Dive into the full 12-part core series of the Disruptive Design knowledge set and learn how to apply the Disruptive Design Method to activate positive social and environmental change.
This 10 month online learning (+2 month 1:1 mentorship) certification program is designed for emerging leaders, intrapreneurs and career changers deeply passionate about making a positive impact through all that they do. We provide content and provocation to help you establish your facilitation and leadership skills. This program offers advanced training in the Disruptive Design Method and is perfect for people wanting to drive change within an organization or wanting to solidify their career as a leader in this space. This certification includes the full 12 module set of the Disruptive Design Method Masterclass, with additional unique content and activities.
Advance your leadership skills in systems thinking, sustainability, design interventions and creative change making
Refine and establish your facilitation and communication skills for supporting organizational change towards a sustainable, regenerative and circular future
Master the entire Disruptive Design knowledge set and become skilled in applying the Disruptive Design Method
Activate your agency, expand your sphere of influence and develop your career as a creative change maker proactively effecting positive change out in the world around you
Access to a private LinkedIn group for all certification trackers to network, share, communicate and collaborate with each other and the UnSchool team
Curriculum
What’s inside this Certification
We designed the UnSchool UnMasters in Creative Change-Making because we believe that every organization should have a professional Change-Maker role as part of its core leadership team. Leaders with a creative systems thinking mindset to help transform old linear ways of thinking that prevent transformative change, with a sustainability focus to ensure longevity and ethics in programs and processes and reflexive, critical brain power to develop new solutions to tired problems that no longer work.
This program is designed for aspirational leaders who want to establish themselves as a creative force for positive impact.
The UnMasters program is for emerging leaders, intrapreneurs and career changers who are deeply passionate about making a real and significant change either within an organization or in the world at large.
This is a 10 month part-time online learning program that delivers monthly content around the Disruptive Design Method, agency development, facilitation, leadership, community engagement, systems thinking, reflexivity and positive impact.
These 10 months are broken down into monthly knowledge acquisition sections around the core DDM knowledge bank and leadership development. There are then 2 months of dedicated mentorship to support your learning advancement and get you ready for your final certification challenge.
Certification as an UnMasters give you the ability to demonstrate your commitment to creative change and your role as a leader in this space.
You will have advanced communication, reflexivity, systems thinking and facilitation skills, supporting you in shifting to a career in positive impact or further developing your role in this space.
Critically the goal is to develop reflexive, reflective and critical thinking skills that apply to developing and expanding agency to make positive contributions to the world. We talk about this in regards to developing a reflective thinking practice, critical thinking skills, developing personal agency and integrity.
It is critically important for you to understand why the Disruptive Design core curriculum areas are designed the way they are. What informs them, why we have the three pillars of systems, sustainability and design as the backbones of what we do, and then how to use them for yourself, and encourage others to use them in making a change in the world.
Although the hotly contested term “sustainability” has come to mean many different things, the original concept is really all about the interconnectedness of social, economic, and environmental sustainability – it’s a powerful aspiration to make better decisions today so that we all benefit in the future.
In this module, you will be identifying and developing your own areas of personal mastery. Critical is the ability to understand what you have that is uniquely you, and then how to refine this into a curated role as a practitioner.
A systems explorer learns to think in systems, to see and understand how things are interconnected and related, and to think about the less obvious complex stuff. In doing this, you can develop a sixth sense for what’s going on under the surface. This helps us all become better thinkers, doers, and leaders.
In this module you will learn:
How to think in systems
How to do analog systems mapping
Systems archetypes, feedback-loops, and dynamics
Stocks and flows
What nodes are
Systems boundaries and how to identify them
In this module, you will be identifying and developing your own personal mastery of designing and facilitating change initiatives whether it by via products, services, programs, projects or human engagement. Critical is the ability to understand what you have that is uniquely you, and then how to refine this into a curated role as a change-maker.
In this module, you will dive into personal ethics, integrity, how to respectfully engage with others, empathy, shifting mindsets and the complexity of working with humans. As facilitators of learning, knowing as much as possible about ourselves, where we stand and how we work offers us a strong starting point for supporting others in gaining these insights. So this section starts with the self, and then expands out to others.
In this module, you will dive into personal ethics and explore what empathy is and what it is not. This all feeds into the respect for complexity of shifting mindsets, making change when working with humans.
As change makers, knowing the root of core concepts such as these is a fundamental part of practicing them well. Ethics is a powerful part of society and helps us reflect on where we stand on certain issues and how we can work with offers (even if they have differing opinions to us) to support effective change for a. This module expands on some themes we have started to explore in previous classes.
Complex and incredibly powerful, our brains are at the core of how we experience the world. While they are incredibly complex, there is some key universality in how they function. The tools that we have to translate our neurological impulses (such as language, social norms, and behaviors) are all formed through social experiences.
In this module, we continue to explore the human experience of learning to advance your skills in unique, transformative and highly engaging experience design. We will now dive deeper into experience design, and the human reactions and responses that are evoked through this type of engagement. Things to be mindful of, how to ensure you do good rather than accidental harm, and the UnSchool techniques for designing highly engaging learning arcs.
In this module you will be looking at a critical piece of this puzzle. Engaging different stakeholders, working with others, collaboration and fostering relationships are critical to supporting you making change in the world, and expanding your sphere of influence.
In this module, we start to look at the important of effective communication, the power of language and explore the assets you bring to your change-making practice. This module will support you in developing and expanding your communication both in language and in presentations.
In this module, we will be covering the building phase of the DDM, the fun part where you get to build on all the work you have done, come up with ideas, test them, and apply them. Even if you are a skilled creative practitioner, this section should give some further insights and tools you can bring into your practice set. If you don’t have much experience in creative problem solving and design, then this section should really support you in developing this critical skillset.
In this section, we round out all the knowledge and look at activating projects and interventions developed throughout the entire DD Methodology set. This is all about implementing, activating, and amplifying ideas out into the world. Ideas stuck in your head are pointless for changing the world. We need to start to activate our interventions and set up the feedback loops that will give us the resilience to make our future interventions even more impactful!
Now that you’re almost at the end of your UnMasters training, it’s time to start thinking and planning for your mentorship process. We offer a 2 month one-on-one mentorship with everyone who takes the UnSchool UnMasters track, and you will be placed with one of our official UnSchool mentors. You will need to stay enrolled in the program for the mentorship to continue and after the mentorship, you can submit your final challenge for certification!
The structure of the mentorship is once a week 45 min meetings for two months. During that time, you will most likely design, test and iterate on a project you would like to see in the world for positive change, as well as the final challenge.
In preparation for your final challenge for your UnMasters Certification, make sure you have completed all the learning challenges and filled up your process journal.
Once everything is complete, your mentorship will start with submitting your process journal to your mentor. The UnSchool team will then create a unique challenge for you to demonstrate all the skills you have developed along the way, and you will work on this throughout your mentorship.
This final challenge is designed for you to put into practice all the skills you’ve gained to demonstrate your own personal areas of upskilling (which will be different for everyone), and for the UnSchool to feel confident in your representation of core knowledge, approach and content out in the world.
Certification
Looking to advance further?
Gain advanced skills in designing and facilitating transformative, cerebrally engaging and agency activating knowledge transfer experiences with our UnSchool Educator Certification Track. This is advanced learning experience is designed for committed and established practitioners wanting to significantly advance their capacity as facilitators of change and obtain certification from the UnSchool in our methods, techniques and experiential pedagogy. This certification includes the full 12 module set of the Disruptive Design Method Masterclass, with additional unique content and activities
“The DDM is more well rounded than many of the methods that I have come across. It is not just another toolkit or stepwise approach but really encourages you to further define your individual changemaking skills and take ownership of them. You’re challenged in your mental models and belief systems and are given tools to be able to look beyond what you see at first sight. I believe this is key in being able to make change.”
Myrthe LantingSustainable Urban Developer
My brain went through a full renovation
“I learned and thought about so many different things at a depth and speed that I had not experienced before. Not only did I find this learning experience deeply gratifying, it made me realize how fun self-directed research and learning can be when you start to see the world through a systems thinking lens.”
Charlie ShipmanProduct Manager
World renowned expert training
Your instructor
An award-winning designer, sustainability provocateur, social scientist and entrepreneur, Leyla Acaroglu (PhD) developed the Disruptive Design Method and creates educational experiences, toolkits, and social enterprises that help design a sustainable, circular and regenerative future. Leyla is a mainstage TED speaker, LinkedIn Changemaker and was named UNEP Champion of the Earth in 2016 for her work in advancing science and innovation for sustainability. Leyla leads trainings around the world on activating positive social and environmental change through systems interventions.
Options and Pricing
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Get ready to use your talents to create a better future that works for all of us!
What you get
All 12 Modules of the Disruptive Design Method Masterclass
Find out if you are eligible for our Equity Access Scholarships
We work hard to balance providing reduced tuition for our programs, offering open source tools & resources, and generating enough revenue to maintain and innovate our programs. As a socially motivated business, we operate on a lean budget and work hard to distribute our resources to support our applicants in highest need. We offer limited scholarships to community members who would otherwise be unable to attend a program at all.
We encourage everyone to apply for scholarships if they feel that they would not be able to access programs otherwise. We are always working towards removing financial, physical, language and time barriers by offering scholarships, diverse international program locations, and online education and free content in a growing number of languages. We also offer additional access support for those identifying as from First Nations, Aboriginal, Native or other Indigenous communities.
We offer custom designed educational and corporate training packages, workshops and curriculum projects. This can be delivered in any combination of live, live online, and hybrid formats to small or large teams. Reach out to discuss with one of our team members.
FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions
All your questions, comments, queries and curiosities. Let us know if we need to add anything!
The Unmasters certification gives you access for one full year from the date of purchase.
We review requests for extensions on a case by case basis, and consider 3 month at a time extensions. Depending on the situation, there may or may not be a cost involved.
As our programs are based in action, it varies from person to person. The actual reading and watching time is easily manageable for someone working a full time job, however it may take longer to complete the activities. Most people manage to complete the certification in about a year, and dedicate a few hours a month to their course work. Others complete it in a sprint over a few months during time off.
We have closed captioning for the videos that are included in the program available in English. You can also use a browser (we recommend Chrome or Brave) to translate the written content on the screen into your preferred language.
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“I think that UnSchool is incredibly guiding for anyone who is passionate about changing the world in a sustainable way, but doesn’t know where to start.”
