Course: Honors Futuring: Anticipating Change and Envisioning Strategic Opportunities
Institution: University of Notre Dame
Faculty: John Michel

Assignment

The Futuring course, with its attention to things that have not happened yet, multiplied by possibilities that could happen, makes the virtues of hope and curiosity exceptionally relevant. This will transpire within our course through the following activities.

• A personal assessment through the VIA Character Strengths Survey
• Readings on Hope and Curiosity
• A written reflection and application of hope and curiosity to student projects
• An in-class gamification exercise, That Thing from the Future, with the opportunity to build muscle memory and application around the virtues of hope and curiosity.
• Prior to class students have an assigned reading on either hope or curiosity and write a two page reflection and application to their futuring project. In class, I facilitate discussion and brief lecture on this material. We then transition to That Thing from the Future Game. This was created by Futurists Stuart Candy and Jeff Watson. It involves a set of cards that serve as prompts to create a context for the future: 1) time horizon, how far in the future; 2) terrain, thematic context or location; 3) object, the focus of your imagination or cultural artifact that is different from today; 4) mood, an emotional element how it might feel to experience this thing from the future. The four cards are dealt to student teams. They are charged with coming up with a novel business opportunity for their project within the environment defined by the cards and embedding this within a context of curiosity or hope. I allow AI to be used in this exercise. Each team must do a brief oral report during class.
• Here is a link to Stuart Candy describing the game (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0yR3zuMogw)
• Here is a link to a print-and-play edition. There are no set rules, customize to align with your course. The cards are black and white, the color deck is no longer available. These cards can be printed and cut. No need to use all cards. https://atelierdesfuturs.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/CandyWatson_2015_FUTURETHING_Print-and-Play.pdf