Hive NYC offers an amazing array of after school experiences for young people in the city. But how can we move from these ‘one-off’ experiences to a model of programming and support that can both spark and sustain youth’s interests and future goals? This design charrette, hosted by Hive Research Lab, will focus on generating tools and best practices around how to provide ‘pathway experiences’ for Hive youth that can contribute to their long-term development as well as career and work futures.
Details
What: “A Network for Learning” Design Charrette with Hive Research Lab
When: TBD
Where: TBD
Key Goals
As a network (Hive Members, Hive “HQ”, Hive Research Lab) we’ll be looking to create actionable prototypes and experiments that look to solve problems around:
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Raising awareness of Hive and other opportunities among various ‘learning brokers’ (i.e., parents, educators, guidance counselors, influential peers, etc.)
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Recruiting youth more efficiently to your programs
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Connecting youth to other relevant experiences (e.g., one-day events, after school programs, etc.)
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Providing ‘leveling up’ opportunities (e.g., internships, scholarships, presentation opportunities, etc.)
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Creating a Hive NYC Youth community
How will this event work?
The “Network that Learns” event will take the form of a design charrette – an intensive design-focused gathering that will be oriented towards the creation of prototypes and experiments (not just technological!) that can be used in order to strengthen the network in this area. The charrette will be a day and a half, carved into three sections:
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Backgrounding – Hive Research Lab will kick things off and share relevant data from their research as well as frameworks from the learning sciences and youth development. The group will work to articulate and map current related resources and assets in the network. Finally, we’ll work together to specify the exact problems we’re trying to solve and identify their root causes as the basis for our design work. Members will also hear about current related projects and initiatives.
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Ideating – Participants will choose to either brainstorm and develop ideas that might be experimented with in order to tackle these problems, or work on refining current projects and initiatives (list forthcoming).
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Refining – Hivers will hone in on a smaller set of ideas that seem most promising, go through a group process to refine them, and come up with more detailed plans of what they might look like in practice by writing up a “minimal viable prototype” plan. Hive Research Lab will support participants to think about how each of these prototypes might be seen as reflective activities we can learn from (mini experiments!) by using techniques from improvement science.
What resources will we have to support our great ideas?
The plans for projects that come out of the charrettes might take a lot of different forms, but will always involve collaborative work between Hive members, Hive Research Lab and Hive HQ. HRL and HQ will be supporting project through expertise and in-house support, and Hive HQ has committed a small pot of “Hive Next” funds that will be available as well. Projects can also be submitted to the Hive Digital Media and Learning Fund down the line. Finally, Hive HQ is committed to thinking about how existing platforms (meet-ups, community calls, learning lab calls, Hive online portfolio, etc.) might be remixed or improved to help meet this mission.
Hive Research Lab 