School of Wellbeing

The Context

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In 2020, The Social Innovation Institute at MacEwan University and RECOVER drafted a strategy to bring together students and faculty at post-secondary institutions, as well as community stakeholders, to engage in learning and projects that would improve the wellbeing of Edmontonians. We are learning how to work with post secondary institutions to connect individuals, classrooms, and teams to RECOVER’s wellbeing framework and prototypes.

The objectives of the strategy are to:

  • Strengthen the partnership between RECOVER and post-secondary institutions.

  • Build a larger pool of innovators equipped to engage in urban wellness projects.

  • Build capacity of post secondaries to support scaling of prototypes and understanding of urban wellness.

  • Better equip post secondary students with social innovation tools.

Relation to RECOVER’s Wellbeing Framework

Targeted outcomes: connection to community and the human project

Tools/Levers: knowledge & meanings, frames & narratives, and roles & resources levers

What We Did

During 2020, we worked with two courses at MacEwan University: BUSN 201 – Introduction to Sustainable Business and ANTH 394- Ethnographic Research Methods. The BUSN 201 course integrated RECOVER’s research and wellbeing framework into existing case study assignments. The assignments were tested in the Summer 2020 and Fall 2020 semesters. For the ANTH 394 course assignments and materials were co-created by the RECOVER team and the professor and used in the Fall 2020 semester. The assignments focused on using ethnographic research methods to understand current work being carried out by the City of Edmonton and applying the wellbeing framework.

What We Learned

The RECOVER Team and MacEwan University inadvertently experimented with different ways of being in relation to each other: a way of being that was transactional in nature, and a way of being that was relational in nature. For the relational interaction, the relationship between team members has extended beyond the individual course, and has resulted in items and actions that achieved more engagement and excitement in the wellbeing framework, and better outcomes for both parties, as well as promising future collaborations.

While the students reported to understand the framework, it was observed that putting the framework into practice was more challenging. People who currently work in strategy and systemic change have learned how to interpret frameworks and tools, and how they can be applied to different situations. Undergraduate students have not yet had that opportunity. This brings forward the importance of RECOVER to create tools and techniques to enable non-experts to understand and apply the framework. Students provide an optimal audience of testing, and even co-designing such tools, in the future.

The team also learned that RECOVER’s involvement in the classroom can be off-the-shelf or custom-built. The two courses utilized two different models that provided a glimpse of how RECOVER’s post-secondary strategy might be scaled.

The “off-the-shelf” version allows RECOVER to scale out -- basic existing research could be provided to professors to include as case studies within their existing course materials. RECOVER would be able to reach a larger number of professors and students using this approach.

The “custom built” version allows RECOVER to scale deep -- working closely with a smaller number of professors and students, RECOVER would be able to more deeply understand the nuances of the desired outcomes of each course, and co-create course material that would help deepen RECOVER’s application of the wellbeing framework; and at the same time, help students more deeply explore the wellbeing framework.

See our Evaluation Report here.

Where to From Here

The team will continue to work to determine shared outcomes. In addition, the team will explore options for future course-based learning, and how RECOVER might work in partnership with researchers. Finally -- and importantly -- the RECOVER team will continue to nourish existing relationships with post-secondary partners, and cultivate new ones.