School Story Lab

(1 Credit Hour) · Undergraduate

This course is a hands-on opportunity to work with a team on an ongoing project—School Story Lab—about people's experiences of being in school, and to amplify the work via social media. School Story Lab builds on both interviews and crowdsourced stories. The goal of the project is to collect and disseminate personal experiences of people (especially students and teachers) involved in schools at all levels, and internationally. Experience-near accounts of school should always be considered by policy makers and those charged with designing schools, but they are often overlooked in favor of simpler standardized measures. These experiences are affective, bodily, social, economic, medical, and more, not just cognitive. Stories provide it all. The course meets weekly for an hour, and students spend another 1-2 hours weekly working on the project: conducting and analyzing interviews, contributing to the website, and bringing their own experiences.