Limed – Season 3, Episode 3

Dhvani Toprani hosts this month’s episode with her longtime colleague, Saadeddine (Saad) Shehab from the University of Illinois’ Siebel Center for Design. As the Director of Assessment and Research for the Siebel Center, Saad wants to identify strategies for near- and far- term assessment of the transfer of learning and mindsets in participants in their center’s workshops. Our panel included Sarah Bunnell, Director of Elon University’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, Adam Kanowitz, a senior Entrepreneurship and Innovation student at Elon University, and Dawan Stanford, President and Founder of Fluid Hive, a consultancy for using human-centered design for innovation. The panel discusses the challenges associated with measuring transfer and offer some ways to align assessment with goals. 

View a transcript of this episode.

About Our Guest

Saadeddine Shehab is the Associate Director of Assessment and Research at the Siebel Center for Design (SCD) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Leading SCD’s Assessment and Research Laboratory, he collaborates with undergraduate and graduate scholars to conduct research that informs and evaluates the practice of teaching and learning human-centered design across both formal and informal learning settings. His research focuses on the integration of human-centered design in STEM education, K-12 classrooms, and teacher preparation programs. Specifically, he explores the design and assessment of human-centered design activities, examining their impact on learning and the dynamics of collaboration within these activities. You can learn more about him on his personal website or connect with him on LinkedIn.

Meet Our Panel

Dr. Sarah Bunnell is the Director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning and an Associate Professor of Psychology. She is past-president of the International Society of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, an ISSOTL Distinguished Service Award winner, and was recently selected as a Gardner Institute Russell Edgerton Innovation Fellow, which “recognizes distinctively innovative contributions to improving postsecondary education and student success.” A co-author of Being Human in STEM (2023, Routledge), Sarah is passionate about building student-faculty-staff partnerships to enhance teaching, learning, and thriving across educational spaces. Her research merges her disciplinary training in developmental and cognitive psychology with her 20 years of work in faculty development and SoTL. Please reach out to Sarah to explore ways that CATL can support your individual, departmental, and institutional teaching and learning efforts. 

Adam Kanowitz is a fourth-year student at Elon University currently serving in senior leadership at Elon’s Center for Design Thinking. Involved in pedagogical research, workshop development and facilitation, and heading consulting engagements, Adam oversees the proliferation of design thinking methodology across a variety of communities and stakeholders. His studies at Elon University focus on Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and Project Management. His interests follow the intersection of business decision making with human-centered design. You can connect with him on LinkedIn. 

Dr. Dawan Stanford is an education innovation leader, design thinking expert, and founder of Fluid Hive, a consultancy that helps organizations create services and solutions through workshops, training, and projects. He brings over 15 years of experience driving organizational change and transforming higher education through human-centered design and learning innovation. With a unique combination of legal expertise (JD from Berkeley Law) and academic scholarship (PhD in Media and Communications), he bridges the worlds of technology, design, and education to create meaningful institutional change. He is integrating AI adaptation and data science into his practice to help institutions navigate the digital learning landscape and adapt to the future of work. Dr. Stanford has pioneered innovative approaches to learning design and institutional transformation, notably as the founding Director of Design Thinking at Elon University, where he established the Center for Design Thinking and created the annual Design Forge conference. As a co-founder of the Education Design Lab, he developed design challenge processes that have benefited students, universities, foundations, nonprofits, and corporations. Currently, he is expanding his expertise through focused research and experimentation in data science, computer science, and AI development. 

Episode Credits

This episode was hosted by Dhvani Toprani, edited by Matt Wittstein, and produced by Matt Wittstein in collaboration with the Elon University Center for Engaged Learning. 

Explore Resources Related to this Episode

Nisbett, R. E., and T.D. Wilson. 1977. “Telling More than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes.” Psychological Review 84 (3): 231–259. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.3.231 

Shehab, S. and C. James. 2024. “Teaching About and Through Human-Centered Design in Higher Education Classrooms: Exploring Instructors’ Experiences. Innovative Higher Education 1-19. 

Stanford, Dawan. 2021, March 2. “Micro Course: How to Conduct Listening Sessions with Indi Young.” Design Thinking 101, MP3 audio, 1:25:11. https://fluidhive.com/dt101-64/ 

Stanford, Dawan. 2018, June 26. “Problem Spaces, Understanding How People Think, and Practical Empathy with Indi Young.” Design Thinking 101, MP3 audio, 1:05:36. https://fluidhive.com/problem-spaces-understanding-how-people-think-and-practical-empathy/ 

Young, Indi.  2022. Time to Listen: How Giving People Space to Speak Drive Invention and Inclusion. Self published. https://indiyoung.com/books-time-listen/