Experience Educational Design and Inquiry

This course explores the principles and practices of design thinking and their application within educational settings. Students will learn how to integrate design thinking into the curriculum to foster creativity, problem solving, and innovation among students. The course emphasizes a hands-on, experiential approach, where participants will engage in collaborative projects that model the design thinking process, including empathizing with learners, defining challenges, ideating solutions, prototyping, and testing.

This course offers an interdisciplinary exploration of Cognitive Science, the study of the mind and its processes, drawing from psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, artificial intelligence, and anthropology. Students will investigate how humans perceive, think, learn, and remember, as well as how these cognitive processes are influenced by biological, social, and technological factors.

This course explores the principles and practices of place-based education, an approach that connects learning to the local environment and community. Place-based education leverages the unique cultural, historical, and ecological resources of a specific place to create meaningful, relevant learning experiences for students. The course emphasizes experiential, hands-on learning that fosters a deeper connection to the local community and environment, while also promoting academic achievement and social responsibility.