Overview
The Digital Problem-Solving Initiative (DPSI) at Harvard University brings together a diverse group of learners (students, faculty, fellows, and staff) to work on projects to address problems and opportunities across the university. DPSI offers participants a novel opportunity to enhance and cultivate competency in various digital literacies as teams engage with research, design, and policy relating to the digital world. In addition to a rich, networked learning environment and an emerging community of practice, the program will offer students and and mentors a unique opportunity to invent, build, and shape the increasingly digital environment in which they live, learn, work, and create.
2015-2016: DPSI 3.0
DPSI offers participants a novel opportunity to enhance and cultivate competency in various digital literacies as teams engage with research, design, and policy relating to the digital world. In addition to a rich, networked learning environment and an emerging community of practice, the program offers participants a unique opportunity to invent, build, and shape the increasingly digital environment in which they live, learn, work, and create. In 2015-2016, DPSI explored a series of co-designed workshops, partnering with undergraduate and graduate student organizations, courses, and projects across the university.
2014-2015: DPSI 2.0
Over the course of the fall semester, DPSI teams worked on projects based in and around the Harvard community, using design thinking and other forms of creative problem solving to produce concrete solutions. Documentation by project teams can be found on the DPSI website, and teams presented at a Fall Review. In the spring, DPSI hosted a number of speakers, skill-based workshops, and hackathons, as well as several new projects.
2013-2014: Pilot
The 2013-2014 pilot program (link to the Pilot page, listed below) provided an exciting opportunity for participants to work with experienced mentors and engage with concrete use cases, collaborating to produce tangible outputs. Each team engaged with a unique digital use case or “problem.” Initial use cases emerged from conversations among mentors about real concerns, curiosities, and challenges that surfaced in diverse domains of teaching, study, and work across Harvard. The pilot’s approach was to be practical yet experimental: each team was charged with defining its focus, devising its own model for working together, and delivering concrete outputs that accorded with its vision. For an overview of the pilot, click here for a brief video.