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Jess
Empathy, Developer, Positivity, Input, Woo
Mary Frances
Strategic, Learner, Input, Communication, Individualization
Annie
Achiever, Learner, Input, Futurist, Arranger
Bailee
Communication, Input, Individualization, Learner, Belief
Abra
Strategic, Achiever, Realtor, Learner, Significance
Carly
Strategic, Activator, Positivity, Input, Arranger
Marbila
Learner, Achiever, Relator, Individualization, Responsibility
Mary
Harmony, Input, Maximizer, Connectedness, Intellection
Ariel
Relator, Connectedness, Arranger, Individualization, Input

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Kathy - Knowing what I'm responsible for
Ariel - clear markers, when is the goal complete? when do we need to keep working?
Marbila - Ideate with another co-worker - able to consult with others
Mary - start from the place of "this is possible" - make it about the idea not the person, use "yes and..."
Jess - "Yes, and" philosophy, being clear about where we are in the decision making process
Annie - having a very clear set of constraints to test decisions/debates against, internal: such as time and capacity and external
Bailee - structure to be able to come back to the purpose of the Sprint, and being able to come back to - an end goal driving the work to keep in mind
Abra - transparency about where we are, what we think the goal is, what each person is able to contribute
Mary Frances - written down as much as possible to accommodate Zoom tech

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How we reinvented charity transparency by running a Design Sprint across four time zones.
(Note: The following article presupposes that you know the Design Sprint process. If you don't, please look them up first.)
Recently, we got approached by Daniel from SaveTheChildren to work together with the CEO of BitGive Connie on the transformation of their charity platform onto a blockchain. The idea was to increase transparency and overall trust for charity projects.

The problem was that Daniel lives in New Zealand and Connie in the US, while I was in Berlin, Germany.
Obviously, with my Design Sprint skills I suggested to run a Remote Sprint.

I used to work at AJ&Smart, we specialized in Design Sprints and insanely fast problem solving for large companies and teams with very different interests and backgrounds. We started working in Design Sprints since 2016 and never looked back.

You can read about our process in our other articles but in this article I want to show you -

How I used the Design Sprint principles to successfully facilitate Sprints remotely.

All participants were in different countries and the results were as mind blowing as in a real life Sprint.

Here are the challenges we are usually faced with in a local Design Sprint:

We need a facilitator who is familiar with the Design Sprint process and can run it with people he/she never met.
The Design Sprint is a solid process which we have internalized and are good at facilitating it.

All of the participants (who have never been in such an intense workshop) need to stay awake, focused and taken care of.
We have Coffee, we try to entertain people, we encourage and comfort people, we give them lunch and snacks in the afternoon.

The process needs to move ahead steadily, feel as effortless as possible and worth the participants time.
Explanations are as simple as possible and always relevant to people's needs. We also keep showing visual examples of how everything should ideally look.

Participants need to feel time pressureTime timer.

We need to make brainstorming visual and eliminate open and unstructured discussion.
We are usually covered in post-its and sticky dots, we have whiteboards everywhere, and the together-alone principles of the Design Sprint help eliminate unnecessary discussion.

As you can see, there are a lot of moving parts which needed to be replicated online to make sure that the Sprint with people across the world runs smoothly. Some of them are technical, others depend on correct facilitation and careful communication of authority.

The problem is, in real life you can see people with your eyes and keep eye contact, you can touch people (only if you want), address participants individually and provide real life rewards like cookies or coffee. You also see how everyone on the team reacts on to your moderation and keep the energy in the room high.

The answer to this challenge is actually easier than you think. First of all, you obviously need to internalise the Design Sprint process and be able to facilitate a Sprint in real life.

But a lot of the social interaction is quite easily done with the online tools we already have. Seeing faces on camera in a single row (in Google Hangouts) and the mouse pointers in RealtimeBoard makes it very easy to keep an overview of everyones participation and mood.

You can't reward people with cookies and beer online (obviously you can always set up a meeting to hang out in real life) but you can emphasize results of the Sprint steps verbally and visually, which to the participants feels just great. Every time something gets produced by the team, feel free to show/send it around. Whether it's a link to an article, or a simple sketch, or an idea which might be interesting, I tend to almost celebrate everything the participants contribute to the project during the 5 days, regardless of its amount or quality.

Keeping your participants focused is not easy and it helps if you are able to entertain people. But that is a personal skill to develop. I recommend doing stand up comedy to make sure you are able to entertain people continuously. It's important to understand how to maintain people's attention and recognize when they start drifting off based on how much they contribute, talk and look on the screen.
The truth is, the process is tedious and sitting at a computer for hours is not always amazing thing, especially if you are skeptical about the outcome. Although in 2017 people are used to doing this and you are probably doing it anyway. (Talking to you, my future self. Get off the computer and get a life)

Also, make sure you give people a break every now and then to leave the computer and get some fresh air. This has a hidden benefit: It keeps them from drifting away from the problem by avoiding internal discussion, which usually happens during on-location Design Sprints.

Just a quick note on time zones: this project was particularly difficult because we had a 12-hour time shift. AJ&Smart is based in Berlin (currently) and one of our clients was in New Zealand and the other in the US. So while the NZ people just got up at 9am, I had to start a night shift at 11pm.

Day 1: Introducing the sprint
The first hour was spent just by getting Connie, Daniel and our team on the same page and showing them what to expect. We have a pre-made presentation that gives an overview of all the steps in the Sprint. I also introduced the software so people have a day to familiarize themselves with it.
It also gave me time to set up the working spaces for the Sprint on RealtimeBoard by creating individual workplaces, i.e. areas which people can see as their desks.

There's a lot of online collaboration software on the market. Mural, Google Jamboard, RealtimeBoard etc. We went for the easiest with the least technical effort which is RealtimeBoard. It doesn't work well on phones, but in a browser it's the smoothest tool you can find, which has all the features we needed - post-its, dots, drawing.
But on the other hand, you have to see for yourself, maybe a Google Jamboard is a better choice for your office. For the Design Sprint at least, it's not necessary.

Day 2: Defining the main challenges
This was the first half of the Design Sprint as we run it. If you know the Sprint Book, it's the first day. I will not go into detail of the Sprint process here, but basically, together with BitGive we defined potential challenges (How Might We's), an optimistic long term goal and pessimistic blockers (Sprint Questions). For BitGive, it was about creating a donation/charity platform which is built on a blockchain but had the best user experience possible.

As you can see, we used red circles for voting. Just the way you would do it with sticky dots on post-it's, we had these red circles, which could just be copy-pasted around to vote. Also make sure to remind people of the correct amount of red dots.

Day 3: Solution Generation
I announced how the solution generation was supposed to work on Basecamp by posting a video along with a description of the specific exercise and provided a clear deadline for sending in the individual solutions. In replies, people posted their inspirations for solutions and simply uploaded photos of whatever they drew on paper.

In Basecamp, I posted how-to videos of each step in the 4 part sketching process.

Day 4: Vote and Decide
In the Sprint Book you also use Supervotes, which are essentially big dots along with a comment on why each individual decided to vote on this area, for that we just used the comment-feature on the RealtimeBoard.

It's super easy to draw with a tablet and copy-paste images

Day 5: Storyboard
The last part of the Design Sprint is about storyboarding what should be the ideal solution, combining all parts of the winning concepts. Drawing a storyboard is easy with a Wacom tablet but can also be done by drawing boxes/shapes and cutting out pieces of existing concepts. To find specific copywriting we googled a lot of text or even images and simply pasted them into the RealtimeBoard.

The rest does not require participation on the clients' side because we take one day to turn the storyboard into a clickable prototype. I won't go into detail on how we do that now, but you can read my article on prototyping here.
We were all familiar with Sketch but usedFigma this time, which is amazing for remote collaboration on design work.

While some part of our team was designing the prototype, the other part was finding user testers. These can also be run remotely using Google Hangouts or Zoom (both have a nice screen-sharing feature to see what users observe and click at).
We scheduled 5 tests for the following day and I streamed them entirely onto a private YouTube channel, which gave the customers the possibility to watch them and give us some real time feedback. If you want to know how to set this up, I wrote an article on this, too.

This is really valuable, because everyone is very curious about what people are saying about their work.

As you can see, even though the process was spread out among several days, the effective real time collaboration only takes a few hours and is doable online. And if you know how to facilitate a Design Sprint, the tools I gave you will help you running a remote Sprint successfully as well.

The Remote Design Sprint is still a work in progress and we faced a lot of challenges. Ideally, every participant should be familiar with the Design Sprint process. If not, you will have to put extra effort in explaining how to do every single exercise correctly (it's very easy to miss out on some important details online). I still have to figure out how to streamline the exercises a bit better and how to put time pressure on everyone if needed.

If you like to try something similar but don't feel like you are ready for an entire Design Sprint, I recommend running a Lightning Decision Jam remotely. It's a great exercise for running retrospectives and is fast to do. It's also just good practice.

You can follow the project at http://bitgivefoundation.org/ and check out some articles here:

If you are interested in how I evolve the Remote Design Sprint, just follow me on Medium, I will post some news every now and then.

You can also send me a message if you have any particular questions. I'll reply as quickly as I can!

Here's an article I wrote with a few principles on how to make sure you finish your prototype in one day:
https://medium.com/@kischiman/how-to-prototype-anything-in-one-day-3d81a7f68e10
If you have any comments or questions, leave them below or send me a message. Also follow @kischiman on Instagram, I sometimes post stories with my work. And follow @ajsmartdesign to see more design-y stuff!

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How we reinvented charity transparency by running a Design Sprint across four time zones. (Note: The following article presupposes that you know the Design Sprint process . If you don't, please look them up first.) Recently, we got approached by Daniel from SaveTheChildren to work together with the CEO of BitGive Connie on the transformation of their charity platform onto a blockchain.

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Georgia Institute of Technology

In this spring of jaw-clenching uncertainty, everyone expects Covid-19 to derail the plans of prospective college students. One big question is: How many?

Hordes of them, the results of a new survey suggest. One in six high-school seniors who expected to attend a four-year college full time before the outbreak of the novel coronavirus now think that they will choose a different path this fall. Three out of five students, though still intending to enroll in a bachelor's-degree program, are concerned about their ability to attend their first-choice college.

Those findings come from a national survey of 487 prospective college students conducted by the Art & Science Group, a higher-education consulting firm. The results provide an early look at how the outbreak is shaping teenagers' perceptions of college - and how their near-future plans might change.

"These findings are pretty stark," said Craig Goebel, a principal at the Art & Science Group. "And they might be underrepresenting the potential impact of what Covid-19 could be once all is said and done this fall."

Sure, you've seen the recent footage of college students partying on spring-break beaches, ignoring recommendations to practice social distancing. You've heard the criticism that teenagers and 20-somethings aren't taking the global pandemic seriously enough.

But prospective undergraduate students are thinking - a lot - about how the coronavirus might affect their college choices, the survey suggests. Nearly all respondents (90 percent) said they consume information about the outbreak at least once a day, with 10 percent doing so hourly.

Amid school closures and lockdowns, many high-school seniors are switching up their immediate plans, the survey found. Of the 17 percent of respondents who didn't think they would end up enrolling full time at a four-year college, a majority expected either to take a gap year (35 percent) or enroll part time in a bachelor's program (35 percent). Seven percent indicated that they would attend a community college, and 6 percent said they would work full time.

Just 20 percent of students were confident that they would attend their first-choice college. "While we know there is always flux this time of year as students are getting their admissions notifications," Goebel said, "it surprised us that more weren't expecting to enroll at their first choice."

Respondents who said they weren't confident that they could choose the college atop their list (63 percent) cited various concerns. The most prevalent was cost: Twenty-one percent of those students said their "first-choice school may no longer be affordable for my family" because of the coronavirus. And 12 percent said either they or a family member had health concerns that required them to change their plans.

Several other coronavirus-related disruptions, the Art & Science Group found, had prompted students to reconsider their college choices: "Was not able to overnight at my first-choice school" (15 percent); "I am unable to try out or practice with a team for athletics" (11 percent).

Campus visits play a large role in many students' college choices. For enrollment managers, those visits are an important gauge of who's likely to enroll. Yet the spread of the coronavirus forced colleges everywhere to cancel countless on-campus programs scheduled for March and April (58 percent of students surveyed said they had experienced, or expected to experience, such cancellations). That means many players in the process must make do without valuable information.

"The fact that all these visits have been interrupted for this year's students," said David Strauss, a principal at the firm, "is sending us into uncharted territory."

The Art & Science Group also asked students about how Covid-19 might have influenced their thinking about the qualities they seek in a college. Thirty-five percent of students said that campuses "closer to home" were now a more realistic option than their first-choice college. Some said they were considering a less-expensive institution (32 percent), with a "more familiar social network" (22 percent), more rural (12 percent), smaller (15 percent), or "located in a safer area" (10 percent).

The survey, which was conducted from March 17 to 20, included responses from high-school seniors planning to graduate this spring. Sixty-four percent of them were female; 74 percent were white; 86 percent were attending a public high school. The respondents' average household income was $88,000.

Colleges are all different. Their market positions vary, and their applicant pools do, too. For those reasons, Strauss said, no colleges should apply the results of a national survey to their own particular enrollment picture.

Moreover, a snapshot of a prospective student's thoughts in a given moment can't reveal which college he or she will ultimately choose. It's early.

"We can't say now how students will behave in the end," Strauss said. "But what we do know is where their mind-sets are right now."
Eric Hoover writes about the challenges of getting to, and through, college. Follow him on Twitter @erichoov, or email him, at eric.hoover@chronicle.com. As the coronavirus crisis deepens, The Chronicle is providing free access to our breaking-news updates on its impact on higher education. It's your support that makes our work possible. Please consider subscribing today.

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How Is Covid-19 Changing Prospective Students' Plans? Here's an Early Look

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In this spring of jaw-clenching uncertainty, everyone expects Covid-19 to derail the plans of prospective college students. One big question is: How many? Hordes of them, the results of a new survey suggest. One in six high-school seniors who expected to attend a four-year college full time before the outbreak of the novel coronavirus now think that they will choose a different path this fall.

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Thursday was the day Ivy League and other highly competitive institutions extended admissions offers. We learned that Yale University admitted 6.54 percent of applicants. The University of Pennsylvania admitted 8.1 percent of applicants. Not much has changed in elite higher education.

But for everyone else, these are scary times. No one know what yields -- the percentage of admitted applicants who enroll -- will be this year. But everyone is worried and checking out the latest national surveys, which suggest their concern is valid.

The various surveys placed an emphasis on speed, and so their pools of respondents do not necessarily amount to a scientific sample of the United States. They tend to skew in favor of wealthier and whiter applicants. But we share them here (along with available information about the pools). Most are by companies that advise colleges on their admissions strategies. In general, they portray problems for higher education.

CarnegieDartlet released a survey of 4,848 high school seniors and found that two-thirds say that a May 1 deadline to reply to an offer of admission was unreasonable. Of underrepresented minority students, 74 to 80 percent want more time. ( Some colleges have moved their deadlines back, but most have not.)

More than half of students said they hoped to make campus visits this spring, either for the first time or visiting their top-choice colleges again. But with COVID-19, students didn't indicate a significant change in the likelihood that they would choose a college they had never visited. Forty-six percent of respondents said they were "somewhat likely to," "highly likely to" or "absolutely would" choose a college they had never physically visited.

On paying for college, 23 percent of the sample said they have a high level of confidence in their ability to afford college. That's down from 32 percent who said they had a high level of confidence before the pandemic took hold. And 17 percent of students are not at all confident they can afford college now, up from 11 percent before the outbreak. Those last numbers are higher for those for minority or poor students.

Art & Science Group released a survey of 487 students graduating from high school this year. The sample was 64 percent women, 74 percent white and had an average family income of $88,000.

Only 20 percent of the students said they were confident they could attend their first-choice college, if admitted. Of the 63 percent who said they were going to attend a four-year college, but probably not their first choice, 21 percent said they were not sure their first choice was affordable, 15 percent had not been able to have an overnight visit at their first choice and 12 percent said that either they or a family member had a health issue that required attention.

The survey concludes that colleges should expect "substantial, perhaps even dramatic" changes in their classes.

Cirkled In, an ed-tech company based in Seattle, surveyed high school students on how the coronavirus will change their college plans. Of 1,100 responses, the company found that 69 percent see the health crisis changing their financial situation with respect to higher education. More than a quarter of students said that COVID-19 will affect their college choice.

Most students in the survey also said they prefer in-person learning.

Some quotes from the study: "I have no idea if I will even go to college this fall at this point" and "I no longer have a job, so I am unable to save for my deposit fee and the rest of the cost of attendance that my financial aid does not cover. It sucks and I am extremely sad, but I am just going to have to figure out another plan for my life."

Maguire Associates surveyed nearly 7,000 students and parents.

Among the findings:

Nine of 10 prospective students whose decision process has been impacted cited the ability to visit a campus.

75 percent of students indicated that their rankings of preferred colleges and universities hadn't changed.

16 percent of students said they were considering an option closer to home than their original first choice.

12 percent indicated they are considering delaying enrollment to spring or fall 2021.

Primacy surveyed 200 high school students on their plans for the future. Among the findings:

20 percent strongly or somewhat agree that "College done online can be just as fulfilling and effective as on campus."

29 percent strongly or somewhat agree that "I have considered deferring attending college until COVID-19 passes."

47 percent are looking for one-on-one conversations with admissions.

44 percent are looking for a virtual tour of campus.

55 percent strongly or somewhat agree that "college will start on time, on campus, in the fall."

Among the quotes released with the survey: "I was planning on visiting colleges that I've been accepted to, but now it looks like I have to make the decision having never seen them at all"; "It has stopped me from revisiting colleges to re-evaluate my interest, but observing colleges' reactions to the COVID-19 crisis and their treatment of their students during this trying time has also helped me weed out some colleges and prioritize others"; and "The virus is forcing all colleges to go online, and I refuse to pay a high tuition for online classes."

Many parents have complained that high schools are not doing enough to encourage their students to work during this time.

Kaplan Test Prep surveyed 320 parents of high school students and found that:

Less than half (43 percent) say their school has provided their child with homework assignments.

37 percent say their school provided them with an online/virtual learning environment.

28 percent say they have been provided with online tutorials.

27 percent said they were provided with laptops or tablets.

20 percent report that their school recommended that their children read certain chapters in textbooks.

18 percent say the high school has organized virtual study sessions with classmates.

15 percent say their high school is not requiring any work while closed.

8 percent report that their high school has provided stress management resources.

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Surveys offer mixed outlook on student enrollment in the fall

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Thursday was the day Ivy League and other highly competitive institutions extended admissions offers. We learned that Yale University admitted 6.54 percent of applicants. The University of Pennsylvania admitted 8.1 percent of applicants. Not much has changed in elite higher education. But for everyone else, these are scary times.

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Remote Collaboration Strategies and Pitfalls

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Remote Collaboration Strategies and Pitfalls

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Here's the Gap Year committee final proposal

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Here's the Gap Year committee final proposal

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Email from Kasey to Deans etc re Enrollment outlook

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Email from Kasey to Deans etc re Enrollment outlook

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Digital Learning created a 'launchpad' in D2L to support students as they navigate the interface, tools, and tips for being successful online learners.

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Workforce Transitions for Students, Employers & Colleges

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Workforce Transitions for Students, Employers & Colleges

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Virtual RAs? Virtual Residence Halls? A Roundtable On How Student Staff Can Build Community During COVID-19

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Pre-College Committee Proposal (not sure if there are ideas in here that would be helpful)

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Pre-College Committee Proposal (not sure if there are ideas in here that would be helpful)

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A Learning Circle is a place to connect with a smaller community of peers with whom you have something in common, whether that's working on the same project challenge, working in the same industry, or residing in the same city. Learning Circles are peer-led, and provide an opportunity to discuss assignments, gain inspiration, and dive deeper into course content.

Learning Circles can be found in our cohort courses, and you will be prompted to join or start your own in the Course & Community Introduction section of the course. Instructions on some common things you may want to do with Learning Circles are below, or you can find more information in the NovoEd help center (NovoEd, our learning platform provider, calls these 'groups').

How to Join a Learning Circle

1. From your course homepage, click on the three dots in the upper right corner of your page and select the ' Learning circles ' option in the drop-down.

2. This will take you to the course Learning Circle directory, where you can find groups of interest to join.

3. Once you've found a Learning Circle you'd like to join, click on the name of the group to open and then click the ' Join This Learning Circle' icon.

How to Create a Learning Circle

1. From your course homepage, click on the three dots in the upper right corner of your page and select the ' Learning circles ' option in the drop-down.

2. This will take you to the Learning Circle directory, where you can click on the blue plus button to create a new Learning Circle.

3. Fill out the basic information about your Learning Circle in the pop-up form that appears:

Upload an image to serve as the icon for your Learning Circle (something small and simple works best)

Create a descriptive name for your Learning Circle

Add a tagline sentence explaining the purpose of the Learning Circle

Decide if you'd like it to be open (available for any learner in the course to join) or closed (private to only learners who you invite to join)

How to Leave a Learning Circle

1. From your course homepage, click on the three dots in the upper right corner of your page and select the ' Learning circles ' option in the drop-down.

2. This will take you to the course Learning Circle directory, where you can find the Learning Circle that you would like to leave.

3. Click on the name of the Learning Circle, then find yourself in the Learner Circle Member List.

4. Hover over your profile, then select " Leave this Learning Circle " in the drop-down menu that appears.

You can leave your Learning Circle at any time. If there are still members in your Learning Circle (and no other admin exists), you will be asked to add an admin.

If there are no other members in your group, the group's content will be deleted.

How to Add Members to a Learning Circle

You can add other learners in the course as members to a Learning Circle if you are the admin of that Learning Circle. This will typically be the case only for Learning Circles that you yourself have created.

1. Find your Learning Circle in the Learning Circle directory and click on it.

2. Click the gear icon in the upper right corner of the pop up window and select " Add Member" from the drop-down menu that appears.

3. Begin typing the name of the learner you would like to add to your Learning Circle in the text box. Select their name when it appears below the text box.

4. Click the " Add to Learning Circle " button.

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A Learning Circle is a place to connect with a smaller community of peers with whom you have something in common, whether that's working on the same project challenge, working in the same industry, or residing in the same city. Learning Circles are peer-led, and provide an opportunity to discuss assignments, gain inspiration, and dive deeper into course content.

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Structure your digital space for optimal collaboration.

Just because you're sharing a virtual space doesn't mean you should be any less thoughtful in designing it. When setting up meetings for communities that don't share the same first language, abilities, or context, creating a container in which individuals can connect can unlock the most potential for problem-solving. This starts before the actual session. A few tactical tips to start:

Provide written materials to participants in advance so they can get a head start on reading or translating the text.

Have a dedicated space for collecting questions before, during, and after a virtual meeting.

Be aware of the "who": Instead of holding the knowledge as the facilitator of the session, aim to elevate and build appreciation around the diversity of perspectives and points of view that are being brought into the conversation. This is also something that grows and evolves as you get to know your community better.

"Create intentionality before the meeting starts by reminding your group to join by video (not just audio, if possible) and to make sure they're in a quiet and uninterrupted space with pen and paper in hand. Garner agency by assigning roles to meeting attendees so they have a reason to stay engaged. A couple of roles you can try include the 'observer' (someone who points out when something needs additional clarification or when the meeting needs an energy boost), the 'chat box wizard' (keeps track of incoming messages or questions during a call), the time-keeper, and translator." - Daniela Restrepo Ortiz, OpenIDEO Chapters Community Strategist (Bogota, Colombia)
Design for global audience with a lens of accessibility.

Much of the technology leveraged today to connect virtual communities, such as the evolution of text messaging, was made possible by the work of people innovating with a lens of accessibility at the forefront.

Whether people are navigating language barriers, varying physical abilities, or a lack of video technology at their disposal, taking simple actions to ask and support various community's needs -like adding the question, "Do you have any accessibility needs?" to an RSVP form-can go a long way in designing an effective, accessible digital session.

Make designing for accessibility a habit. Here are some questions to begin the planning process for your next virtual global conversation:

1. What is the shared goal of the session?

2. Who is joining, from where, and what languages do they speak?

3. How might I create space for participants to explicitly voice their needs to feel virtually supported?

4. What accommodations might be helpful to the people in your virtual space? (Pro tip: Remote collaboration tools like Zoom and Google Hangouts have built-in accessibility features like closed captioning, transcripts, and screen reader support.)

5. How can I build in rituals to learn from the breadth of experiences of the individuals present in this call?

6. How can I continuously collect feedback that helps me better understand how community members feel supported?

Share locally to connect globally.

It's easy to get frustrated during a busy workday and forget the magic that a video call can bring, or the brilliance of the other people on the line, which can get lost between time zones, continents, and languages. Take a moment to practice a simple grounding exercise to ease the tension and strengthen your team's ability to co-create. Consider sharing where you're located, bringing an artifact from your space, or asking the group, "What food reminds you of home?" Doing these things once isn't enough to create community: Make it a consistent practice. We've seen that taking time to ground in a local context not only increases a team's ability to work together, but also boosts impact.

‍ "Take a moment at the beginning of a call to share an object from your home. This breaks the wall of the screen and opens the space for team members to empathize and connect with each other. We've seen this momentum lead to some amazing collaborative outcomes-between innovators, mentors, partners, and beyond!"
- Dima Boulad, OpenIDEO Community Fellow (Lebanon and Dubai)
There is power in injecting beauty and delight.
- Itika Gupta, OpenIDEO Community Fellow (India and the Netherlands)

OpenIDEO Chapter Organizer Naman Mandhan trains a group of prototypers from around the world to help health entrepreneurs build out and test their concepts

"As innovators, we often spend a lot of time working on solutions within the local context that surrounds us. Having access to a global community helps build inclusion into our work from the very start, and gives us the opportunity to test that our work can be scaled globally." - Naman Mandhan, Innovation Engineer, OpenIDEO Prototyper, and Chapter Organizer (Detroit, United States)
When designing resources for participants, institute moments for digital joy and play. Consider a wide range of learning styles and formats: Beyond text-heavy slide decks or word documents, can you include audio, video, or graphic resources? It may sometimes feel frivolous to take extra time to design for delight, but we've found that taking a moment to add visuals to an email or to play music during a virtual brainstorm helps boost engagement and activate creative thinking.

"We spend a lot of time tracking our work and communication on boring, grey spreadsheets. I found that if I take a few extra minutes to design these spreadsheets to feel more collaborative, fun, and easy to interpret, it changes the mindset with which the entire team approaches and engages with that work."

Leverage the power of distributed communities to collaborate-despite the distance.

Last year, we hosted a panel about the BridgeBuilder 2019 Challenge at the SOCAP conference in San Francisco, USA. Although we were unable to have the Challenge mentors (who had lived experience as people on the move) in-person, we used video conferencing tools to make sure their voices and stories were represented in the room.

"When we understand each others' stories and how that connects to the work we do, we are able to go deeper in that work and persevere when things get tough." - Isaac Jumba, OpenIDEO Community Fellow (Nairobi, Kenya)
Whether it involves conducting interviews with end-users or doing analogous research across sectors, digital design sessions can help us source inspiration from places we may not have considered. For example, during the Education in Emergencies Alliance, social ventures from more than 40 countries focused on delivering education into emergency settings (post-disaster, refugee areas, crisis zones) were supported virtually and by people from all over the globe. By lending their voices and expertise, mentors and entrepreneurs helped the teams push their solutions forward-often from completely different parts of the world. While distributed work may have its challenges, it also enables collaboration beyond geographic boundaries and fuels greater creativity through cultural diversity.

Use digital storytelling to change narratives and power dynamics.

Examples of doodles, maps, and prototypes from our global community.

"Visualize to simplify, using metaphors, doodles, and simple language to help team members get engaged. To help mentors in the -

Community Fellow, Manisha Laroia, adds a creative touch to OpenIDEO's challenges by translating complex ideas and concepts into beautifully drawn doodles

Manisha Laroia, OpenIDEO Community Fellow (Delhi, India)

From WhatsApp groups to Slack conversations dedicated to sharing stories, music, and links that are inspiring us, our team uses these informal channels to build rituals for daily connection.

Healthy Bones Challenge coach teams through the human-centered design process, we killed the jargon, then simply drew out the ideas on post-its and shared them on our screens. It made discussing user journeys maps and working prototypes so much easier to do."
As you build your community, there may come a time when you want to look outward and share your work with the world. Take a moment to step back and consider how you share stories to foster inspiration and shift perspectives-this starts with carving out consistent time and space to hear local stories.

For instance, BridgeBuilder 2018 Challenge winner TIMBY-founded by filmmaker and entrepreneur Anjali Nayar-provides hard-to-reach communities with the tools to tell and share their stories to solve complex problems. Using an encrypted mobile app and platform, TIMBY helped the indigenous Sengwer community safely document forced evictions through capturing pictures, videos, and data to tell their stories to stakeholders and decision-makers they normally were not able to reach.

The ability for communication to elevate unheard voices is evident in the work of Mohsin Mohi Ud Din, founder of refugee-led platform MeWeSyria, which enables young people in Syria to leverage social media to take back the narrative of how their experiences in the country are being told. He explains in this video how digital storytelling and communications act as vehicles for healing, community building, and change-making.

In thinking about your work, how might you empower your community to voice their stories and experiences? What are some creative ways to share those stories more broadly?

Use visuals to make things tangible in real-time.

Use analog and digital tools to visualize ideas, make strategies more concrete, and enable collaboration. When you consider that 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual and images are processed in the brain at 60,000 times the speed of text, taking time to share and create together visually during a virtual session can not only help you think more creatively and more efficiently, but it can also help overcome language barriers to get to a shared understanding of a concept or idea more quickly. Whenever possible, use visual tools (like photos, sketches, concept maps) or activities (like hosting a visualization exercise or going on a virtual field trip).

Stay connected by maintaining regular communication.

It's far too easy for feelings of stress and loneliness to replace human connection during times of crisis. Fill this gap and stay connected to your team via regular check-ins, frequent updates, and casual conversations. Don't underestimate the in-between moments: Leverage tools like WhatsApp, Slack, or Facebook groups to share informally and connect between sessions. Make sure to create a consistent rhythm for your communications, and design moments for spontaneous connection.

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How to Build a Vibrant Global Community, Virtually

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Structure your digital space for optimal collaboration. Just because you're sharing a virtual space doesn't mean you should be any less thoughtful in designing it. When setting up meetings for communities that don't share the same first language, abilities, or context, creating a container in which individuals can connect can unlock the most potential for problem-solving.

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Jeff Selingo online town hall "College Search Upended" summary on LinkedIn

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Jeff Selingo online town hall "College Search Upended" summary on LinkedIn

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Excerpts from my newsletter, NEXT. Sign-up here.

Each day of the COVID-19 crisis brings new challenges for students and colleges. The first days and weeks of the pandemic we were focused on the pivot to remote learning.

We're just beginning to understand the enormity of the issues facing the admissions process, both for current high-school seniors, but also juniors.

Admissions is defined by age-old rituals that are being upended right now. Campus tours are all virtual. Testing dates for the SAT and ACT exams through May have been postponed or canceled. The College Board also scraped the in-person Advanced Placement tests this spring.

Flexibility. That was the word repeated often by admissions experts during a virtual town hall I hosted this past week (we're doing another one this week....details below). Flexibility was used to describe the mindset that both accepted students and prospective applicants need right now, but also the admissions process itself in the coming month-and probably over the next year.

For seniors weighing their college choices, getting to campus is now impossible.

Georgia Tech was expecting 13,000visitors between now and the end of April, Rick Clark told us during the town hall. Rick is Georgia Tech's director of undergraduate admissions and co-author ofThe Truth about College Admission: A Family Guide to Getting In and Staying Together.

In the place of the campus visit, colleges are "getting a lot more innovative in terms of some of the various mediums that they're using to engage students," Clark said, including webinars, short video tours, and, of course, the "traditional" virtual tour.

Advice: Clark suggested prospective students dig deeper on social media and follow the accounts of current students or clubs and team sports they might be interested in.

The common set of admissions deadlines are also being disrupted by the coronavirus. More than 250 colleges and universities have already moved their traditional May 1 deposit deadline to June 1.

Many colleges-especially selective ones-are still holding firm to May 1: they want to lock in a class as much as possible during these uncertain times. But look for that to change in the coming days and weeks if financial-aid offers are delayed or the virus gets worse in some cities.

What if a senior has been accepted to colleges with a mix of May 1 and June 1 deadlines? "Reach out and ask if they can be flexible," said Diane Campbell, a counselor at Liberty Common High School in Colorado. One irony of social distancing is that because admissions officers are working off campus it's often easier than ever to reach them.

A fluid summer ahead. Normally, colleges like to have their incoming classes finalized by the end of May. A June deadline means most colleges won't be able to wrap up this year's admission cycle until later in June-maybe.

Wait lists. In recent years, the wait lists have been growing-sometimes larger than the size of the entire freshman class they were supposedly waiting for. Expect even longer wait lists this years, Rick Clark said, and for colleges to go to them often and later than usual to maintain enrollment.

What About High School Juniors?

The spring of junior year is a critical one in the admissions process, especially for those planning to apply early decision.Now, high schools have moved online, some have shifted to pass/fail grades, testing dates for the SAT and ACT have been canceled through May, and in-person Advanced Placement tests have been scrapped and replaced with 45-minute open-ended versions.

On the AP exams: The College Board's Connie Betterton joined us for the town hall to answer questions. Among the most-asked ones:

1. Will 45 minutes be enough? "We've taken a lot of care to ensure that that students can complete the materials in 45 minutes," Betterton told us.

2. What about cheating? "We have designed the exam questions and are planning to administer the test in ways that would make make cheating very difficult," she said. Among those measures: Reading and analyzing primary sources to write substantive responses in the humanities. In math, complex problems where students will have to show their work.

3. How will admissions officers evaluate AP classes on transcripts? "I think you're going to have colleges bend over backwards to adapt and be flexible to make sure that no student is disadvantaged," Betterton said. Rick Clark suggested that admissions officers will revamp their training for application readers next year given all the upheaval in high schools this spring.

4. Will colleges give credit for the exams? At Georgia Tech, Rick Clark said "it's highly likely that we will continue to give the same credit for the same class with the same score." But he imagines two things happening. One, advisors will talk to students about whether they know the content well enough to take the credit. Two, faculty might consider online bridge programs this summer to help students with content they might have missed this spring.

On the SAT: For now, the College Board is still planning to administer the test in June. But "we don't know what the next eight weeks are going to be like," Betterton said.

Between the lines: It sounds like the College Board, like most institutions, is in triage mode-and right now the immediate focus is on the AP tests. It's clear they know they'll need to add SAT dates in the late summer and early fall, but how many, where, and when are still up in the air.
"We're working now to identify alternate test dates throughout summer and fall with a goal of, if it's at all possible, a one-a-one replacement," said Connie Betterton.
What remains unclear is how the SAT dates might impact early-decision and early-action deadlines, which are typically November 1.

Bottom line: Admissions offices have long resisted changes to their process, but COVID-19 is making them think differently on the fly. The question is what changes might stick for the long run.

🖥 Watch a recording of the virtual town hall on-demand here.

👋 More than 1,000 students, parents, counselors, and admissions officers participated in last week's town hall, so I'm joining up with my friends at Grown & Flown and The Chronicle of Higher Education to host another one. Joining us will be:

Chris Gruber, dean of admission and financial aid, Davidson College

Janet Goodwin, chief operating officer, ACT

Gary Clark, director of undergraduate admission, UCLA

Tune in....Tuesday, March 31 at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT. Register Stay safe and stay strong - Jeff here for free.

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Excerpts from my newsletter, NEXT. Sign-up here.

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HMW Questions - Student Interviews (Amanda, Brisa, Abril, Kat)

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HMW Questions - Student Interviews (Amanda, Brisa, Abril, Kat)

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If relevant, please indicate who you were talking to!

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I turned what I'm hearing from our Experts into How Might We questions...

Capture here as a comment!

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Capture HMW questions from our conversation.

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Hope, hoping, hopeful

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Fear, fearing, fearful

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Conditions that need to happen for a project to be successful and help to narrow choices when

creating a project.

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RNL Report: Motivation to Complete College

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RNL Report: Motivation to Complete College

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Interesting research on what motivates first-year college students to persist and some of the challenges to retention they face.