Collab Lab 73 Recap & Notes

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs February 19, 2026February 19, 2026experiential learing, Marquette, MATC, MIAD, MSOE, UWM

Last week’s Collab Lab brought together the folks who coordinate and support experiential learning at UWM, Marquette, MSOE, MIAD, and MATC together for a discussion focused on how we might connect experiential learning opportunities in higher-ed to those in K-12 with benefits to all sides.

Goals

We began the discussion but asking what we hope experiential learning can offer to students as well as educators, in higher-ed, or within K-12. While the group called out a few direct impacts– public service, skill development, exposure to new environments, the opportunity to make connections to material presented in the classroom, it was what might happen that seemed to offer a greater spark. The greatest value in experiential learning may come from the unanticipated impact, a passion is ignited in a student that sends them on an unforeseen journey, they gain insight into and empathy for the lives of others, they feel empowered to set a course for their own lives.

More goals came out, even as the discussion moved on, in particular, that experiential learning opportunities could help pave a path of success, a livable wage, and meaningful work.

Capabilities

Our next point of discussion focused on the capabilities and opportunities that higher-ed and K-12 can bring to support experiential learning. It’s a long list.

Context

Sense of belonging
Uniqueness of experience
Opportunity to explore cultural interests
Opportunity to co-develop learning experiences with educator, student, mentor, partner

Resources/Facilities

Network connections
- mentors
- community resources
- business/industry partners
- Alumni
Career information
K-12 educators within Museums
Offices of community engagement within higher-ed
Models of successful programs
- MKE Roots
Labs/equipment not available in K-12 schools

Structure/Process

Opportunities to connect to community and employment
Best practices:
- Self reflection
- use of artifacts as evidence of learning
- intake models to assess knowledge and skills
- assessment models
Dual Enrollment
MPS Learning Journeys program
Service learning programs/requirements
Credential stacking
Internships
Diversity funds
Centers to connect college students with businesses
- MIAD Innovation Center
- UWM Center for Student Experience & Talent
- MSOE Create Institute

As participants talked through this point, they also made note of what they would like to see put in place to support experiential learning, including:

Having a passionate advocate or champion for a project in the community that can draw the attention and support of those who might create experiential learning opportunities to further the work.
Look for ways to get employers involved, build relationships that that can lead to internship and employment opportunities.
Look for what is in place already that can be brought to K-12
Take time to find where the gaps are and work to address them
Make the work intentional– ask those you are working for what they want and need
Create opportunities within these experiences to learn bout careers
Build and extend relationships
Localization of education/jobs & pathways

What gets in the way

While the capabilities and possibilities are many, there are always barriers.

Discovery

The ability to:

find the right partners, where collaboration is mutually beneficial and builds value for both sides
see the value in partnership with K-12, particularly for industry partners
be aware of possibilities

Friction

Fatigue on teachers, companies, nonprofits to take on new work or engage for the duration
Staff turnover
Time required for planning vs doing
Culture of institutions to deal with disruptive rather than incremental change
Training required for partners and mentors
Development level of students matched to opportunity for growth
- social emotional skills
- soft skills
Pressures for academic success
Institutional gatekeeping of knowledge and relationships
Transportation for students
Misalignment of academic calendars
Misalignment of K-12 hours with availability of college students
Lack of training for community partners to collaborate effectively with students
Process and paperwork
- background checks
Focus on test results/scores/metrics
Long time horizons and relationships needed to make progress
Demographic/generational chasms

Roadblocks

Priorities of institution or district
Schools’ idea of their role and work, and the role of the educator limits ideas and new approaches
Structure of school system for faculty to build relationships with the community/time to engage higher-ed, companies, local business.
Lack of capacity
- staff,
- time,
- money
Lack of courage to try/mind set & culture
Lack of systems for K-12/Higher-ed collaboration within smaller firms/organizations
Ability to get management buy-in
Misalignment of investment in capital rather than talent pipeline
Curriculum does not allow space
Budget constraints/pressures
Inflexible structures
Both levels are under attack in terms of
- money
- content
- freedoms
- how to deal with AI
Lack of trust
Inadequate infrastructure to support collaboration with minimal friction
Institutional rigidity/inability to adapt to change

Opportunities

Never wanting to end on a note of despair, we wrapped up the discussion by asking each table to pick a single issue and offer a suggestion for how it might be addressed. Bonus points for identifying an action someone could take this week to get things moving.

Group 1

Issue: Getting the opportunity just to explore and and experience

Change needed: Stepping of of the rigidity to embrace things that are invaluable, but de-valued

Goals: Let students just be and explore without concern that there is a specific standard to be met

Who needs to be involved: Sandra @ Greenfield has the freedom and transportation to get a group of students off campus; Students have a portfolio project to do as a graduation requirement; Marisa Riepenhoff from the Milwaukee Art Museum can offer a MAM behind the scenes program for Sandra’s students

Where to start: An email to set it up! [5 bonus points awarded]

Group 2

Issue: Within K-12, a lack of curiosity (play, passion, exploration) that links to career (purpose, exploration, thrivable way, stacked credentials, mentorship)

Change needed: Fun & engaging educators, identify opportunities for play within industry, classroom is everywhere, instructor is everyone teachers are evaluated on the hope & joy youth/students experience not just standardized testing.

Goals: Get everyone on the same page with a mission purpose, culture to increase hope and joy

Who needs to be involved: classroom and community, industry (professionals & mentors); youth decision making & expression; evaluators, practitioners, administrators

Where to start: Case study: Strengthen relationship between classroom & community; inject curiosity into early education, insert purpose & joy within shadowing, apprenticeships, hands on learning.

Group 3

Issue: Transportation for entry points– students & corporate partners.

Change needed: Bring the outside in– for the right age group

Goals: Authentic experiences

Who needs to be involved: Mentors, students, corporate partners

Where to start: Virtual options/ride sharing

Group 4

Issue: The system itself

Change needed: break the tradition

Goals: Stronger collaboration

Who needs to be involved: A risk taker/change agent

Where to start: Show up and Follow up!

Group 5

Issue: How to educate the community on the value of project based learning

Change needed: Greater appreciation for the value of project based learning

Goal: Hit enrollment target for Action Research Charter School

Who needs to be involved: Respected voices who can speak to the value of PBL: business community, higher ed, PBL alum

Where to start: Reach out to the school/alum

Thanks

A big thanks to the MSOE STEM Center for hosting us, and to all of our featured participants:

Natalie Villegas — Director, MSOE’s CREATE Institute
Kelsey Otero — Sr. Director of Community Engagement, Marquette University
Kristin Steinbach Holtz — Experiential Learning Manager, MIAD
Josephine Gómez — Dean of Community Education & Strategic Engagement, MATC
Ben Trager — Director of Community Engagement and Experiential Learning, UWM’s Center for Student Experience & Talent

Collab Lab 23 Recap

Pete Reynolds Collab Labs December 14, 2018December 16, 201888.9 Labs, Brinn Labs, Immersive Media Lab, Islands of Brilliance, Kohl's, MIAD, Open Lab, The Commons, UWM

The idea for last night’s Collab Lab came from Chris Willey after a conversation we had last summer. Chris runs UWM’s Immersive Media Lab, and had recognized that there are a bunch of organizations in Milwaukee doing interesting work in innovation and entrepreneurship at the edges of K-12. He suggested we use one of this season’s Collab Lab as a way to help educators understand what the organizations are up to, and uncover areas for collaboration. We started with a list of organizations– UWM’s Immersive Media Lab, MIAD’s Open Lab, Kohl’s Innovation Center, The Commons, 88.9 Labs, Islands of Brilliance, Brinn Labs, and brought a group together to talk through what this might look like.

Collab Lab regulars know that our aim is not to talk at attendees, but to foster conversation among them, so a series of presentations was out from the start. Since real collaboration requires alignment of more than just short term interests. Real collaboration comes out not just shared goals, but shared values.

This notion gave us both the first step in our process– having participants describe what it is that drives the work they do– and the idea to have Marvin Pope come in as a guest facilitator. Marvin’s passion is helping others understand and share their purpose, so it was a natural fit. We were delighted that agreed to do so and was willing to work with us to refine the process he’d lead participants through.

Here’s where we landed…

To start, Marvin asked each participant to capture in a sentence or two, their purpose, and the work they do that is guided by that purpose. Participants then shared what they had written, first with whomever they were seated next to, and then within their discussion group. Here’s some of what participants shared:

I’m on a mission to connect math teachers and transform classrooms
To facilitate others to become life-long learners
To expose students to opportunities and experiences
Helping students and teachers rethink learning through new means of instruction and student centered practices

We followed that by asking participants to note what they need to keep moving forward with their work. This too was done first individually, and then shared within the discussion group. One of the goals here was to illustrate that it is not just educators who need help getting to where they want to be. Representatives from each of the organizations were part of each discussion group, and they talked through their purpose, work and needs as well. Here we heard things like:

A support system that believes in the work I do
Teachers willing to collaborate
Ideas and perspectives that augment my own

In past sessions when we’ve led discussions about how to move past barriers, these focused on the common barriers to common goals of the participants. Last night we focused on the specific needs of each participant. Participants had been documenting their thoughts on paper form we created for the session. At this point we everyone pass their forms to the right, to gather ideas from each of the other participants within their discussion group. Once those made it all the way around the table, we let the groups talk through what they had written. The most interesting feedback I got was after the session ended when one attendee, commenting on this process noted “I was expecting a lot of You shoulds. What came back was a lot of I can help withs.”

We wrapped up the process by having attendees jot down what their path forward now looks like. At the end, the form they completed, told the story of the purpose behind their work, the hurdles they face, the help they can get within the community, and where that help will take them. We invited participants to share their story with the group as a whole, by posting their form on the wall, or telling their story on a digital voice recorder to be shared more broadly.

Sorry, no big, overall summary of the discussion to report, just the good news that the process seemed to spark a lot of ideas around how attendees may work together to get where they want to be.

Thanks again to The Commons for providing the space and to Marvin and our featured participants for the experience and insight they brought to the discussion:

Marvin Pope – BU

Tarik Moody – 88.9 Labs
Bill Pariso, Becki Johnson, Pete Prodoehl – Brinn Labs
Nick Grbavac – The Commons
Mike Klug, Tanmay Mhatre, Josh Delzer – Kohl’s Innovation Center
Mark Fairbanks & Amy Mason – Islands of Brilliance
Chris Willey – UWM’s Immersive Media Lab
Ben Dembroski – MIAD’s Open Lab

Rube Goldberg Parts Giveaway

The highest form of recycling is reuse… in a Rube Goldberg Machine

Participating in STEM Forward’s Rube Goldberg Competitions? Looking for ideas and/or parts for your project? With our partners in this event, we’ll be giving away both. We’ll also have equipment you can take apart to find what you are looking for. Join us on Saturday March 10th in MIAD’s Student Union between 10 am and 1 pm.

Gears
Motors
Rods
Tubing
PVC Pipe
Wheels
Springs
Hinges
Magnets
Linkages
Parts from old typewriters and telephones
Weird stuff that someone found and thought might be useful to someone someday

Participating Organizations:

This event is free, but registration is required

Laying the groundwork for Forensic Illustration

Pete Reynolds Blog, Up-Cycling December 4, 2017December 5, 2018makerspace, MIAD, Sharp Literacy, up-cycle

Sometimes things just seem to fall into place

Over the summer we took a group of makers from area schools, Betty Brinn, and MIAD down to Goodwill’s E-Cycling facility for a tour of the facility and to do a bit of shopping. After seeing the kind of material that comes through the E-Cycling program, we sat down with their folks to talk through the types of equipment that would have parts that could be useful to makers. It didn’t take much time for Goodwill to set aside a pallet full of material for us to play with.

In August we held a pallet party at MIAD for a small group of educators and students to take apart equipment (typewriters, sewing machines, DVD players, old phones, etc.) that had come through Goodwill’s E-Cycling program. The goal was to find the parts that would be useful in school makerspaces and return the un-used material to Goodwill’s recycling stream. At the time, Ben Dembroski, our host at MIAD, suggested that it would interesting to see if we could engage Milwaukee area students to document how to take different pieces of equipment apart and where the useful parts are.

In September we took the equipment we had left to Maker Faire where we were mobbed for three days by kids wanting to take stuff apart. A number of educators who stopped by the booth asked if we could do something like this at their school.

In October we connected with Sharp Literacy, a local non-profit that uses the visual arts to build literacy and math skills. Some of the schools Sharp is working in are looking at ways to incorporate makerspace activity. They were intrigued by the idea of having students take apart equipment and illustrate it’s function within the device. AKA Forensic Illustration, AKA the first installment of Ben’s student-produced guide for how to take things apart.

We brought everyone together over lunch at MIAD and hatched a plan. We bring the equipment, MIAD provides student interns to help coach tear-down and illustration work, Sharp Literacy opens time in their program for the effort and works with the students to guide the process. We hope to cap off the project with a tour of at MIAD where students can show off their work. Useful parts can stay at the school or go to another school that can use them; the rest get recycled.

Last Tuesday we went out to Thurston Woods where students took apart DVD drives, a circular saw, printer, keyboard, camera, and a few other odds and ends in our collection. Today we were out at Browning Elementary to do more of the same. We were thrilled to see the students dive in and work together with little more instruction than “righty-tighty, lefty-loosey”.

We knew from our experience at Maker Faire that students can get deeply engaged taking things apart. Our goal for these two sessions was to get a sense of the time required to take apart different pieces of equipment, and what the students found most interesting. We’ll use what we’ve learned so far to craft the approach we take when we kick off the forensic illustration project next semester.

MIAD