Policy Innovation Lab Class Resource Portfolio
Member Institution
Carnegie Mellon University
Resource Summary
Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College offers a seven-week class, Policy Innovation Lab, that pairs student teams with state-level policymakers to tackle local challenges.
Distinguished Service Professor Christopher Goranson, who leads the class, has developed a course resource portfolio that may help guide other university instructors who are planning a similar policy lab course. This full Policy Innovation Lab course resource portfolio is available on the Canvas website for use under a NonCommercial ShareAlike license.
The Policy Lab is taught as a project-based course with student teams and public interest partnerships. The resources in the course portfolio can help an instructor structure the overarching class, train the students in public interest technology, scope challenges with the partners, lead the students through sprints to create deliverables, make progress on their efforts, and hand off their work.
In the past, the Policy Lab class model has been used for smart cities, climate resiliency, and other distinct topics. Its structure and resources can be adapted to different kinds of challenges.
The course portfolio includes the following resources for instructors to explore and adapt:
- Pre-readings, including public interest tech literature review, design sprint overviews, lab playbook.
- Sample Project Briefs, which can guide the instructor and partners on how to scope out the challenges given to student teams.
- Team Pages, which show how students and partners work together over the course using different tech platforms, and what work deliverables look like (including on GitHub, Mural, Slack, Trello, and Google Drive).
- Sprint and Course Work plans, which have outlines of the main activities of the class, the templates used by student teams, weekly readings, and example work product.
- Lecture Materials for the instructors to use, with details and examples of the weekly topics.
- Assignment and Grading Rubric to manage students’ participation, project work, and ongoing documentation.
