Understanding the problem statement
The event kicked off on Friday, March 28 at the TechHub inside Creativity Commons on the ASU Tempe campus.
Brooke Lipsitz, TLN program manager, co-presented the problem statement being tackled by students in the Spark Challenge. Lipsitze presented alongside Kate Giovacchini, executive director of ASU’s TLN and ASU Pocket.
“There are 42 million students in the United States with some college, no degree,” Lipsitz said. “And there's also a conundrum with what's called stranded credits, so millions of course credentials that people have earned along their journey … they have value, but they don't have a transfer equivalency to the institution you're trying to go to, or they're not accessible because the institution you earn them at has long since closed.”
Close to 50 ASU students across disciplines joined the one-day challenge. Students had five hours to plan, brainstorm and present their solutions for one or both platforms, resulting in a real-world impact on a growing industry for students, graduates and more.
Meet the winning teams
Of the 12 teams that participated in the Spark Challenge, team UXperts and team NiSH came out on top for their innovative ideas for ASU Pocket and TLN, respectively.
ASU students on team UXperts included graduate students Poorva Ketkar, Vandan Gohil, Callie Dunkel, and undergrad Kat Lozano; the team offered new features for ASU Pocket intended to organize credentials, extract skills and endorsements, and, “provide a clear, validated and actionable representation,” of user journeys and skills.
“What we ideated was an onboarding and guiding screen, extracting skills out of credentials or badges and requesting/receiving endorsements from university professors and mentors,” the team said. “If we had more time, we would want to expand the AI resume extension, and that AI assistant would help you develop a resume and give you a nice launch point that you could also edit based on everything you've uploaded.”
Graduate student Shailee Shah and undergrad Nidhi Mehta made up team NiSH, focusing on improving onboarding, engagement, and interactivity on TLN, a platform allowing learners to collect, explore and share verifiable digital credentials gathered across lifetimes on a digital, accessible network.
“Our solution helps students understand what skills they already have and what skills they need to achieve their goal,” the team said. “Our solution is called the ‘Roadmap to Success.’”
Giovacchini said that the diverse student pool participating in the Spark Challenge was exciting to watch.
“The questions that students have been asking have been incredible,” Giovacchini said. “This is a UX challenge, but we’re having students ask questions about what’s the business model, and what’s the technical infrastructure. It really excites me that so many different types of folks have completely tailored work on this problem.”
Many UX students appreciated the unique format of the Spark Challenge, focusing more on design rather than programming. Winners of the UX Spark Challenge would get to submit their strategy and design to TLN and ASU Pocket development teams, who would make the designs on the product as close to the proposal as possible, giving full credit to the students.
The importance of innovating
For Lipsitz, the significance of digital, verifiable credentials must be supplemented by coinciding skills and competencies, according to the fluctuating job market she’s observed. Addressing these market needs, Lipsitz said, would put students ahead of the curve.
Giovacchini agrees.
“This technology is new, and so these students are getting exposed to things like verified credentials, mobile wallets,” Giovacchini said. “It is likely that these students will encounter digital credentials in the next five years of their employment careers, in a way that nobody has yet before.”