The user experience as a kick off for the development of education

Education is not just what goes on in the classroom.

“… You can teach people a lot, but it is the experience and the feeling that lingers… ”

This is what Hanne Lendal, head of Act2learn, UCN’s Department of Continuing Education, said in the start-up of a workshop. The point is, of course, that students at UCN bring much more home with them than the tuition they receive. And everyone in the department contributes tooth’s experience. 

The purpose of the workshop was to give employees and teachers an understanding of the relationship between the service they provide and the experience the students get. At the same time, the workshop should result in a common understanding among the employees, to make them pull in the same direction when they deliver a good experience to the students.

We gave a general overview of how to understand the intangible experience that teaching (and much other service) is. Next, we introduced a series of principles for how to develop the service provided today. 

Two former students visited the workshop. They told us about their experience of Act2learn. With these reports from the user perspective, we asked the participants to develop concrete suggestions on how to give students a (even) better experience of the collaboration with Act2learn.

The ideas were visualized in storyboards, which the participants presented to the management the next day. The ideas thus became the kick off for the concrete strategic efforts that will develop Act2learn.

The day gave an introduction to service design and the design methods that can be used in other contexts. But it also provided a string of concrete suggestions on how to work to give students and students the feeling and experience that make them ambassadors for the institution. And since the ideas were developed across disciplines, the collaboration supported a common scope.

Designer Lærke Knudsen helped facilitate the group work and she made a photo recording of the ideas that were developed during the day. They were sent to the participants together with a presentation and description of the methods used.