Abstract

How might those situated within university structures design teaching, research, and service opportunities that shift higher education towards supporting a “pluriverse”? This paper is meant to serve as an invitation to Reimagine ‘Impact’ within Higher Education. I situate this call within my own lived experiences trying to enact these practices and by explicating several promising strategies emerging from overlapping fields—including ecosystems design, participatory action research, and feminist pragmatism. While design thinking and systems thinking are interwoven with and can reinforce hegemonic and colonial practices, they also provide opportunities for radical and relational imaginaries that build bridges toward multiple ways of thriving. Given their histories and the current state of higher education, I aim to visualize some of the present barriers and opportunities for diverse and expansive assessment and research. I also seek to hold space for exploring how we might incorporate frameworks that take relational and ethical connections to one another seriously and crack open opportunities to reshape the structures and cultures of higher education in order to generate more inclusive and just impact.

Keywords

design thinking; participatory action research; systems thinking

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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Jun 4th, 12:00 AM

Participating in the Pluriverse from within the Academy: Design Thinking Assessment & Research

How might those situated within university structures design teaching, research, and service opportunities that shift higher education towards supporting a “pluriverse”? This paper is meant to serve as an invitation to Reimagine ‘Impact’ within Higher Education. I situate this call within my own lived experiences trying to enact these practices and by explicating several promising strategies emerging from overlapping fields—including ecosystems design, participatory action research, and feminist pragmatism. While design thinking and systems thinking are interwoven with and can reinforce hegemonic and colonial practices, they also provide opportunities for radical and relational imaginaries that build bridges toward multiple ways of thriving. Given their histories and the current state of higher education, I aim to visualize some of the present barriers and opportunities for diverse and expansive assessment and research. I also seek to hold space for exploring how we might incorporate frameworks that take relational and ethical connections to one another seriously and crack open opportunities to reshape the structures and cultures of higher education in order to generate more inclusive and just impact.

 

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