What is the problem you’re trying to solve?
Lack of accessible, well made continuing education resources for adults who need to re-skill.
1) Take a stab at framing it as a design question.
How can we improve continuing education for adults, particularly in the US?
2) Now, state the ultimate impact you’re trying to have.
We want adults to be able to re-train to stay employable in a world where the job market will be changing very quickly, even more quickly than it is changing now.
3) What are some possible solutions to your problem?
Currently: community college, online learning, master’s degree programs
Future: VR learning, adapting flexibility of current MOOC style to better online experiences, AI coaches to help with direction and motivation, high-quality content that can be delivered by a non-expert (ie, something that teaches the teacher too, creates more teachers), change how HR assesses possible new hires, get industry more involved in choosing continuing education topics
4) Finally, write down some of the context and constraints that you’re facing.
Learners might not have the learning skills to teach themselves new skills.
Learners might not have access to the technologies that best allow re-skilling.
Learners might not have access to the infrastructure to use the tools (ie broadband internet).
Lack of quality teachers to create curriculum.
5) Does your original question need a tweak? Try it again.
How can we help learners assess their own skills when they are looking to enter a new industry?
How can we create quality, low cost material to help students learn new job skills?
How can we make sure that continuing education resources are available to as many people as possible?
How can we give as many students as possible access to great teachers?
How can we help teachers reach more students?
How do we assess what skills will be most valuable in the job market?
Solution Brainstorming:
Hi Jessica, great exercise! I chuckled once or twice when I read “re-skilling” as “re-skinning.” It’s really nice to see the transparent process of how your first design challenge went from being too broad in step 1 to nicely narrowed in step 5. I was drawn to question 1 and 4 as they seem to hit the right balance of specificity and opportunity, and stay student-centric. A build on #1 might be to add some tangible output to it like “assess, identify gaps, and find ways to attain required skills,” for example.
to expand on our conversation this week, take a listen to this episode of the podcast exponent which details the incentives that drive why enterprise IT is traditionally bad when it comes to UX. Its about priorities and how they are shifting due to dominant market players.
http://exponent.fm/episode-092-defining-consumerization-of-it/
I would like more details on your problem: please provide more data / evidence of how it manifests itself in Higher education and how it might be more prevalent in the some future. What are examples of low quality continuing education?