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The Extraordinary Experience Lab is proud to be working with the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) to deliver this creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship-focused edition of the Learning Experience Studio.
Calling all experiential architects, tireless teachers, pedagogical revolutionaries, thoughtful mavericks, and educational innovators …
As the first semester of 2023 draws to a close, many of us are ready to pause, reflect, re-energize, and, ultimately, find ways of doing more of the work we love.
The Learning Experience Studio is an inspiring and transformative cohort-based journey. It offers a unique opportunity for educational leaders and their teams to step out of their familiar environments, forge meaningful connections with kindred spirits who are eager to work together, and craft learning experiences that have a lasting impact.
Successful applicants will join our first cohort and engage in a 2-month program of learning and professional development. They will create, implement, and assess a transformational learning experience – in any curricular, co-curricular, or community context of their choosing. With a plan in-hand, they will put it into practice and share their learning at USASBE 2024.
We would be delighted to have you as part of our founding cohort. Please help us spread the word, and consider applying yourself to be part of this extraordinary experience.
What you’ll gain
An extraordinary experience for your learners
This cohort-based journey is designed to empower you to create, assess, and implement a deeply engaging and transformational learning experience – in any curricular, co-curricular, or community context of your choosing and in any modes that make the most sense (online, virtual, in-person, hybrid). Upon returning to your campus, you’ll be ready to hit the ground running with a new or revised program and a plan of action to implement. The experience will be of value whether you are designing something new, or redesigning an existing experience.
Meaningful and engaging connection
When we spend time together online, you’ll be invited into our simple but powerful digital community. Well beyond what Zoom or an LMS can offer, we will gather in thoughtfully-designed spaces and “live rooms” where we can get to know each other, have real conversations, exchange ideas, support each other, and grow together as part of the process. We’ll also be deliberate in complementing what we do online with in-person experiences at the 2024 USASBE conference.
Expert guidance and peer feedback
Participants will receive expert coaching from a team of international facilitators who live for this kind of work, as well as gifts of feedback from the wider cohort community.
A capstone at USASBE 2024
They will will also have the opportunity to come together for a capstone experience at the 2024 USASBE conference in Birmingham, AL – to reflect on and share the impacts of what was implemented and what was learned.
An invitation to be a founding alumni scholar
The founding cohort will be invited help shape our new mastermind-style alumni network designed to provide members with ongoing access to tools, approaches, and, most importantly, connection with and support from a close-knit community.
Frequently Asked Questions
Areas in which we’re already seeing demand
We welcome and look forward to supporting educators with learning experience projects in any area and we want our cohort members to design transformational experiences that are the most exciting and relevant to them, to their students, and to their regional ecosystems. For example, we’re already seeing early demand in these areas:
Technology
entrepreneurship
Teaching, learning, and assessing with ChatGPT and generative AI
Social justice and social entrepreneurship
Creative and arts entrepreneurship
What people are saying
The team behind the Studio
The Learning Experience Studio is led by Alex Bruton, Kristi Ivan, and Matt Rogers-Draycott. They hail from Canada and the UK and have designed, taught, facilitated, and worked with educators in many exciting contexts around the world. They look forward to meeting and working with you.
Alex Bruton | PhD, PEng, MBA
Innovator | Designer | Edupreneur
Alex has been lucky to work with, speak to, and mentor thousands of learners, corporate leaders, and educators in places such as Moscow, Mexico, Seattle, San Diego, New York, and Waterloo, and at organizations such as Berkeley, Tec de Monterrey, and Google. Spend even a few minutes with him and you can’t …
Alex has been lucky to work with, speak to, and mentor thousands of learners, corporate leaders, and educators in places such as Moscow, Mexico, Seattle, San Diego, New York, and Waterloo, and at organizations such as Berkeley, Tec de Monterrey, and Google.
Spend even a few minutes with him and you can’t miss how deeply he believes well-crafted learning experiences can transform lives. How passionate he is about the power of learning and assessment design for sparking curiosity, connecting dots, igniting passions, and enabling dreams. Or, how excited he gets helping educators find meaning through that process.
A teacher at heart, Alex draws on having founded schools and started education companies, on having climbed the ladder himself as a leader and teaching professor in multiple disciplines, and on his work designing and facilitating award-winning learning experiences.
(Also, this website was built by Alex’s own entrepreneurial side hustle, Story Driven Digital, which empowers educational leaders and their small teams to cultivate an authentic brand, build an engaging online presence, and put in place a personalized digital ecosystem that unlocks having more impact in the world and allows them do more of the work they love.)
Kristi Ivan | BSc (Hons), BEd
Storyteller | Educator | Writer
Kristi got her start teaching in PK-12 education before transitioning to the world of instructional design and professional learning. She’s captivated by story, and the way authors, journalists, game designers, and screenwriters use writing to make experiences come to life in exciting and immersive ways …
Kristi got her start teaching in PK-12 education before transitioning to the world of instructional design and professional learning. She’s captivated by story, and the way authors, journalists, game designers, and screenwriters use writing to make experiences come to life in exciting and immersive ways.
She’s a champion for the learner in any situation and is always keen to figure out how to use technology for deeper, more memorable learning. These days, she spends half her time designing and writing learning solutions – and the rest coaching and mentoring up-and-coming designers and teachers looking to level up their digital experience.
Kristi’s educational background includes a combination of science, education, technology and creative writing – “the perfect storm” for Learning Experience Design.
Matt Rogers-Draycott | PhD, PGCE, BA (Hons)
Geek | Educator | Researcher
Matt’s a Lego obsessed educator who, for reasons he does not quite understand, is known internationally for his work in enterprise and entrepreneurial education. He’s an expert in course design, development, implementation and evaluation. His work spans apps, websites, virtual worlds, and physical spaces …
Matt’s a Lego obsessed educator who, for reasons he does not quite understand, is known internationally for his work in enterprise and entrepreneurial education. He’s an expert in course design, development, implementation and evaluation. His work spans apps, websites, virtual worlds, and physical spaces.
More than anything, Matt loves to explore concepts and models of learning, digging into the history of trends in education in an effort to understand where they are taking us and the opportunities (or problems) this might create.