HISTORY

The (R)Evolution of HIP and HIP+AI

In September 2020, the HIP Program was officially launched, and the HIPster Certification Program was globally initiated.

The first cohort of HIP schools consisted of nearly 50 students from 11 schools across four continents. Groups from around the world engaged with one another to find and solve problems that were meaningful to them, gain feedback for improvement from one another, and collaborate and build cross-cultural empathy and understanding.

HIPsters

In November 2020, the first global HIPster selection was launched, and nearly 30 junior and senior high school students from China and Australia passed the selection to become the first batch of Global HIPsters of the ICEE Program.

For several months, HIPsters received HIP leadership training, lectures, and guidance from Subject-Matter Experts in areas such as classroom session design, cross-cultural communication, and feedback support. They brought their ideas back to their peers by hosting a variety of classroom activities, leading collaboration and communication games, providing Mini Ted talks, facilitating breakout room discussions, engaging in feedback and suggestion exchanges, and acting as customers or target audience members for authentic product-oriented learning development.

HIPsters furthered their skills as peer mentors and leaders at ICEE Experience camps, beginning in 2021.

In August 2021, the ICEE Experience Camp was held online for the first time, with 14 Global HIPsters as student group leaders and over 100 students participating in the event together.

In August 2022, the 7-day ICEE Experience Camp was held, with 20 global HIPsters participating in the online first year service activities across campuses and age groups. A total of over 300 first-year learners from the ICEE program participated in the camp activities together with their peer HIPsters, supported by additional camp assistants, subject matter experts and nearly 20 ICEE facilitating teachers.

Becoming a HIPster has seen ongoing recruitment of cohorts since, and expanded to new schools over the years, but the concept of HIP was already in place even prior to the pandemic.

Looking Back to Look Forward

The ICEE program was initially launched in 2019, beginning with preliminary research in March 2019 at Hongfan Junior High School of Chongqing No.8 Middle School. A research team of Subject-Matter Experts led by Dr. Zhao Yong and Professor Li Mang was stationed at Hongfan Middle School to conduct a one-week on-site research. Through forms such as classroom observation, interviews, online and paper-based questionnaires, and trial classes, questionnaires were conducted on nearly 5,000 students and 151 teachers, interviews were conducted on 150 students and 30 teachers, observation records were made on 22 classrooms, and feedback from trial classes of 40 students was collected.

What followed established the course for ICEE and HIP, including the first International Learning Festival led by world-class experts, teachers, students, and education administrators from countries such as China, the United States, and Australia in the field of education. At the festival they exchanged and shared ideas on ICEE Education under the theme of “Education in the Era of Intelligent Machines: Talent Requirements in the Era of Intelligent Machines.”

Over the course of several months, the first experimental program was developed, beginning with the first ICEE Experience camp. In August of 2019, 15 international teachers from the four continents of Europe, North America, Australia, and Asia, along with nearly 50 international student learning partners, jointly experienced “ICEE Education” with 160 students from No. 8 Middle School, and simultaneously conducted on-site training for the first batch of ICEE teachers.

While not yet named HIP in concept, the first ICEE experience camp showcased how learners from all countries can recognize and value individual and collective strengths and interests across language and cultural boundaries. They practiced the Human Interdependence Paradigm in peer leadership and mentorship, cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary sharing, and authentic problem finding and problem solving through the value they created for others in the form of tangible products and services.

A HIP Relaunch

While many schools were responding to a post-pandemic call to focus fully on literacy and numeracy, leaving behind what was perceived as “extras” or minimally, not standards-based, there were a “courageous few” that were endeavoring to continue to shift the paradigm. Many original HIP schools continued or ignited “school within a school models” while a cohort affiliated with the Association for Independent Schools of South Australia (AISSA) partnered to start new HIP journeys.

The Global Kickoff launched in March of 2023 and saw adaptations to the original HIP program as participating schools were able to customize the experience to their own timetables and needs. Some cohorts replicated original intensives, allowing students to engage deeply over a short period of time. Other participants embedded the program across their full school year, including final work in their end-of-year school market. One cohort combined two different semester long classes for a truly cross-disciplinary, cross-grade level HIP implementation.

August of 2023 saw some of these HIPsters able to once again join for the first multinational on site ICEE experience camp able to be hosted in China since pre-pandemic. HIPsters unable to join on site maximized use of technology with virtual visits and sharing both at the camp and throughout the school year to build on cross-cultural understanding, global empathy, and interdependence.

2023 also saw the introduction of AI into HIP and ICEE. The learning festival held in conjunction with the ICEE experience camp showcased students’ ICEE experiences and works, engaged principals and teachers in a Principal Forum Roundtable and Teacher Workshop (respectively), led by YEE experts to engage in discussions on top-notch innovative talents and educational transformation, and the meaningful academic outcomes HIP and ICEE has produced, and importantly, invited education experts from around the world to deliver speeches on the theme of the learning festival: “Cultivating Top-notch Innovative Talents in the Era of Artificial Intelligence: Reflection and Prospect of ICEE Education.” This shift was echoed in campers engaging in challenges and partnerships with AI in the ICEE Experience camp.

HIP+AI

HIP has evolved as a central focus of not just a single program or a single program implemented in a variety of ways, it evolved into a representation of the paradigm shift itself. It is tangibly seen through the HIP network of lifelong learners and the impact the connections, collaborations, and authentic problem finding and problem solving have created.

HIP+AI is the natural next evolution in an AI era. ICEE Experience camps in 2024 and 2025 saw expanded experiments with AI as co-learners, co-problem finders and co-problem solvers, positioned as peer and expert mentors, editors, co-creators, and more.

HIP partners shifted in mindsets from hesitant to “leveling up” the possibilities of use in their own HIP corners and across learning environments. HIP+AI has seen partnerships expand with universities, the next generation of both teacher facilitators and education researchers, and a new round of experimental design, research, and implementation and iteration.

We can’t wait to see where HIP+AI takes us next.