Assessing the Impact of Career and Life Design through Innovative Hybrid Evaluation and Digital Storytelling

This paper outlines the innovative integration and evaluation of a for-credit Life Design module within the formal curriculum of a university in Ireland, the first time Life Design has been introduced for academic assessment in this context. The module forms part of a larger project at the University of Galway, Designing Futures (DF), which has been funded by the Irish Government (€7.5m, 2020-2025) to support student entrepreneurship, innovation and cross-disciplinary and research-led learning. Furthermore, DF is concerned with the rounded and holistic formation of the student, including supporting them in discerning their personal and professional life goals. The Life Design module facilitates this specific aspect of the DF project, engaging students with a diverse set of Life Design tools as they encounter key life concepts and questions, helping them to figure out how to get more out of the college experience and what they might choose to do upon graduation. This article is focusing on how the Design Your Life module has been designed and refined since its introduction in 2021-2022. The iterative design of the Life Design module has been underpinned by assessment and evaluation. The discussion illustrates how student feedback and learning have been ascertained and assessed. This includes the use of innovative digital storytelling as a narrative mode of assessment, one that we have found is well-suited to the process-oriented, personal and professional development goals of Life Design. While this paper predominantly focuses on undergraduate education in a university setting, the assessment and evaluation strategies, heuristics and digital storytelling outlined here can be adopted and adapted to develop and enhance Life Design innovations in diverse contexts beyond college education.