Inquiry, Design, and Ethical Action Scholars (IDEA-S) Certificate

Trina Davis, Texas A & M University; Cheryl Craig, Texas A & M University; Michele Norton, Texas A & M University; Sara Raven, Texas A & M University; Claire Katz, Texas A & M University

Inquiry, Design, and Ethical Action (IDEA) Experiences

Scholars will engage in a series of inquiry, design, and ethical-action based experiences that will culminate with a capstone project. This page shows the combinatorial progression of IDEA experiences our scholars will engage in as they journey through the summer certificate program.

Design Philosophy

This program was developed to explore connections between scientific inquiry, design thinking, ethics and philosophy in a way that encourages scholars to feel empowered to take deliberative action. The IDEA experiences were designed around the Stanton et al. (see below) design thinking framework, adapted from IDEO. The process helps broaden problem-solving, design, and innovation decisions within a particular social justice context.

IDEA 1: Develop Inquiry and Scientific Process Skills

• Develop Scientific Process Skills that will guide your learning during this collective experience. Consider how inquiry, critical friend protocols, and argumentation will strengthen discourse, understanding multiple perspectives, and decision-making skills.
• Guided Experience: IDEA Scholars will engage in a problem-solving experience to create protocols for utilizing inquiry and scientific process skills (focusing on prediction/modeling, communication, and argumentation). For example, scholars will use the CER Framework (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning) to develop argumentation protocols that will be utilized throughout the design process (from IDEA 2 to the Capstone). Scholars will also learn how to create, critique, revise, and use models to draw connections between STEM and community outcomes.

IDEA 2: Reflect

• Reflect on how you are situated. Consider your background, identity, gender, sources of support, spheres of influence, aspirations, family’s possessions/wealth, etc. [Humanistic, Meta Knowledge]
• Guided Experience: Scholars will develop an initial personal statement and engage in discourse to identify their blind spots and biases in situating their positionality. Some key questions that will be considered are:
  • What familial, academic, and community experiences affect your positioning?
  • Which of the influences do you tend to privilege (e.g., economic, potential magnitude of impact, ethical/religious stance, historical precedence, etc.)?

IDEA 3: Contextualize

• Contextualize STEM design challenges/social issues within a broader context or community. Consider the larger historical, scientific, and socio-cultural intersections and boundaries. [Foundational, Humanistic, Meta Knowledge]
• Guided Experience: Scholars will engage in ethical/philosophical debate situated in scientific and socio-cultural issues/problems. Scholars will be assigned a position to argue around a STEM-related issue/problem/need. To effectively argue their position, the scholars will need to research and understand the other positions being argued and place the issue within the broader context.

IDEA 4: Democratize

• Democratize solutions to community needs. Consider the ways communities are organized, funded, and represented. Recognize that community members must be involved leaders in efforts to solve problems. Who makes decisions about the community? Who should be involved in change? What space should you as a “designer” hold? [Foundational, Humanistic, Meta Knowledge]
• Guided Experience: Scholars will participate in a guided Investigation of a “community” (e.g., communities in geographical locations with landfills, or communities with fewer grocery stores, communities affected by global warming). Scholars will create an Action Plan that includes the following steps:
  • Define the issue/problem/need,
  • Find tools to gather evidence,
  • Develop a step-by-step plan,
  • Evaluate findings in terms of best options, and
  • Assess the process in which they engaged.

IDEA 5: Empathize

• Empathize with those impacted by your design/innovation by cultivating a mindset of curiosity and enacting active listening skills to understand other perspectives instead of judging them. Consider how empathy-based data collection including observations, interviews, focus group interactions, and potentially immersing yourself in the communities impacted by the issues, all help you to understand the problem as a future-user. [Humanistic Knowledge]
• Guided Experience: Scholars will engage with key community stakeholders and develop a data collection plan to gain insights into a particular issue/problem/need in their target community:
  • Identify community members to interview individually or in focus groups,
  • Create interview/focus group questions, observation protocol, etc.,
  • Interpret interview responses and other data,
  • Write notes to file,
  • Transition field texts to a final report,
  • Communicate the report to stakeholders and elicit stakeholders’ responses, and
  • Revise the report based on stakeholders’ feedback.

IDEA Capstone 

• Scholars will immerse themselves in the design-thinking process (define, ideate, prototype, test) to solve a complex problem/issue/need facing a community. [Foundational, Meta, Humanistic Knowledge]
  • Empathy: Scholars will use their interviews from IDEA 5 to identify the issue/problem/need they will address through the design-thinking process.
  • Define: Scholars will define the issue/problem/need using the data collected, contextualize the issue within a broader landscape and data, democratize the issue by considering all community needs, and reflect on the positionality they bring to the issue.
  • Ideate: Scholars will brainstorm possible solutions to their identified issue/problem/need
  • Prototype: Scholars will come to an agreement on the possible solution and then prototype that solution
  • Test: Scholars will develop a plan for testing their prototype and collecting the data needed to iterate towards a better solution.