Community colleges are often called "commuter colleges" for a reason. Lacking a sense of community and belonging, students are less likely to advocate for equitable change on their campus. Working with a brief from IDEO and Beyond 12, we wanted to design a platform that would inspire students to connect through storytelling as a way to build community and affect campus change.

Rethink

However, our data revealed a complication for this student mobilization: students at community colleges didn’t feel a sense of connection to their college. This forced us to step back and reexamine the problem. How could we mobilize students if there wasn't a sense of community? It became clear that we first needed to help create a community, then leverage those connections to affect change.

Result

12Stories folds in the issue of community building into the larger goal of advocacy by combining a physical campus story wall with a digital experience that allows students to read about, interact with, and contribute to shared student stories. While this helps to build community, the backend aggregates stories around topics, allowing Beyond 12 to share qualitative and quantitative data—as well as recommendations—with the college administration.

To build empathy and understanding, we conducted directed interviews with six individuals from the college. As the students talked with us—expanding on answers or simply telling their stories—we kept hearing a common refrain: a lack of belonging, of community, of connectedness.

At first, we didn't know what to do with these confessions of student disconnection. IDEO and Beyond 12 hadn’t asked us to ease the sense of disconnection students were feeling. They wanted us to mobilize students to affect change at community colleges. But the more we heard from students, the more we wondered about the efficacy of mobilizing people around something they didn't feel connected to.

To validate this concern, we spoke with faculty and staff at the college itself who told us not only that they were aware of this disconnection but that they also knew the lack of connection was affecting student success as well.

It became apparent we needed to somehow fold in the issue of community-building.

But how could we do that while still solving for the issue of student advocacy?

We wanted to validate our concept idea to ensure this was a valid design direction, so we quickly created a digital space using Google Jamboard.

With COVID, we honestly didn't know how the first prototype would go. We worried people wouldn't contribute or that toxic comments and trolling would derail the conversation.

However, not only were students willing to read and write posts, many felt so connected and empathetic with their fellow students that they continued interacting with the prototype weeks after the initial test was completed.

Even more surprising were the recurring comments from students hoping we would "share the information to people on the [college] board and do something about the needs of the students."

Even though students had posted anonymously, we had assumed they wouldn't want their thoughts shared with faculty and staff. Clearly we were wrong.

This allowed us to take the student posts, quantify them while still retaining their powerful qualitative information, and then present the data to that program's faculty and staff.

It was interesting to witness firsthand the impact the student thoughts, feelings, and experiences had on those who had more power to advocate for change on campus.

Initially, we were met with defensiveness during these interviews. Proving that neither side is filled with villains—only people struggling with problems—we not only heard about complications and limitations the college faces when attempting to enact change, but the steps they were already taking to address some of the pressing issues students had talked about as well.

But as we talked more about what students had written, we were told that the data allowed the college to “get a deeper understanding of the challenges the students face”, and suggested that it could help the college become more proactive.