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Impact Makers

Objectives

Society needs change agents who not only can develop ideas to address complex challenges but can also make those ideas work. While coming up with and developing ideas is important, it is only the beginning. To make ideas tangible and to create positive impact, there's much more work to do. This course will provide you with experiences, tools and an environment to explore what it takes to make positive impact.

Impact making is on three main principles:

To change the world, is to change one's self

To change the world requires a deep understanding of the context and the different stakeholders




General characterization

Code

2653

Credits

7

Responsible teacher

Anne-laure Fayard

Hours

Weekly - Available soon

Total - Available soon

Teaching language

English

Prerequisites

n/a 


Bibliography

Burnett, B. and Evans, D. (2016) Designing your Life, Alfred A. Knopf

Seelos, C. and Mair, J. Innovation and Scaling for Impact: How Effective Social Enterprises Do It (2017) Stanford Business Books

Design Thinking Roundtable Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/43BX6v41muO31yYRSG0oxL

Specific chapters and episodes, as well as complementary articles will be provided in class 


Teaching method

This course is highly experiential, project-based, course where students will explore how to impact their community and help making social change: it starts by doing and it involves reflecting. Hence the course will take place partly outside of the classroom with (about) 15 hours community work with a non-for-profit organization. In class meetings will be a mix of hands-on activities, discussions, reflections, guest speakers and project works. The course is a combination of doing and reflecting with an individual diary to allow each student to document their own personal journey as an impact maker. 


Evaluation method

Because of the experiential, project-based and hands-on nature of the course, the course will be evaluated through pass / fail. In line with research on grades and learnings, I believe that a pass/ fail system will foster more engagement from students and promotes a deeper denagement with the content and deeper learning. It will invite students to take more risks and go out of their comfort zone and challenge themselves while encouraging collaboration with everyone on an equal playing field.

It will also create a safe space, decreasing students' anxiety allowing them to see the professor as a facilitator rather than an authority figure. Last, it will nurture intrinsic motivation which has shown by research to be key for social innovation and sustainable impact.

Standards for a "pass" will be discussed in class in order to make sure that students don't default to completing the bare minimum.

The "pass" will be evaluated by a review of:

Attendance to all workshops and mentoring sessions

15-hours of work (attendance, reflection on the work and feedback from the organization)

Individual diary (each assignment / reflections done in a meaningful way).

Final project (how does it leverages the learnings from the personal theory of change and community work, to create sustainable and long-term impact). 


Subject matter

The course is organized around three main components: 1. Articulation of a personal theory of change (purpose and values); 2. In the field experience; 3. Project to scale and make impact. The course will meet once a week for 3 hours. During these classes, we will do a combination of discussion, hands-on activities, guest speakers and project work. As part of the course takes place outside of the classroom, some of our classes will be shorter and /or will be focused on individual or team coaching. A schedule of the different sessions and activities will be provided at the beginning of the course. Students will be asked to sign up in advance for their mentoring sessions.