In our interviews, we explored our professional settings. Sam Kirk is an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher for the Immigrant Services Society of British Columbia (ISSBC) in the Language and Career College (LCC). Stephanie Messier is a human resources (HR) professional who consults with various businesses. During our synchronous exchanges, we explored the work and cultural environments of our respective worlds. We uncovered common organizational challenges such as conflicting political agendas, diverse learners, and talent retention. The one shared challenge that inspired our design was our interaction with unmotivated individuals who struggle in a virtual work setting.

As an outcome of the ideation brainstorming process, we decided to develop a virtual, open-ended, and constructivism-based (Heaster-Ekholm, 2020) model that we excitedly named Digital Water Cooler Professional Development Series. To that effect, the LCC teachers would be involved in constructing their own development while at the same time building their own digital toolkits much in the same spirit as their newly immigrated students’ realities of access and inequities (Strommel, 2020).

Our overall design thinking challenge was an insightful learning experience. Although we worked in two different worlds, we leveraged our expertise and played our strengths to design our prototype. We are hoping that our design will receive the seal of approval of the LLC school CEO as a potential development initiative for the teachers.

Our solution is illustrated in this video.

Enjoy!

Sam and Stephanie