International Studies Minor
Redesigning curricular offerings to better align with student body needs.
Time
20 Weeks
Team
4 Service Designers
Role
UX Research,
Service Design
Deliverables
Prototype,
Final Presentation with Recommendations, Implementation Support
Through our research, we determined that there is a need for the minor, but in its current form, it does not offer the community, cohesion, and flexibility that students desire when completing a minor. By proposing more options for minor requirements and new courses, we redesigned the minor structure and requirements to meet those needs.
Dartmouth College’s Dickey Center for International Understanding offers the International Studies (INTS) minor and co-curricular programming aimed at helping students enhance the global dimension of their study. The INTS minor was initially very popular among students, but student enrollment has decreased dramatically in recent years.
Our client, the Dickey Center, sought to understand why enrollment has declined and determine whether there is still a need for this program on campus.
Our challenge was to identify how the minor could be redesigned to better align with student needs.
We redesigned the International Studies minor to better align with student needs for flexibility, cohesion, and community – and to increase student enrolment.
Background & Starting Challenge
Solution
PROCESS
RESEARCH
In order to better understand the problem the International Studies Minor is facing, we compared the INTS minor to other minors at Dartmouth.
Secondary Research
Minor Requirements
We began by comparing the requirements of the INTS minor and other popular minors.
The structure of the INTS minor is more restrictive than other minors
The INTS minor requires four core courses that are each only offered once a year, whereas other minor departments require fewer core/introductory courses and offer them more frequently.
Additionally, other minors offer many different options for methods, elective, and seminar-level courses. The INTS minor limits this customization by requiring four predetermined courses.
Minor Enrollment
We reached out to the Registrar, seeking to understand whether the declining enrollment was an overall campus trend or specific to the INTS minor.
The INTS minor enrollment decreased by 61.9% and had the highest decline in enrollment out of all minors at Dartmouth from 2017 to 2021.
Notably, the newly implemented Global Health minor’s enrollment grew inversely proportional to the INTS minor.
47.2% of the people that declared the INTS minor ended up withdrawing or graduating incomplete.
RESEARCH
In order to better understand why fewer students are completing the International Studies Minor, we identified and interviewed the following stakeholder groups:
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Prospective minors
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Current INTS minors
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Minor drop-outs
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Students involved with other Dickey Center Programs
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Alumni of the INTS minor
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INTS minor core class professors
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Dickey Center staff
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We conducted fifteen interviews with various stakeholders to better understand their experiences with the INTS minor, and surveyed over thirty more to hear additional perspectives.
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User Interviews
RESEARCH
In order to better understand why fewer students are completing the International Studies Minor, we identified and interviewed the following stakeholder groups:
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We conducted fifteen interviews with various stakeholders to better understand their experiences with the INTS minor, and surveyed over thirty more to hear additional perspectives.
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User Interviews
Prospective minors
Current INTS minors
Minor drop-outs
INTS minor alumni
INTS minor core class professors
Dickey Center staff
SYNTHESIS
After this primary research, our team developed personas, journey maps, and empathy maps to synthesize our research into insights. …
We determined three key reasons students choose to declare, or not declare, a minor.
The Sticker: to demonstrate interests in a concrete way
(professionally motivated)
User Research Insights
The Community: to meet people with similar interests
(socially motivated)
The Skills: to advance learning about a particular topic
(academically motivated)
With these motivations in mind, we set out to understand where the minor’s offerings and student needs overlap. We found that there is a need for the minor, but that need does not align with what the INTS minor was created to fulfill.
We discovered that most students who completed the INTS minor specifically were motivated by the “sticker” because they sought to demonstrate their international interest and knowledge in a tangible and concrete manner.
Defining the Need
We discovered that although there was a select group of students for whom the sticker was enough motivation to complete the minor, there are several barriers that prevent students from starting or completing the minor.
We identified the following four core areas for improvement for the International Studies Minor to successfully attract and retain students.
COHESION
“I think my least favorite part [of the minor] was the lack of cohesiveness between the International Studies classes.” – Dartmouth ‘18 INTS Minor
Students and alumni consistently reported that the four core courses feel disconnected from each other and fail to build a cumulative academic experience. With this, we determined a need for cohesion among minor courses. Without this much needed sense of continuity, minors thought of the courses as “random” and struggled to see where they were building international skills.
FLEXIBILITY
“Class timing and the number of classes were so limited.” – Dartmouth ‘19, did not complete INTS minor
Many of our interviewees who did not complete the minor cited the limited flexibility as the reason. They pointed to both scheduling flexibility – as the core classes were offered infrequently and students struggled to take them – and flexibility of choice. Compared to other minors, the INTS minor does not allow students to customize the minor to their own interests within the subject area, which discourages many prospective minors.
COMMUNITY
“I'm hopeful that the Dickey Center can work towards building a stronger community for more students.” – Dartmouth ‘22 INTS Minor
The minor clearly demonstrated a need for community: none of the minors we spoke to could name another minor. In speaking to students in other minors, we found that students value meeting peers and finding mentors through shared classes. However, the Dickey Center’s past community-building initiatives, like picnics, had little attendance. Thus, our solution must integrate community development into its solution organically via the creation of shared experiences.
AWARENESS
I took it upon myself to search things up on Dartmouth's website and encountered [the minor] by chance there after my junior year ended and I happened to have requirements and course substitutions for it.” – Dartmouth ‘18 INTS Minor
The minor clearly demonstrated a need for community: none of the minors we spoke to could name another minor. In speaking to students in other minors, we found that students value meeting peers and finding mentors through shared classes. However, the Dickey Center’s past community-building initiatives, like picnics, had little attendance. Thus, our solution must integrate community development into its solution organically via the creation of shared experiences.
The minor structure hasn’t changed since it began in 2008, so what has?
Although the minor structure is the same as when it attracted many students, the motivations of students interested in completing the minor have.
The Sticker: more students are professionally-motivated than before
The Community: less community as minor enrollment has fallen
The Skills: lack of cohesion between core classes makes it feel like less cumulative skills are being built, and few “hard” skills to put on resume
HMW Statement
HMW attract more students to complete the INTS minor without sacrificing the integrity of their international studies education?
IDEATE
"Tracks" Version
"Buckets" Version
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Cover subject matter of all four core courses
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1 core course covering Violence & Security, Global Health, and International Development
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Supplemented by 1 “methods” course in cross-cultural understanding (Cultures, Places, and Identities)
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Joint teaching
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Allow students to pursue interest-based “tracks” of courses in other departments
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Likely less expensive
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Cover subject matter of all four core courses
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1 core course covering Violence & Security, Global Health, and International Development
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Supplemented by 1 “methods” course in cross-cultural understanding (Cultures, Places, and Identities)
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Joint teaching
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Allow students to pursue interest-based “tracks” of courses in other departments
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Likely less expensive
PROTOTYPE & TEST
Preliminary Testing & Initial Feedback
We conducted surveys and interviews with students and professors to get their feedback on these proposed ideas.
Interviews
Initial feedback was overwhelmingly positive and clearly pointed to the "buckets" version as a more popular solution.
“It allows for more flexibility and the idea of having a culminating seminar makes sense because students can take classes from each bucket and then can do a deep dive into what they're interested in”
– Dartmouth ‘23, Current INTS Minor
Surveys
Students were asked to rank the minor structures from 1 (Lowest) to 5 (Highest) on cohesion, ability to modify to fit specific interests, and scheduling flexibility. The proposed "buckets" redesign received significantly higher scores across these categories.
Feedback on the minor in its current form:
Refining Prototypes
Next, we continued to refine and add to the courses that fall under each "bucket" based on our research and conversations with faculty, staff, and students.
Feedback on the proposed "Buckets" redesign:
Final Proposed Solution
Following this testing and iteration, we landed on the following six "buckets," which align with the Dickey Center pillars.
REFLECT
Takeaways & Next Steps
I recently presented this proposed redesign to the International Studies Minor Steering Committee, and they voted to move forward with implementing this proposed "Buckets" version and restructuring minor requirements. While this process may take some time and there are still details to be refined, I am incredibly excited that this solution will be implemented.
This project was extremely rewarding, and I really enjoyed the process of working alongside other students as well as leading co-brainstorming sessions with our clients in order to arrive at this final redesign. Our partnership with the Dickey center staff was essential to developing a viable solution as they helped us to evaluate the feasibility of various solutions (based on budgeting constraints, stakeholder feedback, and administrative approval). It was at times challenging – but also extremely valuable experience – to work within the constraints of budgets and administrative bureaucracy, but I learned a lot from finding the balance between ideation without limitations and the reality of implementing ideas.
Ultimately, we determined that the long-term restructuring of the minor will require petitioning the Registrar and finalizing course syllabi, which fall outside the scope of our project. However, we were very aware of the long-term nature of our proposed solution during the handoff stage and I am confident that our client is well equipped to implement the solution.
PROTOTYPE & TEST
Preliminary Testing & Initial Feedback
We conducted surveys and interviews with students and professors to get their feedback on these proposed ideas.
Interviews
Initial feedback was overwhelmingly positive and clearly pointed to the "buckets" version as a more popular solution.
“It allows for more flexibility and the idea of having a culminating seminar makes sense because students can take classes from each bucket and then can do a deep dive into what they're interested in”
– Dartmouth ‘23, Current INTS Minor
Surveys
Students were asked to rank the minor structures from 1 (Lowest) to 5 (Highest) on cohesion, ability to modify to fit specific interests, and scheduling flexibility. The proposed "buckets" redesign received significantly higher scores across these categories.
Feedback on the minor in its current form:
Refining Prototypes
Next, we continued to refine and add to the courses that fall under each "bucket" based on our research and conversations with faculty, staff, and students.
Feedback on the proposed "Buckets" redesign:
Final Proposed Solution
Following this testing and iteration, we landed on the following six "buckets," each of which includes a selection of courses from different departments.
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Students will then choose one course from each of the buckets to complete the requirements.
Ability to substitute/choose classes creates flexibility
Senior Seminar creates community
Senior Seminar creates cohesion
Aligns with Dickey Center focus areas
Interdisciplinary
Allows for more breadth