Welcome to BIF’s Student Experience Lab. As champions for audacious change, our mission is to channel the voice of the student into action by building a real-world, collaborative innovation platform to help education transform itself. We invite you to join us on this epic adventure.
Learn MoreCheck out some of the activities going on in the lab.
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Imagine the opportunity to bring together teachers from various school districts across a state to explore technology models, approaches and solutions that enhance student achievement. Imagine a hands-on laboratory where teachers can discover, explore, create and experiment with blended learning models, strategies and tactics using hardware platforms and software programs that support the needs of students with various diverse learning profiles. That's the mission of the EdUnderground - a unique collaboration between the Student Experience Lab and Highlander Institute.
The Student Experience Lab partnered with Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) to design and prototype a brand new education model. Aptly called the "College For America," the new online degree program delivers a low cost, high quality education for disadvantaged students who have been marginalized by traditional higher education. Using a transformative competency-based approach College For America leverages technology, community support, social networking approaches, employer partners, and strong assessment.
In September, 2012, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation commissioned the Student Experience Lab to better understand the feedback that teachers receive, in what ways that feedback is shared, and under what conditions the feedback impacts teacher performance (both negatively and positively). Results of the research were published in January, 2013.
The Student Experience Lab is working with Pleasant View Elementary School to help facilitate the school's transformation into a blended learning environment. With our expertise in educational transformation that draws heavily on engagement, human-centered design, and digital storytelling, the Lab will be working with Pleasant View to put their whole school model into action and use our tools and capabilities to facilitate the process.
To accelerate the understanding of the secondary school experience, the Lab, in partnership with the Rhode Island Department of Education, brought forty students, ages 13 -22, together to share their experiences and brainstorm novel ideas for innovation in education.
What if we put students in the driver’s seat of a new kind of R&D to transform higher education? One that provided a platform for engaging students more fully in a real world effort that also involved faculty, and university administrators? Could we improve a student’s education experience? Yes. Could we take it a step further and transform higher education itself? Yes.
The Student Experience Lab partnered with the College Board to better understand and develop opportunities to enhance the educational experiences of young men of color. By engaging young male Asian American/Pacific Islanders, African Americans, Hispanic/Latinos, and Native Americans directly to understand how they view their experiences, we add their important voice to the innovation discussion of how to better meet their needs, improve their experience and lead them toward degree attainment.
In 2009, the Lab conducted primary research to understand and digitally document the educational experiences of students nationwide. Nine major themes were revealed that affect student performance. These themes span demographics, geography, school and student-type and serve as a catalyst of opportunity identification and experimentation to improve student outcome.
News, views, and student voices from the Student Experience Lab
Here’s a BIG question facing higher education today: What changes must be made for students to have a coherent + goal focused educational experience? Because frankly, for far too many students today, the experience is neither coherent nor goal focused.
An ongoing mechanism of change delivering the voices and experiences of students nationwide. Learn more
How do we better understand the feedback that teachers receive? In what ways is feedback shared? Under what conditions does feedback impact teacher performance (both negatively and positively)? We present 3 powerful videos that portray the Student Experience Lab's robust qualitative understanding of teacher feedback and what can be done to improve (or dare we say transform!?) teacher effectiveness and the learning experience.
In this 3rd of a 3-part video series about the college list planning process, high school juniors and seniors and college freshmen share the things they think and do to make the final selection of where to go to college. And the urgency in the mantra "go to college" pushes many students to select a school or an educational path without sufficiently considering options, opportunities and the realities of cost.
Created for BIF's recent student workshop to re-invent the college list planning solution, here's a design challenge video that explores the topic of affordability.