Reflection Process Redesign
Experiential Learning Program at a Large University
Stakeholders had competing priorities that couldn’t be ignored:
Faculty wanted a streamlined way to review submissions before student meetings
The program director wanted to redesign the assignments entirely
Division directors needed consistent activities across the university to support a data project
A new Registrar policy on Incomplete grades added a compliance requirement
The Situation
As the Operations & Data Lead for a 40-person undergraduate experiential learning program, I identified that 70% of students were not completing required reflection activities, despite the assignments being tied to a pass/fail grade. Faculty inconsistently enforced the grading policy, often issuing "Incomplete" or passing grades regardless of completion. I proposed a project to diagnose and resolve the completion problem, which required aligning (and in some cases reorienting) stakeholders across four groups around a shared definition of success-- and none of them reported to me.
The Approach
The Complexity
Rather than defaulting to the director’s initial solution, I worked through a structured process:
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At every level to define what “success” looked like from each perspective— which reframed the problem from “redesign the assignments” to “fix the workflow and grading consistency”
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Of 5 possible platforms and workflows, consulting other programs, the system vendor & administrators, and the university’s lead instructional designer
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Only one system could satisfy all stakeholders, so I built a prototype with light business process documentation and facilitated a live feedback session with the full team
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Managed from end-to-end, including faculty training, revised student communications, and regular status updates to keep the team invested.
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Framed the process as a v1.0 from the start, then conducted a “lessons learned” session after the pilot to refine v2.0
~90% of students completed reflection activities by the original deadline
Of the ~10% who received an Incomplete, ~80% resolved it within the extended window— bringing cohort-wide completion to 98%
Faculty applied grading policies consistently across cohorts
The program met both the division’s data needs and the Registrar’s compliance requirements