Trans-Disciplinary Design Thinking Approach to Creating Study Abroad Curriculum: Creating Arts-centered, Place-based Experiences Abroad for All Students

Workshop Presentation
Shelby Newport,  Greg Laurence  

We must be more deliberate about our trans-disciplinary thinking in order to provide more opportunities for students, especially when developing a global experiential curriculum. How we engage one another as colleagues and collaborators needs to be a part of crucial conversations happening on university campuses. Study Abroad is a particularly difficult program to fund and maintain as enrollments decline and budgets tighten up. This workshop will engage participants in an active, design thinking conversation about how to develop study abroad courses that integrate the arts and transcend traditional disciplines in order to provide students with robust pedagogical experiences abroad. We must first develop shared vocabulary and pedagogical goals that are not discipline specific and then create an exciting itinerary utilizing high impact practices. We aim to encourage participants to think about teaching in their own disciplines differently by encouraging trans-disciplinary communication and using the design thinking process to work through common challenges in developing a global curriculum. We will use the lessons learned from our own development of our co-led course the “Business of the Arts: Study Abroad in Japan” at the University of Michigan-Flint to guide the conversation and curriculum development in this workshop.