Students

Offering a top-tier education, Northeastern blends the classroom experience with that of the real world and is always looking for new opportunities to push the bounds of innovative education. Realizing their students are the true experts on their educational experience, they solicited BIF’s help to convene a group of them to reimagine learning experiences beyond the classroom.

The Minds that Move Us initiative challenges communities to design innovative education and training models that create social equity and economic mobility, driven by the market demands of business and industry as well as the needs of youth and adult learners.

What does fragmentation actually look like? What does integration feel like? And how might we better understand the conditions that must be put in place for us to move towards further integration? Check out our learnings!

Throughout this project, we saw powerful glimpses of these conditions in action. They enabled us to go beyond surface level solutions to think more holistically about how school and communities could better learn and grow together.

The Student Experience Lab partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to engage teachers in creating and leading local communities of practice focused on issues of equity and closing opportunity and achievement gaps.

Do you remember being stuck at the kids’ table for Thanksgiving dinner growing up? I do. There were always too many of us to all sit around one dinner table, so we had a secondary table off to the side, sometimes even in a separate room, to which the younger generation was relegated. I remember asking every year if I would be able to sit with the grownups. The conversation at their table ranged from sports to politics to family gossip, and whatever the topic it was always more animated and intense.

It's time to dig deeper and move away from traditional learning practices and utilize alternative methods that will further engage students to move beyond boredom and into deeper learning.

So how do we get the experienced cooks in the kitchen to design thoughtful and lasting solutions? How do we make sure that educators and students close to issues surrounding equity have the power to create change?You can not create successful, equitable solutions unless you are proximate. You can not cook without heat.

Higher education has a business model problem. The business model for U.S. colleges and universities — how they create, deliver, and capture value — hasn’t changed since Harvard, our country’s first college, was founded in 1636. Our higher education system is a national treasure that creates enormous societal value, but its 380-year-old business model fails to deliver affordable access and post-secondary credentials to an increasing percentage of our population.

If deeper learning approaches are going to spread, there must be intentional methods for sharing practices and communicating with a greater majority of educators. In order to reach this majority, these practices must be accessible, desirable, and popular among broader audiences of educators.

Students Design For Education (SD4E) is a groundbreaking initiative to create a school designed by high school students. SD4E is driven by a team of students hungry for transformation, supported by community members and educators passionate about student success, and powered by BIF’s extensive experience in human-centered design.

BIF is partnering with the Hewlett Foundation to prototype School Hackers, a free online platform that inspires and enables educators to share creative ways of repurposing existing resources and capabilities to move their students toward deeper learning.

Today’s young adults face uncertainty as they transition out of high school and are forced to navigate their next steps to determine how their interests might translate into a viable career path.

What do you get when you put 5 classroom teachers, 6 teaching artists, 3 youth development staff members, 3 graduate students, 1 coach, and 1 parent in BIF’s office space for a 2-day intensive “design jam”?  What if they all come with a problem they’re currently facing and want to tackle? During the last weekend in March, we found out.

How might we bring the minority male student experience to life in a way that makes their voice central to our conversation about transforming the education system to improve their college experience and completion rates?

In partnership with Babson College, Entrepreneurs of all Kinds is rooted in a deep understanding of the experiences of entrepreneurs of all kinds and engages them in the conceptual development of wholly new experiences.