2025 June Virtual Life Design Studio

Instruction will be held in the Pacific Time Zone

DATES June 5, 6, 9, 10, 11

WHO The Studio is for university educators (higher education faculty, administrators, or staff) from any 4-year or 2-year post secondary institution (university, college, junior college, community college, technical school.) This includes tenure-track, non-tenure track and adjunct/clinical faculty, and those who serve students and/or faculty at their schools — program directors and managers, deans and associate deans, provosts, career educators and coaches etc., so long as your appointment is at least 80% time at the institution.

FORMAT This event is taught in English. The five day synchronous training sessions will take place on Zoom. On Days 1-3, the session will be held from 8:00 AM - 1:00 PM PT. On Day 4, our synchronous session instruction will occur from 8:00 AM - 1:00 PM and we highly suggest participants block 2 hours after instructional time (1:00 - 3:00 PM PT) to work with their teams on their curricular prototypes. On Day 5, the training will be a full day retreat from 8:00 AM - 2:30 PM PT inclusive of a lunch break.

Outside of the synchronous time, participants will be invited to engage in asynchronous work (no more than 1-2 hours during each 24 hour period). During all sessions we will engage in synchronous learning through assessments, design challenges, highly interactive discussions in breakouts and plenary sessions, and generous breaks throughout the day. Our goal is to make the time spent on Zoom highly collaborative and energetic. We use MIRO (an ideation platform), Google products and interactive Zoom features to support learning.

The online Studio will be especially useful in getting a feel for teaching life design virtually. It will introduce you to the global cohort of life design educators and facilitate development of collaborative relationships to support your work. The power of the Studio lies in this radical collaboration.

Attendance for all synchronous sessions is required - this is not a webinar but an active design process, and by enrolling you are indicating your commitment to be fully present online throughout the entirety of all 5 synchronous days, with access to necessary tech and able to participate interactively with peers.

AGENDA

On Day 1 and Day 2 - Plan to immerse as a learner. You will experience life design curriculum first hand as a student in any of our classes would. We ask that for these first two days you come with a beginner's mindset and a generative curiosity.

On Day 3 - Wrap up the experience as a learner and take time to dive more deeply into the pedagogy and materials in preparation for the opportunity to build your own curriculum design. You will begin the process of designing your curriculum prototype.

On Day 4 - You will continue building your prototype with the support of coaches and have the opportunity to get feedback from your fellow peers.

On Day 5 - You will use the mindset of bias towards action to build, envision, prototype, and tell the story of what life design at your University could look and feel like.

WHAT DO WE GET?

• Immersive training in the life design material: how to apply life design to yourself and your own professional development and how to launch life design projects, programs, classes and more at your university, with a specific focus on virtual tools and delivery.

• Virtual teaching best practices: learn how to create community and to spark engagement even in the virtual environment. Discuss virtual best practices and tips to make every class you teach more engaging.

• Personalized coaching: we will have experienced facilitators to help you build prototypes and give you feedback.

• Materials: you will have access to our syllabi and lesson plans, all our slides, recommended class and workshop sequences, and handouts and activities we use, including modules built for in person and for online delivery. All of our materials are licensed under Creative Commons, not for profit. This means you can share them with your institution for educational purposes only, and you cannot use them for profit.

• Post-workshop support: we hold virtual office hour sessions to workshop the experiments you are trying back at home and host alumni sharing their work in addition to sending a monthly newsletter full of information to help you build your life design practice.

• A Higher Ed Life Design Community: access to the 1,000 or so other university educators also working in life design.

WHAT DO WE NEED TO BRING?

• First and foremost, comfy clothes, an open mind, and a schedule cleared to create space for full engagement. Imagine you were going to be in person with us - that's the kind of schedule clearing we mean!

• As good a wifi connection as you might be able to access

• A journal to write in and some blank or recycled paper you can tear up (we use 8.5x11 but anything is fine) and a writing utensil

• We will ask you to do some pre-work to support your work in the virtual sessions. Before the training begins, you will create a Look Book page, Workview, World/Lifeview, and a private Social Identity Reflection, along with preparing to engage with MIRO, our ideation platform. We will also ask you to complete additional homework between sessions.
• Bonus: colored markers, post its (these are not at all necessary but can be fun to use for certain activities). Please do not buy anything additional for this Studio training and use what you have in your house.
• Designing Your Life Books: Not required.

• Designing Your Life : Having the book is not required during the Studio, but having read it is helpful, though not necessary.

• Designing Your Work Life : This training is aimed at the materials used in higher ed which gave rise to the book Designing Your Life. We will share a few tools which also show up in Designing Your Work Life, but most of this book is aimed at mid career professionals and thus not the focus of this training.

• Can I buy books for my students or staff? Yes! Through amazon is best. We sadly do not have any bulk deals.

COMMUNITY You are and will be one another's best resources, co-conspirators and collaborators. We will be doing a lot of what we call radical collaboration in the Studio Zoom sessions. Be prepared to share with one another your pre-work assignments (excepting the social identity reflection which will be private) and other reflections. To support this community after the Studio, we will also be inviting you to a closed LinkedIn Group and other forms of virtual communication to fuel one another’s life design practices.

ADDITIONAL ACCOMMODATIONS Please contact Brittany at [email protected] if you have any special needs not captured in the Eventbrite form.

TICKETS Individual tickets to the 2025 June Virtual Life Design Studio are priced as follows in $USD. We encourage early registration for best pricing.

• $2,000 for early bird tickets available until April 15, 2025
• $2,200 for standard rate tickets available until May 22, 2025
• $2,700 - After May 22, late registration tickets are available until June 3 at noon, two days prior to the event.

NOTE: This is a primarily synchronous event and it is extremely important that you be fully engaged each of the five synchronous days. Missing any part of synchronous days will be detrimental for your learning, so much so that if you foresee having any issues being completely present each of these days we highly suggest you consider attending a future Virtual Life Design Studio.

Have an emergency? Are virtually lost? Reach out to Brittany, our logistics wizard, at [email protected]

Host or Publisher Life Design Lab