At The Johns Hopkins University Life Design Lab, we believe in the power of co-creation. Co-creation ensures that a program meets the needs of each stakeholder involved. It’s a big challenge to navigate that requires patience, flexibility, and stellar relationship management skills. We are constantly working to harmonize students’ developmental needs, employers’ recruitment goals, alumni and donors’ expectations, and university objectives. By successfully engaging multiple stakeholders, we’re crafting immersive learning opportunities that bridge the gap between classroom theory and how in-class activities and reflections can be extended to real-world workplace environments, otherwise known as scaffolding the curriculum. This is why we’re excited to share our journey and best practices in co-creating high-impact trek, and site visit experiences for our students using our Applied Life Design Curriculum.
Scaffolding in curriculum development involves creating a structured, progressive learning experience that builds upon previous knowledge and skills. In the context of the Johns Hopkins University Life Design Lab’s applied life design curriculum, scaffolding has been particularly effective in helping students transition from self-reflection to workplace application. Here’s how this can be implemented:
Scaffolding Self-Reflection to Workplace Application
In-class activities:
- Start with exercises focused on identifying personal values, interests, and strengths
- Introduce concepts of flow and energy in relation to tasks and activities that students are involved in
- Encourage students to reflect on past experiences where they felt most engaged
Bridging to workplace environments:
- Guide students in mapping their identified values and energy patterns to potential work settings
- Introduce tools for analyzing job descriptions and company culture in relation to personal values
- Facilitate exercises where students imagine themselves in different work environments and reflect on alignment
Real-world application:
- Organize alumni panels or networking opportunities where students can ask targeted questions about workplace realities
- Assign projects where students research specific roles or companies and analyze alignment with their personal values and energy patterns
- Encourage students to keep a reflection journal during site visits or internships, focusing on moments of alignment or misalignment. We have created a specific Life Design Guidebook for our Explore Tours and Career Treks that each student can take with them on their travels.
Alignment and Potential Misalignment
When scaffolding these activities, it’s important to address both alignment and potential misalignment. Students may discover that their values strongly align with a company’s mission or culture. They might find that tasks that energize them in class settings are also central to certain job roles. Personal strengths identified through self-reflection may match key skills required in specific industries. However, students might realize that a job they thought was ideal doesn’t align with their core values, or that the day-to-day reality of a role might not match their expectations or energy patterns, or the company cultures may not support their work view-life view or personal growth opportunities that students prioritize.
Incorporating Alumni Insights
Alumni experiences can be a powerful tool in this scaffolding process:
- Invite alumni to share their career journeys, highlighting how their values and interests have aligned (or not) with their work overtime
- Organize small group discussions where students can ask alumni specific questions about their day-to-day experiences and how they relate to the students’ self-reflections
- Problem-Solving Workshop: Present students with a real business challenge or case study relevant to the tech industry. Have students work in small groups to analyze the problem and propose solutions and present back to company reps for feedback.
- Skills Demonstration: Set up stations where employees can demonstrate specific skills or technologies used in their industry. Allow students to try these skills for themselves under guidance providing tangible connection to classroom learning.
- Interview Preparation: In small groups, employers and alumni can conduct mock problem-solving interviews, presenting students with real-world scenarios they might encounter on the job. This helps students develop critical thinking skills and learn how to approach complex problems in a professional context
Reflective Activities
To tie everything together, incorporate ongoing reflective activities into a guidebook or journal students can take with them:
- Build upon the energy and flow activity that student participated in class and have students create “energy maps” of their ideal workday and compare these to alumni descriptions of their actual workdays
- Ask students to reflect on how their engagement with employer and alumni during their site visits helped them to refine the career paths they previously imagined.
- Engage students in a discussion on how they plan to further refine their story and infuse this into their professional documents and interviews.
By scaffolding the curriculum in this way, students can gradually build a bridge between their self-understanding and the realities of various career paths. This approach helps them make more informed decisions about their future careers and increases the likelihood of finding fulfilling work that aligns with their values.
The goal is to help students develop the skills to continually assess and adjust their paths as they grow and change throughout their lives. This scaffolded approach provides students with the tools and experiences they need to become lifelong “life designers”.
Looking Ahead
As we continue to refine our applied life design curriculum, we’re excited about the possibilities that co-creation and stakeholder engagement bring. By working together, we’re not just preparing our students for careers—we’re empowering them to design lives of purpose and fulfillment. Stay tuned to hear what students are saying about all of the upcoming treks and explore tour recaps!
