Bring Design Thinking to Your Online Course!

There are many creative problem-solving methods. Today, we will write about design thinking, an approach that gained popularity and spilt from the business world to education and beyond. You can teach it to your learners, but today we will give some ideas for using it in the course design process. 

Design thinking is based on the needs of your learners and is also an excellent way to bring learner-centred education to your practice. 

1) EMPATHIZE

First, it’s essential to understand your learners’ needs, interests, and previous knowledge. You can gather data from multiple sources:  

Existing research: find relevant sources and analyse the data about your target audience. You can use accessible online research databases like CORE, ScienceOpen, or Directory of Open Access Journals.  

Do the needs assessment yourself. Do a survey using Google Forms, Lime Survey, or another tool. Talk to your learners – hold an interview, or organise a focus group for more of them. Remember to practice active listening, paraphrasing, and keep an open mind. Read more here. 

 2) DEFINE

After the emphasise phase, systemise the data to use it. You can use it to define your learners’ core problems and needs. You can do it in multiple ways. We suggest you start with empathy mapping and the design of a persona. The empathy map contains learners’ thoughts, actions, and emotions. A persona is a personification of your average learner, containing similar information as an empathy pas, with added perks like name, age, sex, and other information relevant to your course. 

 After analysing your learners, you can choose the topics to engage them. Also, you can tweak the pacing and the complexity of the information. You can also design the course to take care of their needs, from basic ones like the length of the breaks up to self-actualisation. 

3) IDEATE

After gathering the data about your participants and systematising them (making a persona, for example), you can proceed with the process’s next step- defining your course’s aims and objectives. Remember that aims and objectives should serve you and your learners. They show you the end goal, the prize your learners achieve at the end of the course. Get creative, and don’t be afraid to play around. Getting out of the box is, after all, one of the basic principles of design thinking. 

After setting aims and objectives, you can define learning outcomes – precise, short sentences that answer the question: “What will the learners know or be able to do at the end of the course?”  

4) PROTOTYPE 

After you know your learners and what you want them to learn, it’s time to do what you already know. Determine the topics, choose the methods, space, and time for delivery, produce needed materials, and design the evaluation process. You can read about it in the rest of the chapter! 

5) TEST 

Testing your course can be done in two ways: with a test group (beta learners) or during the first course. Doing it with beta learners gives you time to perfect the course before going public. Beta learners should be paid if possible and reflect a variety of learners from your target group. If you don’t have the time or the means, you can test the course with your “first generation” learners, with a clear disclaimer and free access. 

The evaluation process can be lengthy and include various quantitative and qualitative criteria. It mustn’t just reflect learning outcomes, aims, and objectives. Reflect on your learners’ thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and words. 

Author: M.C. 

REFERENCES

IDEO (2012). Design Thinking for Educators. All rights reserved. 

http://designthinkingforeducators.com/

Luka, Ineta (2014). Design Thinking in Pedagogy. Journal of Education Culture and Society, 2, 63-74.

Messervy, L. et al. (2014). TD4Ed. Teachers Design for Education: Unleashing the potential of Teachers as Designers. https://www.businessinnovationfactory.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/td4ed-report-final.pdf