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Action Collabs are facilitated workshops that use design-thinking to engage in a dynamic and creative process focused on solutions. Action Collabs spark innovation and breathe new life into challenges at all levels of education. Participants engage in a dynamic and creative process that takes them from brainstorming to prototyping to, ultimately, creating new and viable solutions.
At Big Ideas Fest, Action Collabs are facilitated in small-groups made of a diverse mix of education stakeholders. Cohorts focus on a design challenge that primarily gives focus to the Action Collab and models a process that incorporates design-thinking and discovery. Big Ideas Fest 2010 design challenges include:
• How to enable teachers to have the greatest impact on learners.
• How to create learning opportunities for students pushed out of formal education.
• How to create alternatives for certifying or credentialing learning, as a means of expanding education and career opportunities.
Watch Video of Big Ideas Fest 2010 Prototypes and Commentary
Action Collab 1: Identifying Opportunities
Identifying Opportunities considers the Design Challenge and delves into possible opportunities for addressing the central issue. The group first conducts research from people directly connected to the problem area and then brainstorms new opportunities for change.
Action Collab 2: Design
The Design lab digs into the Identified Opportunities and generates truly impractical designs that later spark relevant and reasonable designs. Quantity, not quality, is the building block during the design phase and rapid brainstorming generates many design ideas in which one is chosen to Prototype.
Action Collab 3: Prototype
Prototyping is a methodology for making solutions tangible in a rapid and low-investment way. During this lab, the group is encourages to quickly create many prototypes that highlight different aspects of a product or service. Prototyping before creation enables people to give honest feedback on each approach and prevents the team from getting prematurely attached to an idea.
Action Collab 4: Scale and Spread
This lab focuses on expanding the group’s idea into the world by deciding how it fits within a larger scope and then developing details of how the idea is dispersed. The group considers real world obstacles to the scale and spread of their idea and creates feasible resolutions.
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| Design Team |
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Combining acumen in educational research and practices with global design expertise and the transformative power of improv, the Action Collab Design Team creates dynamic experiences in thought and action.
If you'd like to bring the creative and results-driven Action Collabs to your organization, please email
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Lisa Petrides is president and founder of the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), an independent non-profit educational research institute. Her research seeks to inform and improve the ways in which those in formal and informal education foster the creation and sharing of information, apply it to well-defined problems, and create knowledge-driven environments focused on improved learning and organizational success.
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 Jonah Houston is a senior project leader at IDEO in Palo Alto. He works on a wide variety of projects ranging from medical devices, office furniture, consumer electronics, food and beverage, and large-scale systems design. |
 Chris Miller has been performing and teaching improv for almost 20 years. He co-founded LifePlays, which brings the powerfully transformative and connective skills of improv to communities and innovative workplaces, such as Google, Genentech, Microsoft, and Whole Foods. |
 Samantha Wayne brings education program design & facilitation to ISKME. She loves contributing to the growth, creativity, and collaboration of communities. Her background includes facilitating group therapy, teaching college courses, training unemployed adults on the importance of networking, and managing after school art programs. |
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| Lab Facilitators |
 Maggie Barber, professor
Barber is a faculty member in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Utah where her teaching and research focuses on the design, delivery, and evaluation of leadership development programs for school leaders leading change, particularly in high-need communities.
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 Rich Cox, improviser, performer, coach, consultant, author
Cox is a communication and acting coach who brings creativity, collaboration, and presentation from theater to organizations and businesses. Cox teaches performance improv acting to students in the Bay Area.
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 Elizabeth Doty, organizational learning consultant, coach, and author of "The Compromise Trap"
Since 1993, Doty’s firm, WorkLore, has focused on diagnosing breakdowns and dysfunctions in large, complex organizations, helping clients such as Intuit, Hewlett-Packard, and Archstone-Smith capitalize on hidden opportunities to improve performance. |
 Carl Mack, cultural diversity, group dynamics, human relations consultant and facilitator
For the past 35 years, Mack has worked at all levels of education including teaching elementary and university students, chairing both Ethnic Studies and African and African American Studies at UC Davis, and serving as a public school superintendent.
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 Lionel Mohri, systems designer, project leader
Mohri works at the intersection of Transformation, Systems Design and the Public Sector. He consistently brings systemic, transformative and empathic thinking to solving complex challenges. Since joining IDEO, he has worked on challenges as diverse as designing a needle-free vaccination device for pandemic flu to designing a training curriculum to transform airport security.
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 Erin O'Connell, professor
O’Connell teaches Classics and Comparative Literature at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Her scholarly interests include ancient and modern comparisons of literature, performance, and philosophy, and she is committed to making education relevant to today’s students.
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 Andrea Saveri, foresight and strategy developer, researcher, sense-maker
Savari applies insights from futures research and emerging technologies to develop strategy and market opportunities. Recently, she created a 2020 forecast of the future context for education, including a map of key trends driving change, disruptive innovation areas, and implications for re-designing public learning systems. |
 Megan Simmons, teacher, trainer, environmental educator
Simmons supports the development of education programs, workshops, and training activities for the OER Commons project at ISKME. She is particularly passionate about providing environmental education and art programs to underserved communities nationally and internationally. |
Samantha Wayne, education program design & facilitation
Wayne loves contributing to the growth, creativity, and collaboration of communities at ISKME. Her background includes facilitating group therapy, teaching college courses, training unemployed adults on the importance of networking, and managing after school art programs.
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2010 Big Ideas Fest 
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