The Siebel Center for Design, launched in 2018, sits across the street from the College of Education. But it’s not geographic proximity that has led to such a deep relationship between the two.

“We have a special relationship with the College of Education due to our commitment to conduct evidence-based assessments,” says Rachel Switzky, Siebel Center for Design (SCD) director. “We made an early connection with the College in order to properly evaluate and assess how design thinking can disrupt education.”

That original connection was made in 2018 with Chris Span, a former professor in Education Policy, Organization and Leadership. Span, who was recently appointed as dean of the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, was teaching a course in education and social justice, says Saad Shehab, SCD’s associate director of assessment and research.

Shehab himself represents a connection between Siebel and Education, as he earned his Ph.D. in Curriculum & Instruction from the College in 2019 before stepping into his post at SCD.

Referring to the course that Span was teaching in 2018, which Curtis Mason, teaching associate professor in EPOL, now teaches, Shehab says “we co-designed a booklet with Dr. Mason and the TAs to provide students with a systematic way to approach their community placement assignment through a human-centered design lens.”

The Human-Centered Design Approach

Human-centered design is a problem-solving approach that uses design thinking to identify the unmet needs of a population to develop solutions collaboratively and iteratively.

“It relies heavily on empathy and iteration,” Shehab explains. “Empathy stresses that idea of the need to connect with others, the need to be kind, honest, transparent, and to form the trust to collaborate with others in order to start learning from failure, to learn from taking one step after another until you arrive at a satisfactory solution to the problem.”

While Switzky notes the special relationship with the College, she is quick to point out that SCD’s scope is campus wide.

“We work all across campus in all types of contexts,” she says. “Some of the work is about teaching and learning, some is on research. All of it is based on human-centered design processes and how it’s integrated within these different contexts.”

Types of Collaborations Between SCD and Education

Another key figure within the College’s work with SCD is Mike Tissenbaum, associate professor in C&I.

“Chris Span and Mike were our early adopters,” Switzky says. “They were drawn to the potential of SCD and began collaborating with us on how to co-create and shape its future.”

Tissenbaum was brought in, Shehab says, so SCD could build on his expertise in the learning sciences—a relationship that has continued to this day.

“Mike is one of our key advisors at the Center,” Shehab notes. “He attends monthly meetings with us, and many of our SCD scholars go to him for advice. He’s helped us promote the Center, and he has helped us make connections through his network. That mentorship is one of the key collaborations between the center and the College.”

Another important collaboration, Shehab says, is through grants focused on human-centered design in K-12 and higher education settings.

“I’m working right now with Gloriana González [C&I professor] on a grant to create professional development opportunities for teachers to learn about human-centered design and create math lessons that integrate human-centered design with geometry and social justice,” he says.

González will be presenting a paper on the project in France. “It was very competitive getting into the conference, but we got in because our work was seen as having an impact on the future of teaching geometry,” Shehab says. “We’re trying to engage high schoolers in thinking about design and social justice. For example, we’re housing geometric concepts in human-centered design challenges—such as creating space in a museum showcase that contains artifacts to teach others about cultures of different people who are with you in the classroom.”

A third collaboration link between Siebel and the College of Education is in incorporating human-centered design in education courses, which Span, Mason, and other professors have done.

It gets down to disrupting how education has been traditionally approached, says Switzky.

“For example, many people find STEM topics unengaging because they’re often presented in a dry manner,” she says. “Using a human-centered design approach is one way to make STEM careers more exciting and accessible."

She notes that she has worked with Span on developing a human-centered design platform for math education, and a similar push is occurring with chemistry education.

Education Active in SCS's Affiliate Program

Last October, SCD began a multidisciplinary affiliate program focused on collaborative research, development, and innovation that brings human-centered design to the affiliates’ disciplinary focus. Faculty and staff from more than a dozen units on campus are part of the first cohort of affiliates. From Education, González, Tissenbaum, and Mary Herrmann, teaching associate professor in EPOL, are affiliates.

González is working on the aforementioned project in integrating human-centered design for geometry-based instruction. Tissenbaum is exploring how digital games, simulations, and mobile tech can revolutionize learning spaces and promotes inclusive computing and engineering curricula for underrepresented youth. Herrmann is integrating human-centered design thinking into her leadership courses and contributing immersive experiences for school superintendents with SCD.

“We wanted to formalize these relationships that we had developed,” says Switzky. “There are so many amazing projects of engagement, not just with the College of Education, but all across campus. We’ve already doubled the number of affiliated faculty and staff, and in our next cohort we’ll probably triple it in another six months or so.”

Included in that increase for the second cohort, which begins in August, are five candidates from the College: Vania Castro (EPOL teaching assistant professor), Mary Kalantzis and Bill Cope (EPOL professors), Jessica Li (associate dean for research and director of the Bureau of Education Research), and Jina Kang, (assistant professor in C&I).

“These affiliates are breaking down silos, finding connection points among their work,” Switzky says. “They are giving us tangible stories that we can share with others and that can inspire people to affiliate with SCD.”

SCD a Hub for Graduate Students

Siebel Center for Design has also become a hub for graduate students in Education to gain knowledge and conduct research—which is how he got his start with SCD when he was a graduate student in the College, Shehab says.

“We now have three postdocs who came from the College of Education directly to work at SCD,” he says. “And we’ve had around fifteen students who came in as graduate students from the College of Education and worked and learned with us under different projects. The Center has really succeeded in helping and hosting these students to come and practice and learn about doing education research.”

Impact on Educators Around the State and Beyond

The continued growth of Siebel Center for Design opens up more opportunities for faculty, staff, and students from the College of Education to work with people across campus to incorporate the human-centered design approach, Shehab says.

The result of those collaborative efforts will extend far beyond campus, Switzky adds.

“We hope our collaborations with the College will build out into the rest of the state, into the other campuses of the University of Illinois, and to other campuses training future educators in the other state universities and colleges,” she says.

“All the work we’ve been doing with the College of Education translates into tools and trainings and research elements that we can provide to the state. This benefits both future educators being trained and current educators in state schools."

“The next step for us is how do we scale this.”