on the learning experience: A conceptual overview and emergent framework based on the Designing Futures Programme at University of Galway, Ireland

Abstract

In complex and challenging times, with the increasing imperative to advance the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, comes the call for new pedagogical approaches, which move education from a transactional to a reciprocal partnership with business and society, helping us to educate the best-prepared and optimally-skilled graduates for the future. To support transforming business for good, a number of thought-leaders thus advocate for a radical change to higher education, one which enables universities to be more agile and responsive to the serious challenges ahead in delivering the UN’s seventeen SDGs. This paper outlines an innovative university-wide initiative (substantially funded by the Irish Government, €7.57m over five years, 2020-2025) to foundationally change the way academic curriculum is designed and delivered, in partnership with local, regional and multinational industry and society. The purpose of this programme, Designing Futures, is to radically reenvision the way the university collaborates with business, cultural and civic partners. In Designing Futures, students, faculty, key stakeholders and industry work together to codesign learning; employ new educational technologies (e.g. virtual reality); and engage in research-based innovation projects focused on global grand challenges, aligned with the UN’s SDGs. Galway is a centre in Ireland and internationally for the medtech industry as well as world-renowned for its creative and arts sectors. There are nine named business and community partners collaborating with Designing Futures; these include Boston Scientific, Veryan, Aerogen, Channel Mechanics, Mbryonics, SAP, Galway International Arts Festival, Rent the Runway; and Medtronic. This article focuses on a specific innovation within Designing Futures called Life Design. Originally developed at Stanford University and further developed at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, Design Your Life or Life Design is a systematic learning approach and set of tools that can enable learners to discern the best, most fulfilling path, not only in their career, but in their lives in general. Designing Futures represents the first time Life Design has been introduced as a credit-bearing module within the curriculum of an Irish tertiary level institution. As with any such novel educational initiative, there is an educational requirement to measure its efficacy as an innovative learning intervention. This paper examines how the first iteration of Life Design within the curriculum has been assessed and its impact evaluated. Not only is this useful in the context of Designing Futures, but it shows how innovative university learning can be assessed, in potentially transforming business for good.