Project Summary

True North is a web application and curriculum that helps prospective and current college students navigate transitions in college, career, and life. Originally a transformative, in-person curriculum, the contents of True North have been adapted into a web app with bite-sized, in-app activities and journaling prompts meant to connect students to mentors and formative experiences.

Approach

The True North Project focuses on three main components:

• The first is persona definition, a set of modules designed to help students reflect on an aspect of themselves, including their core values, character strengths, skills they are motivated to master, and impact they wish to make in the world.
  
  
• The second proposed component is the “experience” module. Once a student has completed the initial persona building, they can invite guides—teachers, mentors, friends—to join them in their purpose journey (similar to the way that social media users can “friend” others). Students and their Guides can share experiences, plotting potential paths through their academic careers. Here, we create the digital space for students to find those meaningful, purpose-defining events, with more experienced guides helping to find, curate and orchestrate those events. Through this application, students can build an extensive portfolio, with contemporaneous notes, curated by their guides.
  
  
• The third proposed component is “True North Live”—a synchronous program that complements True North web application use. This program will consist of a scalable (90 minutes to 14 weeks) curriculum, in the form of workshops or credit bearing classes. The content will include 4 key elements: core values, personality strengths, 21st century skills, and desired impact. The curriculum will draw from a strength based and critical psychology perspective and leverage interactive activities, which can be adapted to online learning environments. Through these four components, students will be guided and supported in their purpose development in ways that will support them academically and vocationally.

Key Findings

True North has been piloted in several settings at Boston College, and the initial data analysis of our pilots show that students benefit from the earlier version of True North in three ways: first, by understanding purpose to be non-linear; second, by concretizing their own purpose; third, by building relationships.

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