Program Design & Management: 100Kin10 Fellowship
TLDR: supporting teachers and representatives of education-focused organizations from around the US to engage in a design thinking process to develop innovative solutions to challenges in the field
About 100Kin10:
100Kin10 unites over 300 top academic institutions, nonprofits, foundations, companies, and government agencies from across the country to address the nation’s STEM teacher shortage by training and retaining 100,000 excellent STEM teachers nationwide and tackling the underlying challenges that contribute to the shortage. By giving STEM teachers the support they need, we are helping to educate the next generation of innovators and problem solvers. Because the organizations in the network are so diverse, they all contribute to solving this challenge in different ways and 100Kin10 runs various programs to help them in their efforts.
100Kin10’s programming previously included an annual Fellowship which resulted in organizations obtaining grants to bring new ideas to life. Each year, 100Kin10 chose a specific challenge (i.e. “not enough active STEM learning in Pre-K through third grade,” or “teachers do not have flexibility to experiment with their instruction”) and guided a cohort of ~10 organizations from around the U.S. through a human-centered design thinking process (research, brainstorming, prototyping, testing, iterating) in which they developed innovative solutions to that year’s challenge.
The Fellowship spanned 6 months each year, with fellows coming together for in-person workshops at the beginning, middle, and end of the experience. Between these milestones in the program, fellows worked remotely and engaged in synchronous and asynchronous touchpoints and processes.
The process that fellows were led through was, at the time, quite different from the way that many in the education field were working. Much of our work in guiding them through the process was introducing fellows to the concepts of human-centered design, design thinking, and other processes. Participants reported that they enjoyed bringing these newly-learned methodologies back to their organizations after experiencing how they could bring about more relevant and creative approaches.
With the 100Kin10 Research & Innovation team, I gathered learnings from the organization’s first attempt at running this program and together we iterated on the overall arc of the Fellowship, the in-person events and the materials used at them, and the activities that take fellows through each phase of work. In the spirit of continuous improvement, we surveyed participants after each in-person touchpoint and also conducted interviews regarding their experience in the program after each cohort wrapped. Over the years, we continued to tweak our approach towards teaching a design and prototyping process to non-designers. I also coached the Fellows throughout the experience on human-centered design, design thinking methodologies, etc.
My work on this project included:
Program Design, Program Management, Instructional Design, User Research, Workshop Development, Event Design, Event Facilitation, Event Logistics, Design Coaching, Project Management, Evaluation Design, Graphic Design, Collateral Design
“Both the end product and the experience of participating in the fellowship were equally valuable. We've developed an idea we're excited about that is beyond the scope of our normal work because of the fellowship design process, but which is strongly tied to our organization's education goals.”
— Fellowship Participant
One aspect of the Fellowship is an emphasis on prototyping and testing potential solutions. However, the ideas that Fellows develop are oftentimes programs, services, or other experiences that are abstract in nature and difficult to prototype. We experimented with teaching Fellows different ways of getting user feedback on their ideas—such as process maps or storyboards.
This graphic shows the arc of the 100Kin10 Fellowship, divided into phases of work that reflect the design process. The dark yellow areas show when fellows come together for in-person events and the light yellow areas are their remote work.
“The training was hands-on, practical, pushed our thinking, and was something I can turn around and use straight away. It was an amazing way to experience outside-of-the box thinking”
— Fellowship Participant