- List the top 20 questions your team needs to answer to advance the venture forward. Categorize the questions if necessary.
We LVSIF members are from three different projects: Beyond Bars, Immersive Virtue Reality, and First-Generation University Students. Each project has given several questions.
General:
1) How can we impact the local community?
7) How do you maximize the reach of local projects?
12) How can university students make a difference in the local community?
Beyond Bars:
2) What’s the problem with the social justice system in the U.S.?
6) What causes mass incarceration in the U.S.?
10) How does cultural diversity affect our community?
15) What’s the relationship between the living conditions and the rate of incarceration?
Immersive VR:
4) How can immersive VR impact learning at Lehigh University?
5) How can immersive VR affect learning for disengaged students?
9) What other ways can immersive VR be used to change methods of education?
11) How difficult might it be to implement immersive VR in a public school?
13) To what extent video gaming practices could help/hinder the Lehigh immersive VR project development?
First Gen:
3) How can higher education impact low-income communities?
8) How does social media/other online sub-cultures affect students’ points of view about higher education?
14) What specific social values/customs that may prevent a low-income student to pursue high education?
- Develop and Visualize the Theory of Change (Logic Model) for your venture.
For Beyond Bars Project, our stakeholders are women in prison or work in prison, experts studying the social justice system in the U.S., student researchers, actors, police chief, theatres such as Icehouse, and organizations such as Mustard & Cheese and Pride Center.
Our input is time and research. For example, we will visit the Northampton Prison, talk to Doctor Bonnie, organize the play, and reach out to different organizations.
Our resources include Lehigh University, organizations, theatres, and the community.
For output, we plan to have a discussion in the Pride Center with people who are interested in this project. After that, we are going to arrange a play in the social justice center, Icehouse. There will be a donation after play, and we decide to donate the money to the Northampton Prison.
The expected outcome is to reduce the incarceration rate and the recidivism rate. We hope to raise people’s awareness and understanding of the mass incarceration situation in the U.S. through our efforts. If we succeed in arousing the audience’s empathy, there might be less discrimination.
- Develop an M&E plan for your venture.
Short-term:
1) 100 audience for the play
2) Complete the discussion in the Pride Center
3) Donation
Long-term:
1) Decrease the incarceration rate
2) Reduce discrimination and possible conflicts
3) Lower the recidivism rate
Good work – you came up with some nice guiding questions for your project. Your outcome is great in your logic model – really your ultimate goal of change.