Work with a Lab as a Teaching Fellow

Connect what you teach or practice with a real-world challenge being explored by an ASG Co-Creation Lab.

A Teaching Fellow can be a university teacher or practitioner who turns real problems into opportunities for learning, experimentation, and collaboration.

Rather than teaching only about a problem, Teaching Fellows help learners work on the problem with the people and institutions experiencing it.

Your Pathway

1. Find a Lab → 2. Choose a Challenge → 3. Connect Your Expertise → 4. Find Learners → 5. Find a Practice Partner → 6. Design the Learning Experience → 7. Teach and Experiment → 8. Share What You Learn

1. Find a Lab

Start with the challenge or field you care about.

Explore the ASG Co-Creation Labs and identify where your teaching, expertise, research, or professional experience could contribute.

Possible areas include:

AI and Governance

Climate Action

Health

Food and Nutrition

Cities

Blue Economy

Social Finance

Financial Inclusion

Housing

Forests

ScaleUp

Explore ASG Co-Creation Labs →

You do not need to stay inside one Lab. A teaching project can connect several Labs around the same challenge.

You're done when: You have identified a Lab and a challenge you want to explore.

2. Choose a Challenge

Do not begin with:

What course do I want to teach?

Begin with:

What real-world challenge could become a powerful environment for learning?

The challenge might already be part of a Lab project, or you might bring a new challenge into the Lab.

Examples:

How could municipalities use AI responsibly to improve public services?

How could coastal communities develop more inclusive blue-economy opportunities?

How could cities respond to the health effects of climate change?

How could farmer enterprises become more sustainable?

You're done when: You have a real challenge rather than simply a subject to teach.

3. Connect Your Expertise

Ask what you can contribute.

You might bring:

• academic expertise

• professional practice

• research

• government experience

• technical knowledge

• community experience

• methods and tools

• local knowledge

• networks and relationships

You do not need to be the expert on the entire problem.

The Lab can connect your perspective with others.

Teaching Fellow + Lab + Other Expertise

4. Find Learners

Identify who could learn by working on the challenge.

They might be:

Undergraduate Students

Graduate Students

Government Practitioners

Community Leaders

Professionals

ASG Fellows

Mixed Teams

Your existing university course can become the learning platform, or you can develop a new learning experience around the Lab challenge.

[Start a Course →]

5. Find a Practice Partner

Connect the learning experience with a real institution or community.

The Teaching Fellows model encourages sustained collaboration with a small unit of city government, with Teaching Fellows actively co-designing and prototyping projects over one to two years.

The same principle can extend to appropriate Lab partners such as:

Municipality

City Government Unit

University

Community Organization

Public Agency

Civil Society Organization

Social Enterprise

The partner should not simply provide a case study.

The partner becomes a co-creator of the learning experience.

Teaching Fellow + Learners + Lab + Practice Partner + Real Challenge

6. Design the Learning Experience

Connect learning with action.

A simple cycle is:

LEARN

Introduce useful concepts, frameworks, cases, and methods.

↓

ENGAGE

Meet the people and institutions experiencing the challenge.

↓

UNDERSTAND

Explore stakeholders, systems, incentives, relationships, power, and different interpretations.

↓

CO-DESIGN

Develop possibilities with the practice partner.

↓

PROTOTYPE

Test promising ideas while commitments are still small.

↓

REFLECT

Ask what happened, what surprised you, and what assumptions changed.

↓

ITERATE

Improve the prototype and continue learning.

The learning cycle becomes:

Learn → Engage → Experiment → Reflect → Learn Again

7. Teach and Experiment

The Lab becomes more than a source of cases.

It becomes an environment where teaching, research, practice, and experimentation intersect.

Your Teaching Fellowship might generate:

Student Projects

Applied Research

Design Projects

Prototypes

Policy Experiments

Government Collaborations

Community Projects

Case Studies

New Teaching Materials

Institutional Partnerships

Use other Paved Pathways when needed:

[Start a Design Project →]

[Start Research →]

[Design an Experiment With a Lab →]

[Start an Institutional Partnership →]

8. Share What You Learn

Bring learning back into the Lab.

Share:

• what students discovered

• what practitioners taught you

• what assumptions changed

• what prototypes worked or failed

• what new questions emerged

• what other Lab participants could use

Useful outputs might become:

Teaching Cases

Learning Notes

Research

Open Teaching Materials

Project Playbooks

Lab Knowledge

[Publish Something →]

[Tell the Story of the Work →]

A good Teaching Fellowship should leave the Lab with more knowledge than it had before.

Work Across Labs

Teaching Fellows can connect several Labs around one challenge.

For example:

Climate + Health

Climate Action Labs

• Universal Health Care Lab x local university x city health office x students

AI + Municipal Governance

AI for Governance Lab x City Futures Lab x municipality x university faculty x students

Coastal Livelihoods

Blue Economy Lab x Social Finance Lab x Climate Action Labs x coastal municipality x university

Scaling a Proven Innovation

Thematic Lab

• ScaleUp Lab x university course x organizations trying the model in new contexts

The course becomes a way of mobilizing students, faculty, practitioners, and institutions around the Lab's real work.

Who Can Become a Teaching Fellow?

Consider this pathway if:

You teach and want to connect your students with real-world challenges.

You practice and want to turn professional experience into learning for others.

You research and want learners and practitioners to engage with your field.

You work in government or development and want to share practical knowledge while learning from others.

You have a challenge you want to explore with learners, rather than simply an answer you want to teach.

What the Lab Provides

Depending on the Lab and initiative, working with a Lab may help connect you with:

Real Challenges

Practice Partners

Other Fellows

Researchers

Government and Community Actors

Cross-Disciplinary Expertise

Projects and Experiments

Learning Across Locations

The Teaching Fellow brings teaching capacity into the ecosystem.

The Lab brings an ecosystem into the learning experience.

The Teaching Fellow Principle

Start with a real challenge.

Use the Lab as a learning environment.

Connect learners with practitioners and communities.

Teach what you know while remaining open to what you don't.

Co-design rather than prescribe.

Prototype rather than stop at recommendations.

Bring what you learn back into the Lab.

Ready to Explore?

Explore ASG Co-Creation Labs →

Explore the Teaching Fellows Program →

Sample Outputs of Research Fellows who are guided by Teaching Fellows 

Fellowship projects at the Social Finance Lab (click here)

Fellowship projects at the City Futures Lab (click here)