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Design Thinking for Higher Education

To meet the challenges of a new era, universities should redesign their core functions while also creating capacities to reach emerging and underserved markets. Open access to this article is made possible by BYU-Pathway Worldwide & ASU's Center for Organization Research and Design.

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By Clark G. Gilbert, Michael M. Crow & Derrick Anderson Winter 2018

Higher education has entered into an era of transition. Changing student demographics, rapidly evolving stakeholder demands, and new technologies are requiring universities to reconsider abiding assumptions about geography, time, and quality. We expect that in the coming years, long-standing models of higher education that prefer tradition and stability will be supplemented, if not displaced, by new models that embrace organizational innovation, responsivity, and adaptation.

Design thinking offers important pathways for shaping these important new models. Organizational change can embody deliberate choice that purposefully shapes the object and direction of the change itself. A design perspective suggests that there are architectural choices to be made about what the organization seeks to accomplish and how it is organized to achieve those ends. Many industries, especially higher education, confront challenges from both legacy and emerging markets. Few universities, if any, should be willing to ignore one market in favor of the other, since legacy and emerging markets are both vital and can play important roles in fulfilling higher education’s social mission.

We have found that a dual transformation design strategy has proved especially effective for addressing both legacy and emerging markets. According to this approach, operations acting in parallel—one to develop strategies that optimize the core organization to become more responsive to the new profile of demands it faces, and a second to design and implement disruptive innovations that provide a basis for future growth, agility, and responsivity. 1 We provide here a set of recommendations for how dual transformation can be implemented in higher education.

While we reference many colleges and universities, we focus on how our own institutions, Brigham Young University-Idaho and Arizona State University , have embraced these principles of transformation. These two institutions are important as case studies for their similarities as much as their differences. Brigham Young University-Idaho (BYU-Idaho) is a private religious four-year college established less than two decades ago from the dramatic reorganization of a distinguished residential junior college. Alternatively, Arizona State University (ASU) is a comprehensive public research university born from a regional teachers’ college that now stands out among national universities for its commitment to both access and excellence.

Despite these important historical and structural differences, both universities have adopted design models that facilitate innovation along multiple, seemingly competing trajectories. Both are committed to the success of all students. And both have undergone transformation in their efforts to be continuously responsive to the new spectrum of challenges facing higher education.

Tech Meets the Medieval University

Knowledge is the core of higher education. The roots of modern higher education date back to 11th-century Europe, where the first universities were formed from guilds of student practitioners and expert instructors. In this system, knowledge was accumulated by experts and passed to apprentices, a tradition that to this day informs the self-governing, faculty-centric nature of university design.

Tradition casts a long shadow over higher education. For generations, universities have been able to fulfill their scientific and socioeconomic missions by replicating past success. As a consequence, many of today’s colleges and universities are internally driven by the same structures of power and decision making over resources, the means of production, and sources of authority and legitimacy. Thus, the design logic that has prevailed in higher education can sometimes encourage uniformity and discourages innovation. From the number of books in libraries to the number of hours that students spend in seated lectures to what constitutes a degree, there are widespread pressures to conform.

This rigorous standardization has served higher education well until this point. It helped ensure quality through centuries of upheaval marked by the rapid proliferation of new institutions. However, the modern era demands greater flexibility and innovation. Factors that aim to ensure quality, such as accreditation, must avoid becoming too focused on examining a narrow set of academic processes. An overemphasis on process conformity arguably limits exploration, differentiation, and, in some cases, even system-wide quality.

What’s more, the challenges facing higher education are historically unique. Rapid, ubiquitous, and accelerating technological progress is now part of the human condition. While intergenerational technological progress has been observed since the industrial revolution, the benefits of progress have primarily owed to the wealthy. But we are swiftly approaching the point where the benefits of technological advancement will (or through design choices easily could) reach everyone, even the poor.

We also know that society’s capacity to absorb new technologies is growing. While telephones took 25 years to be adopted by 10 percent of the American population a century ago, tablet computers achieved that level of market penetration within five years. 2 And while the personal computer reached one quarter of the American population in 16 years, the Internet took only seven. 3

As a consequence of rapid technological progress and the increased capacity to integrate new technologies into already complex social systems, we now have greater access to information and tools to collect, transmit, and process information. In years past, trade skills could be expected to transfer from generation to generation. Today it is estimated that 65 percent of schoolchildren will work in a job or career that doesn’t presently exist. 4 For the first time in human history, how people live and work is fundamentally changing within the duration of a single lifespan or less.

Coupled with widespread technological change are steadily increasing expectations for social mobility. According to a recent report by the Brookings Institution, the global middle class is growing by about 140 million people per year and accounted for approximately 3.2 billion people at the end of 2016. Yet, in the United States, real access to college, measured in terms of student success and completion, remains the province of wealthy families. While college attendance for students in the bottom quartile of family income has increased from 28 to 45 percent since 1970, this figure is dwarfed by the 82 percent of students from families in the top quartile who attend college.

In terms of college graduation, the gap is even more dramatic: 77 percent of US students from the top family income quartile will go on to earn a bachelor’s degree by the age of 24, compared with just 9 percent of students from the bottom quartile. 5 In other words, students from the highest-income families in America are eight times more likely to graduate from college than students from the poorest families. Thus, the capacity of American higher education to contribute to American democracy is inherently limited, arguably by design.

Moving Toward Design Solutions

Taken together, these technological and sociological trends suggest that in maintaining their value to society, many colleges and universities will need to teach new material to new types of students at new, large scales. Doing so will require entirely new design models. However, in the face of rapid social change, the trend among many in higher education has been to reinforce traditional models. Some of this active entrenchment comes from pouring resources into technology that perpetuates the traditional classroom model and fails to harness the unique benefits of online and distance learning. University leaders also choose to invest in amenities and efforts to bolster rankings in order to increase enrollment—at the expense of innovations with long-term, real student impact.

We believe that the problems that beset colleges and universities are the result of failures to lead design-driven adaptation. As a first step in formulating design solutions, we recommend viewing the challenges posed by both legacy and emerging markets as independent ones, and assigning specific responsibility for innovation for each challenge to differentiated functions of the university. While this is only one approach, it offers important opportunities to reinvigorate the core of the academic institution while allowing new organizations to explore and innovate areas that are either ignored or needlessly bound by tradition.

In general terms, the dual transformation framework we advocate encourages organizations to embark on two separate but carefully connected efforts. Transformation A is a redesign of the core organization to improve capacities in teaching and research. Transformation B entails carefully designing a capacity to respond to emerging opportunities or social demands. In the context of higher education, through Transformation A, academic organizations must lower the costs of (or even exit) those offerings that do not sufficiently differentiate them and invest in areas that will reposition core teaching and research in ways that will drive competitive advantage in an ever-changing landscape. 6 Thus, Transformation A is about deliberate choice that every university confronts, where failure to choose is a de facto choice for expensive mediocrity.

Transformation B, by contrast, should be treated as a distinct opportunity focused on entirely new models and separate student markets. Examples of Transformation B innovations include online learning, distance education, and other forms of increased access for students. The higher education sector offers numerous case studies of institutions that have undertaken successful transformations along one or another of these dimensions. A smaller number of cases—including BYU-Idaho and ASU—provide examples of successful transformation along both dimensions.

Transformation A in Differentiated Research

While not all universities are research intensive, those that are can achieve dramatic gains in research productivity by focusing on their core strengths and building up programs in which they have natural advantages. Since 2002, when this paper’s coauthor Michael Crow became its president, Arizona State University has increased research expenditures by a factor of four, constituting the highest growth rate of any university research enterprise in the United States. But even as it has expanded its research investment, it has done so by consistently considering “place.” For 15 years, ASU has strategically increased capacity in fields that are accessible in and relevant to Arizona and the Phoenix metropolitan area, such as water scarcity and resource management, solar and thermal energy technologies, and sustainable urban development; merged programs and departments to create new synergies—for example, fusing geology and astronomy into a School of Earth and Space Exploration; and employed the participation of key industries in sponsored projects such as ASU LightWorks, a multidisciplinary effort pursuing breakthroughs in solar energy and sustainable fuels. 7

As a consequence of executing a carefully designed strategy, the research enterprise at ASU has expanded from approximately $123 million in FY2002 to nearly $520 million in FY2016 with remarkable efficiency. For example, the size of the faculty has remained nearly constant since 2002. According to recent data from the National Science Foundation, ASU now ranks tenth of 724 universities without medical schools in total research expenditures—ahead of California Institute of Technology, Princeton University, and Carnegie Mellon University.

But more than simply expanding research investment, ASU has chosen to differentiate itself from its peers by bringing to its research clarity of purpose through a focus on use-inspired research. Accordingly, for ASU, the notion of “place” is not just geographic; it relates also to seeking a unique thematic position within the broader national innovation system. Other universities have also bene ted from committing themselves to a thematic interpretation of place. For example, Rockefeller University has achieved and maintained its status as a global leader in biomedical research and training while operating pursuant to its motto, “Science for the benefit of humanity.” And Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, has incorporated the cultural and religious priorities of its Latter-Day Saints community to pursue a leadership role in research pertaining to religious freedom, family social science, and poverty alleviation.

In pursuing design strategies for research differentiation, universities assess the promise of a research enterprise relative to their unique institutional assets rather than muddling through a medley of scientific fields where their capacity to maintain the path of academic inquiry becomes fragmented. As a consequence, new lines of inquiry can be discovered, and universities with otherwise limited resources can assume leadership roles in new disciplinary fields.

Transformation A in Teaching and Learning

On the teaching side, many universities have unfortunately responded to rising costs and decreasing state support by increasing selectivity or passing an excessive share of instructional costs to students and their families. Whether through high costs or highly selective admission standards, exclusivity narrows the pool of admitted students to those who are almost certain to succeed. Instead, we think universities should be de ned by who they include and how those institutions improve their students’ chances of success.

Accordingly, Transformation A calls for carefully planned innovations that allow for gains in student outcomes without succumbing to the magnetism of exclusivity. For example, rather than increasing selectivity and turning away students who are less likely (or unlikely) to graduate, the University of California, Riverside (UCR), has made inclusivity a core part of its identity: 57 percent of UCR students are low income (federal Pell Grant eligible) or first-generation students. Notwithstanding the abundance of evidence proving that these students are less likely to succeed, federal data show that 90 percent of UCR students persist after their freshman year and 68 percent of students graduate in six years—26 points higher than the national average.

The reasons for UCR’s success graduating students includes a combination of targeted financial aid for needier students (students with a family income under $80,000 per year pay no tuition); 8 a robust suite of student services, which emphasize peer ties between students through learning communities; and opportunities for undergraduate students to partner in faculty-led research. (More than 50 percent of undergraduates undertake a research experience.) 9 By taking a different tack from competing institutions, UCR has shown that it is possible to maintain robust growth, hold down costs, and drive success for students of all demographics.

BYU-Idaho has also undertaken a major transformation of its teaching enterprise. Created in 2000, BYU-Idaho grew out of Ricks College, a two-year junior college, to become a four-year, bachelor’s-degree-granting institution that primarily focuses on access, student success, and teaching excellence. Designed to “have a unique role and be distinctive from” its sister institutions within the BYU system, BYU-Idaho has managed to grow its enrollment and keep costs low by upending the traditional academic calendar in favor of a three-track, year-round calendar. Applicants to BYU- Idaho are assigned to a cohort that begins in either a fall, winter, or spring term and remain with their cohort through graduation, with each cohort assigned to attend only two of the three terms.

Since the new system was announced in 2000, total annual enrollment on campus has increased from fewer than 15,000 to more than 30,000 students, while the relative cost per student has declined. In other words, because each cohort attends only two of three available semesters each year, one-third of the students are away from campus at any point in time—effectively growing the capacity of the school by 50 percent without adding infrastructure. Rather than taking the downtime that many schools have in the summer, BYU-Idaho operates year-round, always at full capacity. The university keeps the system flexible by allowing students to take online courses at any time, regardless of their cohort calendar, and offering qualified students the option to enroll year-round to accelerate graduation. 10

Not only has its focus on a teaching-oriented faculty and a three-track calendar addressed the affordability and access challenges of higher education, but also it has enabled BYU-Idaho to zero in on student outcomes. Even though the university has a policy of virtual open enrollment and more than 50 percent of its students receive federal financial aid, BYU-Idaho consistently has nearly a 20 percent higher graduation rate than the national average, well above that of its regional peers. 11 Moreover, BYU-Idaho students graduate in the 82nd percentile in the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) for critical thinking and writing, while their incoming credentials suggest that they should only achieve the 65th percentile. For BYU-Idaho, the focus on teaching has not only expanded access and reduced cost but also increased quality by concentrating on meaningful student outcomes.

At ASU, teaching is organized according to four Teaching and Learning Realms. Realm 1 pertains to campus-based immersion learning where 3,400 faculty members interact closely with more than 71,000 students. Realm 2 includes fully online delivery of degree programs offered by campus colleges and departments. Realm 3 provides open scale digital immersion learning (sometimes termed massive open online courses or MOOCs), and Realm 4 focuses on “education through exploration,” including virtual field trips, game-based learning, and personalized learning.

Technology-driven enhancements cut across all four Realms, but the focus of Transformation A is Realm 1, where carefully implemented strategies have allowed for dramatic growth in enrollment, especially of disadvantaged populations, along with improvement in retention and graduation rates. For example, ASU’s eAdvisor platform, implemented in 2007, uses assorted data points to help keep students on track for degree completion and automatically implements interventions when a student fails to progress. Other innovations are structural, such as partnerships with community colleges that accommodate the careful preparation of students and seamless transfer pathways. Such innovations have helped ASU increase the number of degrees awarded at its metropolitan campuses from 14,444 in 2007-08 to 18,254 in 2015-16, while also raising its public profile. ASU has received a top-five ranking in best-qualified graduates from The Wall Street Journal in 2010; a top-10 ranking in graduate employability from the Global University Employability Survey in 2016; and a number-one ranking in the United States for innovation in 2016, 2017, and 2018 by U.S. News & World Report .

Transformation B for New Opportunities

While Transformation A innovations focus on the established core functions of universities, Transformation B generates entirely new educational models that could not emerge meaningfully from the traditional academic organization. In higher education, this is often manifested through online programs targeting nontraditional student populations or new technology-driven modes of learning.

Prior to the 1980s, higher education was focused almost exclusively on young learners. But now students who attend four-year institutions and live on campus make up only a portion of all US undergraduates. Of the more than 20 million undergraduates attending college in the United States, more than 40 percent are over the age of 25, and this figure is predicted to increase, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Technological and social changes are also driving the emergence of new student demographics from diverse locations as well as a broader spectrum of socioeconomic backgrounds. Many of these students face barriers such as the need to balance studies with work and family obligations, high educational costs, transportation and logistical difficulties, a lack of access to information about educational opportunities, and a lack of guidance tailored to their unique needs. Many of these barriers also correspond to the ways in which these students learn that are fundamentally different from the experience of traditional campus-bound college students. For example, midcareer students bring to the classroom work experiences that not only are foreign to traditional students but may be the exact experiences that the classroom is preparing them to confront.

Southern New Hampshire University stands out as an example of a forward-thinking institution that reorganized itself around online education to reach the nontraditional student market. Founded in 1932 as the New Hampshire Accounting and Secretarial School, SNHU since 1995 has expanded its reach to nontraditional students worldwide with the founding of an online distance learning program, SNHU Online. Within six years of launch, the program included students from 23 time zones. Today, as a consequence of the success of SNHU Online, the university enrolls about 85,000 students. Most recently, SNHU launched College for America , a subsidiary nonprofit institution that offers nontraditional learners degrees in competency-based tracks, wherein students advance by demonstrating proficiency through applied projects rather than traditional coursework.

SNHU Online was created as a differentiated organization dedicated to serving the unique demands of emerging online markets but carefully connected to the core university for the assurance of quality. This strategy of establishing a separate organization with careful integration with the core university is not unique. Even in major public universities where significant success with online education has occurred, it has often come when leaders have been willing to create distinctive organizations that could focus not only on the new models tied to online learning but also on the distinctive needs of online students.

Pennsylvania State University is one of the largest universities in the United States, and serving nontraditional students from Pennsylvania’s rural population has long been a part of its identity. In 1998, Penn State launched its World Campus , one of the nation’s first online programs, which has since grown to o er 125 degrees, certificates, and minors and now has more than 12,000 students enrolled in all 50 states and more than 50 countries. 12 In 2013, Penn State announced that it would invest $20 million to facilitate the expansion of World Campus, which it plans to grow to 45,000 students by 2023. 13

Like SNHU Online, World Campus exists as a separate unit of the university with carefully designed integrations with other core university units. A key feature of the World Campus that contributes to its business success and 95 percent student-satisfaction rate is the program’s integration with central academic units through revenue sharing. 14 When students enroll in World Campus courses in a given subject, the college that offers the course keeps a portion of the discretionary revenue, providing incentives for academic units to promote and accommodate World Campus growth and ensure that students receive the same level of support as on-campus students. In recent years, the World Campus has played a critical role in growing Penn State’s system-wide enrollment even as population decreases in rural areas and drastic decreases in state funding threaten the viability of its branch campuses. 15

Other universities have taken a more targeted approach to growing specific nontraditional markets. For BYU-Idaho, this began with a focus on reaching students who were not being served by the existing BYU system because they did not feel that they could afford college or because, in some cases, they did not feel that they could succeed. In 2009, the university launched a new program called Pathway to target these students. It provides a one-year preparatory experience to ready students for college.

Rather than teaching traditional general education courses, the program focuses on study skills and self-organization. Instead of the traditional freshman English and math, the program teaches (to similar outcomes) résumé and cover letter writing, and family financial literacy. The students work through the material in interactive, cohort-based online courses and then gather weekly in small groups at local religious centers. While the program started with just 50 students in three pilot locations, today it has grown to reach tens of thousands of students in more than 500 locations around the world.

Similarly, BYU-Idaho’s online degree programs start with certificates and associate degrees, rather than maintaining the almost exclusive focus on bachelor’s degrees at more traditional universities. This has allowed many students to advance more quickly in the workforce and access a more applied curriculum than a traditional campus-centric model of higher education would do. It is important to note that both the Pathway and online degree programs were structured as separate operating entities within BYU-Idaho so they could focus on the distinctive needs of these online students. By helping students build confidence in their early academic efforts, pricing the program at less than $75 a credit hour, and allowing students to access education locally, the Pathway program and the BYU-Idaho online degree programs have grown to more than 35,000 students annually. This combined annual enrollment now exceeds the total annual student enrollment of the residential campus in Rexburg, Idaho. This past February, BYU-Idaho’s governing board elected to create a new institution, BYU-Pathway Worldwide, to focus on serving the needs of these nontraditional students.

Transformation B at ASU cuts across multiple realms of teaching and learning, each pushing further into the frontiers of innovation in higher education. Like BYU-Idaho, ASU’s Transformation B is coordinated primarily through an independent unit dedicated to the cultivation of technology-intensive disruptive ventures. ASU founded this unit as EdPlus . In what is termed Teaching and Learning Realm 2, traditional undergraduate and graduate degrees are offered in online formats. Since its inception in 2009, ASU Online (now operated under the umbrella of EdPlus) has gone from just under 1,000 students in five programs to nearly 26,000 students in more than 100 fully online programs. Through Realm 2, instructional designers connect faculty expertise to the unique learning needs of online degree seekers. This enables ASU to be responsive to nontraditional learners. It can also facilitate rapid, scalable response to very specific opportunities. For example, through an innovative partnership with Starbucks, ASU is on track to provide degrees to 25,000 Starbucks employees (or partners) by 2025. 16

ASU’s Teaching and Learning Realms 3 and 4 venture further into the frontiers of university innovation. ASU’s Global Freshman Academy (GFA) is the chief effort in Realm 3. In partnership with the MIT/Harvard University nonprofit venture edX, GFA is a massive open online course (MOOC) platform. Existing MOOC platforms offer certifications or badges for completed courses, but GFA is the first to offer course credit from an accredited university. GFA is also priced affordably for learners around the world—less than $200 per credit hour—and students pay for course credit only after passing the course and only if they want the optional university credit. Initial enrollment in the first 10 GFA courses exceeded 350,000 students.

ASU’s Realm 4 is dedicated to education through exploration. Similar to the research and development arm of a large company, Realm 4 at ASU aims to understand, integrate, and shape the newest technology-driven approaches to learning. Efforts here involve the development of platforms for game-based learning, adaptive learn- ing, and personalized learning. For example, one Realm 4 project, driven in part by ASU’s Center for Education Through eXploration (ETX), is the “immersive virtual field trip” or iVFT. This project uses digital photo, video, satellite, and map technologies to capture the experiences of eld scientists and share them with learners through interactive tools. It is but one of many potential ways that the uni- versity can expand the number and kinds of students it reaches, and the means by which they can learn.

Higher education in the United States has entered a new era shaped by profound social and economic challenges and historically unique technological acceleration. To confront these challenges, tradition, replication, and standardization are not enough. Design thinking offers an important pathway for transforming universities into adaptive institutions that can carry out the important work of effectively responding to legacy and emerging markets. Although design thinking and strategic thinking are often tightly coupled, no amount of strategy can remedy an organization whose design is incapable of responding to the full spectrum of problems it faces.

University leaders who would risk dual transformation are required to exercise full commitment to multiple, potentially conflicting visions of the future. They undoubtedly confront skepticism, resistance, and inertia, which may sway them from pursuing overdue reforms. We recognize that this marks a tumultuous time in the history of American higher education, but we see it as an opportunity. America’s leaders in higher education must rise to the challenge of creating new, innovative design models for their universities—for the betterment of their institutions, higher education, and society as a whole.

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documentary

What is Design Thinking in Education?

In a world where artificial intelligence, exemplified by tools like ChatGPT, is reshaping our world, the human touch of design thinking becomes even more crucial. You might already be familiar with design thinking and curious about how to harness it alongside AI, or perhaps you’re new to this method. Regardless of your experience level, I’m going to share why design thinking is your human advantage in an AI-world. We’ll explore its impact on students and educators, particularly when integrated into the curriculum to design learning experiences that are both innovative and empathetic.

Back in 2017, I spearheaded a two-year research study at Design39 Campus in San Diego, CA, focusing on how educators used design thinking to transcend traditional educational practices. This study was pivotal in understanding how to scale from pockets of innovation to a culture of innovation. It’s rare to see a public school integrate these practices, and I always wondered, “Why is this the exception and not the norm?” How might design thinking when combined with AI tools, complement standards-based curricula by prompting students to tackle real-world challenges. We investigated the methods educators used to learn about design thinking and how they crafted learning experiences at the nexus of knowledge, skills, and mindsets, aiming to foster creative problem-solving in an increasingly AI-integrated world. The results revealed it had nothing to do with the technology. It had to do with people.

Design thinking is both a method and a mindset.

What makes design thinking unique in comparison to other frameworks such as project based learning, is that in addition to skills there is an emphasis on developing mindsets such as empathy, creative confidence, learning from failure and optimism.

Seeing their students and themselves enhance and develop their skills and mindset of a design thinker demonstrated the value in using design thinking and fueled their motivation to continue. In addition, it strengthened their self-efficacy and helped them embrace, not fear change.

The results indicate strong agreement amongst the educators between developing in demand skills such as creativity, problem finding, collaboration and communication and practicing design thinking. 

As workplaces determine how to leverage new and emerging technologies in ways that serve humanity, the two critical skills expected will be the ability to solve unstructured problems and to engage in complex communication, two areas that allow workers to augment what machines can do (Levy & Murnane, 2013.) 

Brynjolfsson and McAfee (2014) call this era, “The Second Machine Age,” characterized by advances in technology, such as the rise of big data, mobility, artificial intelligence, robotics and the internet of things. The World Economic Forum calls this era, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution.” 

Regardless of the name we give this era, Schwab warned, as did Brynjolfsson and McAfee, that failure by organizations to prepare and adapt could cause inequality and fragment societies. 

That era that we once talked about, is not here.

The rise of generative Ai.

As Erik Brynjolfsson shares, “There is no economic law that says as technology advances, so does equal opportunity.” The World Economic Forum reinforces this by sharing, that while the dynamics of today’s world have the potential to create enormous prosperity, the challenge to societies, particularly businesses, governments and education systems, will be to create access to opportunities that will allow everyone to share in the prosperity. 

Schwab, Brynjolfsson and McAfee advocate for schools being able to play a powerful role in shaping a future that is technology-driven and human-centered. Design thinking, a human-centered framework is one method that can provide educators with the skills and mindset to navigate away from the traditional model established during the industrial area. To a learner-centered vision where we design learning experiences at the intersection of knowledge, skills, and mindsets.

The Future of Work

Designing schools for today’s learner is not just about solving a workforce or technology challenge. It’s also about solving a human challenge, where every individual has the access and opportunity to reach their potential. 

Despite the changing expectations of the workplace brought forth by this era, today’s education systems largely remain unchanged. Leaving graduates without the knowledge, skills and mindsets to thrive in future workplaces and as citizens. Furthermore, the lack of equity has led to what Paul Attewell calls a growing digital use divide deepening the fragmentation of society. 

​​A decade ago, some of the most in-demand occupations or specialties today did not exist across many industries and countries. Furthermore, 60% of children in kindergarten will live in a world where the possible opportunities do not yet exist (World Economic Forum, 2017).

In Technology, Jobs and the Future of Work, McKinsey states that 60% of all occupations have at least 30% of activities that can be automated. 40% of employers say lack of skills is the main reason for entry level job vacancies. And 60% of new graduates said they were not prepared for the world of work in a knowledge economy, noting gaps in technical and soft skills. Before our experience with ChatGPT I’m reminded of Imaginable by Jane McGonigal where she shares, “Almost everything important that’s ever happened, was unimaginable shortly before it happened.”

With an influx of technology over the past decade, with iPads and Chromebooks, and now the acceleration of AI technology, particularly over the past year, we have to wonder what gaps exist that prevent us from accelerating and scaling the change we want to see in schools. 

One reason is that this challenge is complex and overwhelming. This is where design thinking practices are helpful in moving from idea to impact. Design thinking practices provide the structure and scaffolds needed to take a complex idea and simplify it.

The Design Thinking Process

Too often design thinking is seen as a series of hexagons to jump through. Check off one and move onto the next. Design thinking is a non-linear framework that nurtures your mindset toward navigating change. 

It can be used in three areas:

• Problem finding
• Problem solving
• Opportunity exploration

The design thinking model is nonlinear. Resulting in a back and forth between the stages of inspiration, ideation and implementation, in an effort to continuously improve upon their potential solution (Shively et al., 2018). These stages were expanded by the d.School into empathy, define, ideate, prototype and iterate. In fact, there are many exercises that can be used to apply each area of the process. 

Let’s walk through each phase. Then I’ll share examples of how it is being used. I also want to preface this by saying that simply going through these stages is where most people misunderstand design thinking and don’t see the results they hoped for. These phases are here to help you develop an action-oriented mindset. Moving from identifying a problem to designing and then testing a solution to quickly get feedback. Each of these phases have numerous exercises to also help facilitate experiences based on your scenario.

Phase 1: Empathy

When you begin with empathy, what you think is challenged by what you learn. This alone is what makes design thinking so unique and is the first phase. During the empathy stage, you observe, engage and immerse yourself in the experience of those you are designing for. Continuously asking, “why” to understand why things are the way they are. 

This phase is where we see the most challenges, yet this phase is the most critical. An empathy map is probably the most common exercise. Yet there are others such as, “Heard, Seen, Respected.” Another challenge in this area is not speaking directly to the user. For example, I’ve sat in many “design thinking” experiences where the group will speculate on behalf of the users. For example, educators speculating about parents, administrators speculating about teachers. 

The purpose behind an empathy exercise is that when we begin with empathy, what we think is challenged by what we learn. While you can practice with each other, ultimately you must speak directly to who you are designing for.

Phase 2: Define

During the define stage you unpack the empathy findings and create an actionable problem statement often starting with, “how might we…” This statement not only emphasizes an optimistic outlook, it invites the designer to think about how this can be a collaborative approach.

Phase 3: Ideate

During the ideate phase you generate a series of possibilities for design. The focus here is quantity not quality. As you want to generate as many possibilities to see how they may merge together. As Guy Kawasaki shares, “Don’t worry be crappy.” Feasibility is not important at this step. Rather the key is to not think about what is possible but what can be possible. At the end, one of the ideas, or the merging of many ideas, is chosen to expand upon in the next phase. 

This is another phase where we see challenges. It is not enough to simply tell someone to get a piece of paper and then come up with lots of ideas. As adults, this is incredibly challenging and is also a muscle that needs to be developed. In fact, one of my favorite exercises is 1-2-4-all. Another is walking questions, where the prompt begins with “What if…” and then after each person writes something it is handed to the person on their right.

Phase 4: Prototype

During the prototype phase, ideas that were narrowed down from ideation are created in a tangible form so that they can be tested. During this phase, the designer has an opportunity to test their prototype and gain feedback.

Phase 5: Iteration

By quickly testing the prototype, the user can refine the idea. And have a deeper understanding to go back and ask questions to the group they are designing for. The feedback received from the user allows the designer to engage in a deeper level of empathy to refine the questions asked and the problem being defined. This brings us back to phase 1. 

You can find more of these exercises to lead your group through each phase at sessionlab.com . 

As schools strive to create student learning experiences that prepare them for their future, design thinking can play a critical role in complementing students’ knowledge with the skills and mindsets to be creative problem solvers.

Examples of Design Thinking in K12

While new approaches tend to be viewed with skepticism, an increasing number of studies are coming forward reflecting the promise of transferability of skills and mindsets from the classroom to real-world problems when utilizing design thinking. As expectations are raised about what student skills and mindsets are needed, the level of support for educators must increase as well to experience success in new strategies and the outcomes they promise. 

When student learning experiences include design thinking, their skills continue to be enhanced and developed. This in turn allows them to apply these strategies to be problem finders and problem solvers. Helping them be more comfortable with change and empowering them to solve unstructured problems. And work with new information, gaining knowledge, skills and mindsets that cannot be found in the confines of a textbook.

In “The Second Machine Age,” the authors share:

Technological progress is going to leave behind some people, perhaps even a lot of people, as it races ahead. As we’ll demonstrate, there’s never been a better time to be a worker with special skills or the right education. Because these people can use technology to create and capture value. However, there’s never been a worse time to be a worker with only “ordinary” skills and abilities to offer, because computers, robots, and other digital technologies are acquiring these skills and abilities at an extraordinary rate. The Second Machine Age | Erik Brynjolfsson | Andrew McAffee

Design thinking strengthens the mindsets and skills that today’s world demands with the ability to become creative problem solvers. Through nurturing the skills and mindsets developed through engaging in design thinking, schools can create more equitable use environments for all learners that leverage technology to accelerate creative tasks that can bridge the digital use divide.

Case Study 1: Design Thinking in Grade 6

A recent study by the Stanford Graduate School of Education highlights that through instruction, students transfer design thinking strategies beyond the classroom. And that the biggest benefits were to low-achieving students (Chin et al., 2019). 

The study included 200 students from grade 6. The researchers worked with the educators during class time to coach half the group of students on two specific design thinking strategies. And then assigned them a project where they could apply these skills.

The two strategies included seeking out constructive feedback and identifying multiple possible outcomes to a challenge. Each of these strategies were designed to prevent what the researchers called, “early closure”. Identifying the potential solution before examining the problem. 

After class the students were presented with different challenges to see how they would approach them. The students who were taught about constructive criticism asked for feedback when presented with the new challenge and were more likely to go back and revise their work. 

This area was significant, as a pre-test revealed that low-achieving students were behind their high achieving peers when seeking out feedback, a gap that the researchers say disappeared after classroom instruction, highlighting the need for this to be taught to all students, not just advanced students in electives.

As Attewell shares, “Placing computers in the hands of every student is not a solution because the challenge lies in addressing the “ digital use divide – changing the tasks that students do when provided with computers.” 

He further highlights the students who gain the types of skills highlighted by the Future of Jobs Report are white and affluent students. These students are more likely to use technology to develop trending skills with greater levels of adult support. Whereas minority students are more likely to use it for rote learning tasks, with lower levels of adult support. 

While design thinking is often found in pockets, presented to students already interested in this area, or the students who are in certain electives, the study led by the Stanford Graduate School of Education demonstrates the advances that can be made when this is offered to all students.

Case Study 2: Design Thinking in Geography

Another study (Caroll et al., 2010) focused on the implementation of a design curriculum during a middle school geography class. And explored how students expressed their understanding of design thinking in classroom activities, how affective elements impacted design thinking in the classroom environment and how design thinking is connected to academic standards and content in the classroom. The students were a diverse group with 60% Latino, 30% African-American, 9% Pacific Islander and 1% White.

The task was for students to use the design process to learn about systems in geography. The study found that students increased their levels of creative confidence. And that design thinking fostered the ability to imagine without boundaries and constraints. A key element to success was that educators needed to see the value of design thinking. And it must be integrated into academic content.

A challenge often associated with design thinking in education is not integrating it into mainstream education as an equitable experience for all learners despite showing that lower achieving students benefit more (Chin et al, 2019). 

If students are to experience dynamic learning experiences, then organizations must raise the level of support for educators and give them the time and space to learn and integrate design thinking.

How Educators Use Design Thinking

Educators are facing a number of challenges in their professional practice. Many of the requirements today are tools and methods they did not grow up with. Furthermore, the profession is tasked with designing new methods often within traditional systems that have constraints that may serve as roadblocks to change (Robinson & Aronica, 2016). 

A 2018 study by PwC with the Business Higher Education Forum shared that an average of 10% of K-12 teachers feel confident incorporating higher-level technology that affords students the opportunity to use technology to design learning that is active, not passive. 

As a result, students do not spend much time in school actively practicing the higher-level trending skills expected by employers. Moreover, the report shows that more than 60% of classroom technology use is passive, while only 32% is active use. While the study suggests that many teachers do not have the skills to engage students in the active use of technology, 79% said they would like to have more professional development for how to leverage technology to design learning that is active.

Case Study 3: Design39 Campus

As I shared earlier I led a two-year research study at Design39 Campus. The study examines how it helped teachers evolve their practice. At Design39 teachers are called “Learning Experience Designers” (LEDs). Borko and Putnam (1995) share that how educators think is related to their knowledge. To understand how LEDs are using design thinking to complement the standards-based curriculum, it was important to understand how they acquired and applied this knowledge.  

Despite design thinking having its roots outside of education, when asked, “What does design thinking mean to you?” The LEDs identified many commonalities amongst their own work as educators and design thinking. Moreover, they appreciated the alignment of their work with the vocabulary and structure of the design thinking framework. 

Over 50% of the LEDs interviewed identified design thinking as providing them with a common vocabulary and structure for what they already do. The LEDs identified educators as inherent design thinkers due to the shared human-centered focus of working with users. In this experience educators design challenges with cyclical learning tasks involving testing, feedback and iteration, and a design mindset to address the wide variety of complex problems within their individual classrooms and across education organizations.

One LED shared:

I just look at it as a process, a process in my mind that we kind of naturally go through as educators, and so with the design thinking process I feel that it is codifying what we do and so we start off always in empathy and empathy is the heart of design thinking and so we are problem solving, who are we problem solving for – people, our learners and so this entire process that we go through of brain dumping it, trying it, getting feedback and coming back to it again so that we can make sure we were really insightful about what the problem really was for the users and we continue around this process to fine tune a potential solution is the design thinking process. Learning Experience Designer | Design39 Campus

One of the ways mastery of knowledge is demonstrated is by teaching others. To assess their mastery of design thinking in education, learning experience designers were asked to describe their confidence in teaching someone else how to integrate design thinking into their curriculum.

Many LEDs acknowledged that although this is what it often looked like in the first year of the school opening, they have since had the time, space and collaborative opportunities to explore and create deeper integration. This was a point of reference mentioned by 78% of LEDs.

I think a lot of people see design thinking as one science activity, we design think everything from rules to problems that come up in the playground, it’s all through the day, they (the learners) are always looking for problems to solve. Learning Experience Designer | Design39 Campus

In another example, four LEDs made a note using the exact same language that “design thinking is not always cardboard and duct tape.” What allows them to design learning that is more meaningful  one LED highlighted:

Not every day is about using duct tape and cardboard, sometimes to do the design to solve the problems you have to hunker down and read and research and so some days, design thinking is highlighting and taking notes. Learning Experience Designer | Design39 Campus

Another LED elaborated on this idea by sharing that

Design thinking is a way of thinking, not always a product that is created at the end. Learning Experience Designer | Design39 Campus

LEDs in all focus groups shared how ultimately design thinking was an opportunity to design lessons that are “ bigger than we are .” 

This allowed for the LEDs to design learning experiences. With this, the end result was not to just design a potential solution to a challenge that was identified. Or to simply go from one standard to another, checking off boxes along the way, but that the solution, the work the learners were doing lived beyond the classroom for an authentic audience, where learners are working on real world problems and presenting their solutions to a real world audience.

Almost all of the LEDs shared that to them design thinking was a mindset. It is a process of inquiry that allowed for a more human centered environment where the learner was the focus. 

This highlighted a critical shift in the culture at Design39, an element Sarason (2004) discussed in saying no one ever asks:

“Why is school not a place where educators learn as well?” 

Bring a Design Thinking Workshop to Your School

We’ve invested in technology. Now it’s time to invest in people. Let’s discuss how design thinking practices can enhance the work you are doing in your school, giving everyone the mindset and skills to navigate change with enthusiasm and optimism. Use this calendar to schedule a time with Sabba to discuss bringing a workshop to your school. Workshops can be delivered both virtually and in-person.

Attewell, P. (2001). The first and second digital divides. Sociology of Education, 74(3), 252-259

Borko, H., & Putnam, R.T. (1995). Expanding a teacher’s knowledge base: A cognitive psychological perspective on professional development. In T. Gusky & M. Huberman (Eds), Professional development in education: New paradigms and practices (pp.35-65). Teachers College Press. 

Brown, T & Wyatt, J. (2010). Design thinking for social innovation.  Stanford Social Science Review, 8 (1), 30-35.

Brynjolfsson, E. (2014).  The second machine age: Work, progress, and prosperity in a time of brilliant technologies  (1st t ed.). W. W. Norton & Company.

Carroll, M., Goldman, S., Britos, L., Koh, J., Royalty, A., & Hornstein, M. (2010). Destination, imagination and the fires within: Design thinking in a middle school classroom. International Journal of Art and Design Education, (29)1, 37-53.

Chin, D. B., Doris, Blair, K.P., Wolf, R., & Conlin, L., Cutumisu, M., Pfaffman, J., Schwartz, D.L. (2019). Educating and measuring choice: A test of the transfer of design thinking in problem solving and learning. Journal of the Learning Sciences. 1-44. 

Levy, F., & Murnane, R. (2013). Dancing with Robots. NEXT Report.

McKinsey Global Institute (2017). Technology, Jobs and the Future of Work. McKinsey. 

PwC (2017). Technology in U.S. Schools: Are we preparing our students for the jobs of tomorrow . Pricewater House Coopers. https://www.pwc.com/us/en/about-us/corporate-responsibility/library/preparing-students-for-technology-jobs.html .

Robinson, K., & Aronica, L. (2016). Creative schools: the grassroots revolution that’s transforming education. Penguin Books.

Shively, K., Stith, K.M., & Rubenstein, L.D. (2018). Measuring what matters: Assessing creativity, critical thinking, and the design process. Gifted Child Today, 41(3) 149-158.

World Economic Forum. (2018). The future of jobs: Employment, Skills and Workforce Strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution . World Economic Forum. 

I believe that the future should be designed. Not left to chance. Over the past decade, using design thinking practices I've helped schools and businesses create a culture of innovation where everyone is empowered to move from idea to impact, to address complex challenges and discover opportunities. 

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Design Thinking in Education

Design Thinking is a mindset and approach to learning, collaboration, and problem solving. In practice, the design process is a structured framework for identifying challenges, gathering information, generating potential solutions, refining ideas, and testing solutions. Design Thinking can be flexibly implemented; serving equally well as a framework for a course design or a roadmap for an activity or group project.

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Stanford — d.school  and the  The Bootcamp Bootleg IDEO — ' Design Thinking for Educators ' and the  Design ThinkingToolkit Business Innovation Factory —  'Teachers Design for Education'  and the TD4Ed Curriculum Research —  Design Thinking in Pedagogy  —  Luka, Ineta (2014). Design Thinking in Pedagogy. Journal of Education Culture and Society, No. 2, 63-74.

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Design Thinking in Education: Perspectives, Opportunities and Challenges

The article discusses design thinking as a process and mindset for collaboratively finding solutions for wicked problems in a variety of educational settings. Through a systematic literature review the article organizes case studies, reports, theoretical reflections, and other scholarly work to enhance our understanding of the purposes, contexts, benefits, limitations, affordances, constraints, effects and outcomes of design thinking in education. Specifically, the review pursues four questions: (1) What are the characteristics of design thinking that make it particularly fruitful for education? (2) How is design thinking applied in different educational settings? (3) What tools, techniques and methods are characteristic for design thinking? (4) What are the limitations or negative effects of design thinking? The goal of the article is to describe the current knowledge base to gain an improved understanding of the role of design thinking in education, to enhance research communication and discussion of best practice approaches and to chart immediate avenues for research and practice.

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Disruptive Innovation in Education

Dr. benjamin washington.

• November 22, 2019

Education is an enterprise that improves the lives of the teachers who instruct and students who are learning. This is true across the K-12 spectrum and in higher education. Although there are challenges in education such as achievement gaps, social and economic issues, and finding effective ways to teach and learn, there are still examples of great experiences. The 21 st -century student has access to information at a larger scale, an abundance of educational technology , and both face-to-face and online learning platforms.

The educational experience for today’s students is filled with opportunities to engage others globally, develop digital literacy skills, and maximize their individual academic ability. There are a variety of practices used with today’s learners that have not changed in years, but there are also elements that bring disruptive innovations in education. In order to understand these elements, it is important to know what disruptive innovation in education is.

What is Disruptive Innovation?

A disruption is a break or interruption in a normalized process. For example, a teacher who has been using direct instruction for years may bring forth a disruptive innovation by using a Learning Management System (LMS) or incorporating project-based learning and interactive web quests to engage students. On a broader scale, a disruptive innovation in education can be creating a personalized learning program to teach financial literacy in a school district for low-income students. The Khan Academy and the Sylvan Learning Center are examples of disruptors that started out small but now have national and global influences in the areas of tutoring students and academic development.

Disruptive innovations in education can come in many different forms. They can be a small change in teaching strategies, systematic efforts for change, or a student idea that was encouraged by a teacher. The impact that the innovations have in the educational field can be brief but also long term and career-changing as well. Whether small or large, it is vital to continue to find ways to bring disruptive innovations to education.

What are the Benefits of Utilizing Disruptive Innovation for Education?

The benefits of utilizing disruptive innovation in education are that it has the ability to level the playing field for students who may not have the same access to educational opportunities as others. In the area of eLearning, this innovation allows for adults who are working full time to still work towards a degree while maintaining a work and family balance. Further benefits to utilizing disruptive innovations in education are that it creates the need for professional development. This makes the teacher and school leader more effective educators and allows for new ideas to emerge regarding ways to implement best practices in education.

Another benefit of utilizing disruptive innovations in education is that it gives students choice and variety with their learning. Having multiple methods for students to learn leads to having multiple ways to assess students. Educational innovations are important to foster growth and sustainability in the educational realm.

Providing new and fresh ideas and incorporating them in the teaching and learning process is not only a benefit of positive educational disruptors, but it is instrumental to creating new opportunities for students in their lives. The same is true for school administrators and teachers as they find new ways to grow and develop their own skills and insights. To further emphasize these benefits, there are a variety of ways to incorporate disruptive innovations in the school and classroom.

Ways to Bring Disruptive Innovation to Your School and Classroom

There are multiple ways to bring disruptive innovations to your classroom. Attend conferences, seek out professional development opportunities, and research new and development changes in the education field. In the classroom, incorporate strategies that focus on engaging diverse students. If the classroom or school has a high minority student population , get to know the students, their families, and their cultures to see what strategies can be implemented to ensure their success.

Another way to bring disruptive innovation to the classroom is to incorporate gamification using educational technology. Gamification facilitates critical-thinking skills, self-autonomy, and planning skills. An example of this is when a math teacher facilitates learning math and design skills by having students play Minecraft or assesses students’ learning with platforms like Quizlet.

On a school-wide level, a principal can change the culture of a school with disruptive education by changing professional development formats and embracing a flipped faculty development approach. It is important to remember that disruptive innovations in education can be as simple as changing a teaching style or as profound as making an educational policy change on the state or national level.

The goal with disruptive innovations in education is to find proactive and positive approaches to disrupting the norm. Finding effective strategies to include all students in the learning process is vital. Educational technology has allowed for there to be a traditional and online learning format, while LMSs offer personalized learning experiences for children and adults. At one point in time, all of these were disruptors to the traditional educational process. Researching best practices, implementing effective policies, and embracing the global perspective allow for ideas to become reality when it comes to maximizing the social, academic, and economic needs of the 21 st -century student.

*Updated October 2021

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What is Design Thinking? A Handy Guide for Teachers

In this post, Mandi Dimitriadis, Director of Learning at Makers Empire, will help you understand more about Design Thinking. You’ll get to know what Design Thinking is, why Design Thinking is important, the phases of the Design Thinking process and how you might teach your students how to use Design Thinking to reframe problems and needs as actionable statements.

Designers use particular ways of thinking to create innovative new products and design solutions to challenging problems. As educators, we can learn a lot from the way designers think.

What is Design Thinking?

• A solutions-based approach to solving problems.
• An iterative, non-linear process.
• A way of thinking and working.
• Supported by a collection of strategies and methods.
• Develop empathy and understand the needs of the people we are designing solutions for.
• Define problems and opportunities for designing solutions.
• Generate and visualise creative ideas.
• Develop prototypes.
• Test solutions and seek feedback.

Why is Design Thinking important?

Consider the rapidly changing world we live in. To thrive in the future students will need to be adaptable and flexible. They will need to be prepared to face situations that they have never seen before. Design Thinking is one of the best tools we can give our students to ensure they:

• Have creative confidence in their abilities to adapt and respond to new challenges.
• Are able to identify and develop innovative, creative solutions to problems they and others encounter.
• Develop as optimistic, empathetic and active members of society who can contribute to solving the complex challenges the world faces.

How can students use Design Thinking?

So what does Design Thinking look like in action?

Watch these inspiring videos made by schools in Australia showing how students used Design Thinking and Makers Empire to solve common real-world problems in their classroom, school and communities.

Please note that the Makers Empire app depicted in this video is a much earlier version of the app.

How did the students in the videos use design thinking.

In the Forbes primary school bag tag video, for example, we saw our first graders:

• Developing and agreeing on criteria for their designs.
• Selecting tools and materials – in this case, Makers Empire and 3D printing.
• Supporting each other to learn how to use the new tools.
• Producing a working prototype.

The testing process for our first graders involved:

• Giving each other feedback
• Assessing their designs against the previous agreed criteria
• Making modifications and improvements to their designs
• Testing their designs in the context they would be used.
• Reflecting on their problem-solving processes and learning outcomes.

How can we teach Design Thinking with little time to plan?

Makers Empire teachers never cease to impress us with their innovative and creative ideas for using Makers Empire to help students achieve curriculum learning outcomes. However, we also know how busy teachers are and how difficult it can be to find time to plan engaging, curriculum-aligned units of work. So we created ready-made Challenge Courses . 

Each themed course is a complete design program comprising videos, quizzes, tutorials & design challenges.  Challenge Courses are aligned to curriculum outcomes and teach real world-problem solving using Design Thinking. Challenge courses take 4-10 weeks to complete so teachers might plan to have students do a course during one lesson/week over a term. During that term, students will address all aspects of the Design and Technologies curriculum without teachers needing to do any extra planning. 

How can we learn more about Design Thinking?

Makers Empire offers customisable Design Thinking and 3D design learning programs to school districts, education departments , and groups of schools .

Through our professional learning programs, teachers learn how to use Design Thinking and 3D design to transform the way they teach STEM subjects and help  equip students with the skills and attitudes they’ll need to thrive in the future.

We’ve delivered Design Thinking and 3D technology programs to groups of 200+ schools in Australia, America and the Middle East so we have the right experience, skills and team to help you.

How will you teach Design Thinking?

Now it’s your turn. Think about projects you can do with your students that will help enhance and deepen learning. How might you support your students to:

• Develop empathy , insights and understandings.
• Define a problem as an actionable question.
• Generate and visualise ideas.
• Develop prototypes; and
• Evaluate and test their designed solutions.

Makers Empire is an excellent way to teach Design Thinking to students. You can sign up for a free school trial at the top of this website. Don’t forget to download our free  Design Thinking posters and worksheets , too.

Mandi Dimitriadis

Mandi Dimitriadis, DipT. is a highly respected educator and speaker who works internationally with elementary, primary and middle schools to help teachers develop Design Thinking, embrace maker pedagogy and cover Design & Technology Curriculum. She is an experienced classroom teacher who recognises the power of technology to enhance teaching and improve educational outcomes. Mandi has extensive experience with curriculum development, having previously developed programs for the Australian Government’s Department of Education.

How to Enhance Design Thinking with ChatGPT

New technologies are always posing challenges in the educational sector.  It’s not the technology that’s the issue, but the people and processes.  Educators’ approaches to these digital advancements must not be to deny their existence but to understand how they can be used to transform assessment.  AI tools, such as ChatGPT, offer students access to a wealth of information and can be most useful as research and practice guides in active and applied problem-solving tasks such as those used in design thinking.

So how can teachers embrace ChatGPT and use it to enhance design thinking approaches? 

ChatGPT is capable of facilitating the generation of novel ideas, enhancing creativity and improving product development (Haleem, 2022).  It can reinforce the principles of design thinking through its ability to generate student centred solutions with its iterative problem solving approach (Enhold, 2022).  For each of the phases in design thinking, ChatGPT can be a useful tool.

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Designorate

Design thinking, innovation, user experience and healthcare design

Design Thinking in Schools: Building a Generation of Innovators

Observing today’s world can tell us much about tomorrow and what human beings need to meet future challenges. Along with the increasing challenges that we face everyday from economical challenges and climate change to extremism and the increasing language of hate between nations, we should raise a generation that is able to meet these challenges and find innovative solutions for tomorrow’s problems. In a previous article, Can we Apply Design Thinking in Education , we discussed how the current education systems still depend on the some core education pedagogy since decades. Although there is a sustaining innovation in some education systems, these future challenges seek a disruptive innovative that can contribute to building a generation programmed to solve problems rather than dealing with them.

When investigating the different routes to achieve this goal, one route seems to be appealing, as it aims to change how we thinking, which aligns with Albert Einstein’s quote: “ You cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it. ” This route is based on design thinking, a methodology that aims to solve problems with a creative approach while putting the user in the center of the process to achieve a user-centered approach. Design thinking processes are not only applied to design business but extend to become a method that can be applied in daily life situation in order to solve our everyday problems or make our lives easier through innovation and creativity.

Why Do We Need Design Thinking?

So, how can this methodology contribute to changing our education system to become more innovation and creativity-biased? While there are different design thinking models—two of which will be discussed later in this article—most of them share the same characteristics while changing the steps and the how the process flows. Some of the characteristics include the following.

Highlight problems and curiosity : In the core of the design thinking there is a question to answer or problem to solve. All the design process start with a question that need to be addressed and reaching this question requires an open-mind that is fueled with curiosity to address problems that may not be addressed before.

Collaborative : The process is based on collaborating and sharing ideas and effort among a design thinking team either inside a company or a classroom.

Constructive and holistic : The design process is based on thinking about old ideas with a new approach in order to achieve innovation. Also, it targets a holistic perception for the situation and focuses on the whole system rather than individual elements, similar to systems thinking theory.

Empathic : In order to put the user in the heart of the process, empathy aims to put the team in the shoes of the user of the product or the service. Therefore, they tend to understand their problems, needs, and aims strategies to solve it.

Iterative : The design thinking process depends on appreciating iteration and ongoing improvement through the different steps of the process and even after delivering the final solution.

Nonjudgmental : Developing ideas during the design thinking process depends on a non-judgmental approach. The team freely develops ideas, seeking criticism in order to unleash creativity especially in the ideation and brainstorming phases.

Universal : The design thinking process doesn’t only apply to design; it can be adopted to solve issues in daily life or problems facing any industry.

Design Thinking Models for Education

Although the design thinking process was initially developed for organizations, the above characteristics promote it to become a successful educational method to teach students on different levels about how to think in problems differently and build innovative solutions through chasing their ordinary thinking matrix. Over the course of targeting the education system, two main models were introduced in association with the IDEO, Stanford d.school, and Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. These processes were developed along with local schools and teachers in order to be presented in a form of educational strategy including the process itself, and a number of these activities and tools can be used in school classes.

Stanford d.school Design Thinking

The Stanford d.school design thinking for education model aims to put teachers and students together in hands-on design challenges that focus on building their skills through different design thinking processes. This model depends on the following steps:

Empathy : This stage aims to discover the gaps between what people say and do, which will present the question or the opportunity to provide the solution. In this stage, students start by investigating a specific situation or place and how people interact with it.

Define : At this stage, students transform their findings into a description for the situation. This description is the target that needs to be addressed in the following steps.

Ideate : In this stage, students intend to arrive at a solution using any of the design thinking methods such as brainstorming and mind mapping.

Prototype : Students start to build a prototype for the suggested solution. This visual prototype allows them to evaluate the idea and determine whether it meets with the target.

Test : This is the first iteration stage, where the prototype is tested by the students and receives feedback to improve the product to reach a better results.

Iterate : Even after the product is delivered, there should be a process to learn about the current and future experience with the product and to develop the future version of the product.

Note that the above model suggests a continuous iteration process between different stages in order to improve the final product. So, the process may not flow in a linear line, as the iteration process may lead to jumping between processes. Another model was provided with different names for the process: understand, observe, point of view, ideate, prototype, and test.

IDEO Design Thinking for Educators

The IDEO mode is introduced on a dedicated website about Design Thinking for Educators , where their toolkit can be downloaded and adopted in classrooms. Similar to the d.school model, this model is based on a process that presents a workflow for educators. It supports a number of in-class activities and tools that help them achieve the target of the design thinking process in education. IDEO model for education is based on five phases.

Discovery : This investigation phase intends to build a deep understanding of what is needed and what needs to be solved. This phase gives an understanding to the proposed design challenge.

Interpretation : This phase transforms the collected data or observation into a design opportunity, combining thoughts to form a direction for the ideation phase.

Ideation : This phase is similar to the d.school model. It tends to generate ideas and thinking in different ideas without judgment, criticism, or any constrains.

Experimentation : This phase presents the prototype. Ideas are visualized and turned into a prototype product that can be tested and evaluated.

Evolution : This phase presents the iteration nature of the process, including planning for further development and improving the ideas.

Resources for Design Thinking Educators and References

Design thinking for education resources are available online in different domains that can help educators and school administrators to directly put this approach into action. The following are some resources that can be downloaded and used in class or to build a class system based on design thinking:

• IDEO Design Thinking for Educators website
• Stanford Educator Guide to Design Thinking
• Taking Design Thinking to Schools
• Introduction to Design Thinking
• IDEO Design Thinking Kit
• Change by Design , a book by Tim Brown
• Make Space: How to Set the Stage for Creative Collaboration , a book by Scott Doorley, Scott Witthoft, Hassor Plattner Institute of Design, and Stanford University

In the current and future challenges that face our world, we should raise a generation with a high ability to solve problems and innovate new solutions for problems. This can be achieved through adopting new ways of thinking, and one of the highlights of these suggested methods is design thinking—a method that intend to build problem-solving skills through creativity and the adoption of a user-centered approach.

Using design thinking as a teaching method helps our students to become more empathic, collaborative, and open-minded. They can solve problems regardless of the industry they will work in when they join the workforce. While there are different design thinking methods, the Stanford d.school and IDEO design thinking methods were introduced along with a set of tools and activities that educators can implement directly into their classes. This approach can help schools directly adopt a creative thinking model, which may change students’ thinking to a more creative and innovative approach, resulting in a new generation geared toward solving world problems instead of making them.

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Dr Rafiq Elmansy

As an academic and author, I've had the privilege of shaping the design landscape. I teach design at the University of Leeds and am the Programme Leader for the MA Design, focusing on design thinking, design for health, and behavioural design. I've developed and taught several innovative programmes at Wrexham Glyndwr University, Northumbria University, and The American University in Cairo. I'm also a published book author and the proud founder of Designorate.com, a platform that has been instrumental in fostering design innovation. My expertise in design has been recognised by prestigious organizations. I'm a fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA), the Design Research Society (FDRS), and an Adobe Education Leader. Over the course of 20 years, I've had the privilege of working with esteemed clients such as the UN, World Bank, Adobe, and Schneider, contributing to their design strategies. For more than 12 years, I collaborated closely with the Adobe team, playing a key role in the development of many Adobe applications.

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4 thoughts on “ design thinking in schools: building a generation of innovators ”.

Great article. As usual Dr. Rafiq you have a very smooth & easy writing style that makes your articles very attractive & useful

Thanks @saifeldemerdash:disqus . I am glade you liked it!

Thanks for the post Dr. Rafiq. I am in my 7th year as a DT educator. What are your thoughts on a teacher created, designed, implemented, refined, & iterated design thinking process? Well, please consider adding DEEP design thinking as a prime example (alongside d.School & IDEO) of a design thinking process to utilize in K12+ spaces into the body of this post. #DEEPdt Discover. Empathize. Experiment. Produce. A human-centered approach to learning, creating, and being through emapathy. For more about #DEEPdt, checkout http://www.DEEPdesignthinking.com & for demonstrations of #DEEPdt Learning & Doing www. theidesignlab.com Also, #dtk12chat is in its 4th year as a full fledge & active twitter community of K12+ DT educators.

Dear Mary, Thank you so much for your comment! the DEEPdt is a very interesting tool and I will cover it in more details in another related article. I have checked your #dtk12 community and it is amazing, I will get in touch with you through your email for more details about it. Thanks! Rafiq

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Innovation, Wicked Problems and Design Thinking

• First Online: 05 July 2019

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• Steven Ney 5 &
• Christoph Meinel 6  

Part of the book series: Understanding Innovation ((UNDINNO))

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This chapter (as well as the subsequent Chap. 3 ) sets up the conceptual framework to help us analyse the impact of DT on large organisations. This chapter explores the relationship between the challenges organisations face today, innovation and Design Thinking. People in large organisations are interested in Design Thinking because it promises innovation. But how do innovations emerge from Design Thinking? We argue that Design Thinking supports innovation because it helps tackle complex and uncertain challenges, also called ‘wicked problems’. These types of challenges have an uncanny way of evading resolutions. In an increasingly complex and uncertain world, this chapter argues, responses to wicked problems emerge from the interplay of different professional and disciplinary perspectives. We suggest, then, to think of innovations as those solutions that successfully and creatively bring together the different insights from a range of disciplines, perspectives and professions. This, we contend, is exactly what Design Thinking enables teams to do: it provides an effective method for mobilising a wide range of disciplines, professions and perspectives for solving wicked problems.

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Ney, S., Meinel, C. (2019). Innovation, Wicked Problems and Design Thinking. In: Putting Design Thinking to Work. Understanding Innovation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19609-7_2

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What Is Design Thinking & Why Is It Important?

• 18 Jan 2022

In an age when innovation is key to business success and growth, you’ve likely come across the term “design thinking.” Perhaps you’ve heard it mentioned by a senior leader as something that needs to be utilized more, or maybe you’ve seen it on a prospective employee's resume.

While design thinking is an ideology based on designers’ workflows for mapping out stages of design, its purpose is to provide all professionals with a standardized innovation process to develop creative solutions to problems—design-related or not.

Why is design thinking needed? Innovation is defined as a product, process, service, or business model featuring two critical characteristics: novel and useful. Yet, there’s no use in creating something new and novel if people won’t use it. Design thinking offers innovation the upgrade it needs to inspire meaningful and impactful solutions.

But what is design thinking, and how does it benefit working professionals?

What Is Design Thinking?

Design thinking is a mindset and approach to problem-solving and innovation anchored around human-centered design . While it can be traced back centuries—and perhaps even longer—it gained traction in the modern business world after Tim Brown, CEO and president of design company IDEO, published an article about it in the Harvard Business Review .

Design thinking is different from other innovation and ideation processes in that it’s solution-based and user-centric rather than problem-based. This means it focuses on the solution to a problem instead of the problem itself.

For example, if a team is struggling with transitioning to remote work, the design thinking methodology encourages them to consider how to increase employee engagement rather than focus on the problem (decreasing productivity).

The essence of design thinking is human-centric and user-specific. It’s about the person behind the problem and solution, and requires asking questions such as “Who will be using this product?” and “How will this solution impact the user?”

The first, and arguably most important, step of design thinking is building empathy with users. By understanding the person affected by a problem, you can find a more impactful solution. On top of empathy, design thinking is centered on observing product interaction, drawing conclusions based on research, and ensuring the user remains the focus of the final implementation.

The Four Phases of Innovation

So, what does design thinking entail? There are many models of design thinking that range from three to seven steps.

In the online course Design Thinking and Innovation , Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar leverages a four-phase innovation framework. The phases venture from concrete to abstract thinking and back again as the process loops, reverses, and repeats. This is an important balance because abstract thinking increases the likelihood that an idea will be novel. It’s essential, however, to anchor abstract ideas in concrete thinking to ensure the solution is valid and useful.

Here are the four phases for effective innovation and, by extension, design thinking.

The first phase is about narrowing down the focus of the design thinking process. It involves identifying the problem statement to come up with the best outcome. This is done through observation and taking the time to determine the problem and the roadblocks that prevented a solution in the past.

Various tools and frameworks are available—and often needed—to make concrete observations about users and facts gathered through research. Regardless of which tools are implemented, the key is to observe without assumptions or biased expectations.

Once findings from your observations are collected, the next step is to shape insights by framing those observations. This is where you can venture into the abstract by reframing the problem in the form of a statement or question.

Once the problem statement or question has been solidified—not finalized—the next step is ideation. You can use a tool such as systematic inventive thinking (SIT) in this stage, which is useful for creating an innovative process that can be replicated in the future.

The goal is to ultimately overcome cognitive fixedness and devise new and innovative ideas that solve the problems you identified. Continue to actively avoid assumptions and keep the user at the forefront of your mind during ideation sessions.

The third phase involves developing concepts by critiquing a range of possible solutions. This includes multiple rounds of prototyping, testing, and experimenting to answer critical questions about a concept’s viability.

Remember: This step isn’t about perfection, but rather, experimenting with different ideas and seeing which parts work and which don’t.

4. Implement

The fourth and final phase, implementation, is when the entire process comes together. As an extension of the develop phase, implementation starts with testing, reflecting on results, reiterating, and testing again. This may require going back to a prior phase to iterate and refine until you find a successful solution. Such an approach is recommended because design thinking is often a nonlinear, iterative process.

In this phase, don’t forget to share results with stakeholders and reflect on the innovation management strategies implemented during the design thinking process. Learning from experience is an innovation process and design thinking project all its own.

Check out the video about the design thinking process below, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more explainer content!

Why Design Thinking Skills Matter

The main value of design thinking is that it offers a defined process for innovation. While trial and error is a good way to test and experiment what works and what doesn’t, it’s often time-consuming, expensive, and ultimately ineffective. On the other hand, following the concrete steps of design thinking is an efficient way to develop new, innovative solutions.

On top of a clear, defined process that enables strategic innovation, design thinking can have immensely positive outcomes for your career—in terms of both advancement and salary.

As of December 2021, the most common occupations requiring design thinking skills were:

• Marketing managers
• Industrial engineers
• Graphic designers
• Software developers
• General and operations managers
• Management analysts
• Personal service managers
• Architectural and engineering managers
• Computer and information systems managers

In addition, jobs that require design thinking statistically have higher salaries. Take a marketing manager position, for example. The median annual salary is $107,900. Marketing manager job postings that require design thinking skills, however, have a median annual salary of $133,900—a 24 percent increase.

Overall, businesses are looking for talent with design thinking skills. As of November 2021, there were 29,648 job postings in the United States advertising design thinking as a necessary skill—a 153 percent increase from November 2020, and a 637 percent increase from November 2017.

As businesses continue to recognize the need for design thinking and innovation, they’ll likely create more demand for employees with those skills.

Learning Design Thinking

Design thinking is an extension of innovation that allows you to design solutions for end users with a single problem statement in mind. It not only imparts valuable skills but can help advance your career.

It’s also a collaborative endeavor that can only be mastered through practice with peers. As Datar says in the introduction to Design Thinking and Innovation : “Just as with learning how to swim, the best way to practice is to jump in and try.”

If you want to learn design thinking, take an active role in your education. Start polls, problem-solving exercises, and debates with peers to get a taste of the process. It’s also important to seek out diverse viewpoints to prepare yourself for the business world.

In addition, if you’re considering adding design thinking to your skill set, think about your goals and why you want to learn about it. What else might you need to be successful?

You might consider developing your communication, innovation, leadership, research, and management skills, as those are often listed alongside design thinking in job postings and professional profiles.

You may also notice skills like agile methodology, user experience, and prototyping in job postings, along with non-design skills, such as product management, strategic planning, and new product development.

Is Design Thinking Right for You?

There are many ways to approach problem-solving and innovation. Design thinking is just one of them. While it’s beneficial to learn how others have approached problems and evaluate if you have the same tools at your disposal, it can be more important to chart your own course to deliver what users and customers truly need.

You can also pursue an online course or workshop that dives deeper into design thinking methodology. This can be a practical path if you want to improve your design thinking skills or require a more collaborative environment.

Are you ready to develop your design thinking skills? Explore our online course Design Thinking and Innovation to discover how to leverage fundamental design thinking principles and innovative problem-solving tools to address business challenges.

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What is Disruptive Innovation in Education?

From Rob Abel's Learning Impact Keynote: Innovation, Disruption, Revolution Oh My!

Excitement about the role of technology in improving education is a good thing as far as I’m concerned. Education is a segment that needs disruptive innovation. To me the hype around things like MOOCs represents a longing by many for “a better educational future” – presumably involving lower costs to students and better career/life fulfillment, not to mention better global citizens needed to solve our global challenges. Let’s face it - there is a general sense that the current education system is not up to the challenges of the future. And, it’s not clear how we get from “here” to “there.”

But, as leaders in the education segment we do need to get better at understanding where we have been and where we are going, what constitutes innovation and/or disruption that is worthy of investment?  Are you an investor? I would argue that any individual that is putting time into educational technology leadership at any level is an investor, but certainly institutions that are spending on innovation, and yes, venture capital investors (investors in this segment, including some pretty big names, are making some bad decisions right now about where they are putting their money – but this post is more about how institutions should decide to invest their resources ).

In 1EdTech we try to ferret out “winners” by looking at criteria for something we call “Learning Impact” – which is defined by a set of judging criteria we use in our annual Learning Impact Awards (LIAs) . You can think of it as evidence that the application of technology in an educational setting has had a clear impact on access, affordability and/or quality. We’re pretty proud of this program because there is simply no way to win with hype. But, in general the whole annual Learning Impact event is about understanding where the innovation really is.

Right now there are quite a few over-hyped activities in the education segment.  I would include in these MOOCs, Common Core State Standards, analytics, badges and open educational resources (OER). Sorry if I tipped over one of your sacred cows there!  Over-hyped does not mean that something good will not come from these developments. It just means that they are being portrayed as more significant in terms of ability to “disrupt” education than they will be capable of delivering on. As with most hyped innovations, eventually some aspects of the innovation “survive,” crossing the chasm to productive advancement of the industry. The challenge for innovators and investors is to utilize critical thinking to rationalize what will sustain and what the real Impact will be.

MOOCs are perhaps everyone’s favorite example of hype right now. It’s difficult to imagine how something could have achieved more hype in the higher education segment – and they are very clearly striking a nerve for being potentially highly disruptive. Literally every day MOOCs are in the headlines – and smart marketers are trying to jump on the MOOC bandwagon even as that bandwagon morphs continually to address the glaring deficits of the MOOC model and quite frankly, more failures than successes at this point.

Clayton Christensen, the leading expert on “disruptive innovation,” has written at least two books specifically focused on education. According to Christensen’s disruptive innovation theory markets are disrupted when new entrants figure out an innovative way to provide a “simpler” product to a wider set of buyers at a more affordable price.  Since the simpler product is actually what the broader market prefers (simpler means more usable, more effective for the desired purposes) the product is highly disruptive – better product at lower price point.  And thus, these new entrants change the market behavior substantially.  Jim Farmer does a very thorough job of digging into the theories as applied to MOOCs here .

While I, like many other silicon valley entrepreneurs, have found Christensen’s original formulations on disruptive innovation descriptive of what is generally seen in the high tech world, and a useful thought framework, well, the problem is that these formulations have not been at all predictive for education – and that is the acid test for using theory for strategic gain – is it predictive?  Writing about what happened in the past and putting a framework around it is great – but if it doesn't help predict the future it doesn’t especially help entrepreneurs or us “investors.”

The innovators in the education segment have NOT disrupted the status quo significantly so far. While Christensen predicted in 2008’s Disrupting Class great disruptions in the segment from online learning, the reality so far is that greater adoption of online learning has continued as expected but not very disruptive: price points for education continue to rise ahead of inflation and while online education continues to grow it is largely seen as reflecting traditional models rather than a disruption.  And, while online/blended models have certainly improved access – well, the percentage of the population that has achieved credentials has been very level.  I wrote a paper about what the technology impact in higher education back in 2005-7 - and the situation is not significantly different today.

Christensen was recently quoted in an interview as stating that higher education institutions are going to be in real trouble 5 years from now. However, he has not made it clear why things will be different in the next 5 years versus the last 5 years since Disrupting Class was published. I do agree that “buyers” (students/parents) are in fact getting smarter about looking for lower cost options as well as attempting to understand the value of a higher education degree.  But I would argue that we are nowhere near a true disruption (rise) in the number of participants in higher education.

While it is very valuable to have any great thinker on business strategy analyzing education and providing insights from other industries that might apply (like Christensen), education leaders need to do their own critical thinking about these formulations of “disruptive innovation” in the education segment.

I’d like to provide three key factors that IMHO are needed to be understood if to  understand disruption in education. While these factors may be relevant to understanding MOOCs, they can be applied to other hype areas as well. Hold on to your hat here as these are things that we don’t hear much talk about in the education space – especially when you go to meetings on one of the hyped topics or even to investor conferences!

• Education is a complex services business in which quality is difficult to define. Disruption in the education space requires better service models that are built around improved educational program quality . Comparison of education to the disruption of the steel industry by mini-mills (a connection some have made because Christensen uses this as a classic example of disruption) is not a valid comparison. Disruption in education is not about replacing the low end of a well-defined product. It’s about redefining quality in a much more complex world of knowledge than that from which most current educational models were designed.  So, for instance, a true disruption in education would be highly desirable/effective K-masters degree in 15-16 years versus the current 19 years (ideally that meets the needs of under performing populations as well as traditionally successful populations).
• The next phase of true progress will be to come out of the current era of massification into a new era of more real world relevant and personalized educational pathways .  Massification of educational experiences will not be the ticket to success in the next wave of educational models. It seems that many of the entrepreneurs and investors in the education space fail to realize that we have already been in the era of massification of education for the last 30 years or so in developed countries. The disruption in terms of content will need to be content that enables educational experiences that are up-to-date (read “relevant”), adaptive to the interests of the learner, easily adaptable by teachers and yet thorough in terms of teaching the educational foundation that are defined via #1 .  No offense to our friends at Coursera (one of the growing number of MOOC providers), but “course era” is an especially off the mark name for describing the future IMHO.  It is NOT a course era now in education nor will it be in the future. It is the same era that it has been: which is one in which a distinctive program of high quality education will be highly valued. It's just that we need to do a better job getting such distinctive programs to the currently underserved populations at a better price point. Yes, there will be different sources of supporting digital resources that will help enable the redesign of educational delivery (potentially a role for MOOC courses). As discussed in other LI blog posts ( here & here ) digital resources will need to be in a form of a highly usable toolkit for faculty and learners.  But, these supporting resources have a VERY long way to go to meet the needs of learners. And, the more available (i.e. free, open, massive, etc) a course or content becomes the faster it will become commoditized.
• Education is the ultimate “long tail” market with a growing proliferation of high value niche providers and boutique programs. This is only going to increase in the future. Contrary to other recent online phenomena like facebook or twitter, education is not a “winner take all” market. I was at an education investor conference earlier this year where a leading investment advisor made the statement that education is the “ultimate winner take all market.” Education, if done correctly, is life success enabling. The more unique and distinctive your educational experience is, the more valuable it is. The ability to produce knowledge is the key currency in the current and future global economy. There is no distinctiveness to attending “Massified University.” And, a credential from a massive provider will most likely be such a commodity that most will prefer not to waste their time on it (other than for pure fun or reference). We need many more niche-oriented institutions that provide specialized, career-enabling and life-enabling education. Note that even large public institutions, while having many students, can engage this philosophy to create a large number of differentiated programs of study.    Therefore, the “disruptive technology platforms” for education will need to enable great diversity. Diversity in terms of delivery models and blending of high touch with personalized self-service.   Disruptive platforms will also need to enable seamless integration among cooperating providers of the various components of a solution – meaning close partnership among institutions as well as innovative learning tools.  Old style Web 2.0 thinking of the single pervasive platform or the single way of analyzing data will not work for the future of education. Education is not that simple (sorry!).

Are MOOCs potentially promising innovations? Yes. They are clearly an evolution of the trend toward pervasive online/blended/more flexible educational models/flipping the classroom. Will they disrupt education?  Not on the current trajectory. They pretty much fly in the face of the three tenants above.

But, there are some potential ways in which MOOCs could be disruptive in a more limited way.

I think MOOCs have the potential to be disruptive on the low end of the education market as a new model for delivering “open university style education.”  For example, today’s MOOCs could be an appealing alternative to the content portion of massive open universities around the world, featuring star professors from highly ranked universities. And, such populations of learners could probably support an advertising/low course fee model of consumption. So, open university providers get a “pay per use” version of content (versus the larger investments they must make today for tuition) that is likely better than what they are offering today, which if subsidized by advertising (net revenue equals small pay per use from open university provider coupled with advertising revenues) could equate to substantial revenues over a large numbers of users with similar interests (as indicated by the topic of study).

In such a model MOOCs could also double as a new type of “tutorial” reference materials. Very much like Kahn Academy, which is often referred to as a MOOC now even though it existed for a few years prior to the term.

Would this application of MOOCs be disruptive? Well, if you consider displacement of open universities and/or a new business model for them disruptive, then yes.  This approach could potentially disrupt the open university market worldwide and create a much larger interest in open university derivative models as a way to learn more about a particular topic and/or as preparation for entry to other universities.  Will they substitute for those universities – no. Such a disruption will not radically change the efficiency of higher education segment at all.

Is there a strong motivation for current providers of education to engage in this model? Unclear. As previously discussed the more you commoditize an educational experience the less valuable the education is. As discussed above the next stage in education is greater diversification, not massification. Personally I would like to see existing institutions respond to the three factors above by rolling out new “institutes” with new types of degree programs that meet the evolving needs of society.

Should open universities or other new entrants that wish to compete in that space try a MOOC/advertising/low course fee supported model?  I hope so.  That would be a good fit with the “course-focused” strength of MOOCs.  It would also provide a potential revenue producing and marketing outlet for institutions and their “star teachers.” Of course there are the normal challenges of achieving accreditation from the countries/states as needed to prove value to the potential students.

So, hooray for the MOOC phenomena in terms of making claims about needed innovations such as scale, analytics and the potential power of star teachers that will help accelerate the innovation trend toward online/blended that we are already on! And, congratulations to the leading institutions willing to make a space to try out the MOOC innovations as another set of tools that might be leveraged in the quest for improved education.

However, I would say that if you don’t know at this point why you are investing (in terms of what impact you expect will sustain at your institution, and therefore what the return on your investment is likely to be) then you are not applying the level of critical thinking you need to. Personally I would be asking MOOC providers to take the risk in terms of proving the validity of the market/business model (such as the ideas around open university displacement) – and not taking on that risk for my university. 

[Note: In a future blog post I will take a whack at what I think will be the sustainable innovations that might cross the chasm coming out of some of the hype items mentioned above: MOOCs, Common Core State Standards, analytics, badges and open educational resources (OER).]

See more of Rob Abel’s views on educational innovation throughout the Learning Impact blog as well as this feature interview with Anthony Salcito of Microsoft .  

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Design Thinking and Universal Design for Learning as a Way to Combat Unwanted Behavior in the Classroom – Universal Design for Learning Implementation and Research Network

Universal Design for Learning Implementation and Research Network

Design Thinking and Universal Design for Learning as a Way to Combat Unwanted Behavior in the Classroom

• April 16, 2019

Cassandra L. Hunt M.Ed. Doctoral Student, University of Kansas

Design Thinking (DT) is a five-stage humanistic approach to solving real-world problems that revolves around a deep interest in developing an understanding of the people for whom we are designing. These problems can come in all forms, but here we are going to discuss utilizing its five stages combined with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as a way to redesign the learning environment to combat unwanted behavior in the classroom. Having a greater understanding of the DT process allows teachers to more effectively implement UDL to design more personalized learning environments for all students. As a design framework, UDL integrates both proactive and iterative instructional design approaches for supporting both academic and behavioral needs of learners (Basham & Marino, 2013). Let’s begin with the stages of DT which are: Empathize, Define (the problem), Ideate, Prototype, and Test (Dam & Siang, 2018); and how the UDL framework can be supported/implemented within each phase.

When teachers encounter unwanted behavior in the classroom, DT encourages them to first Empathize with the student to gain an empathic understanding of the problem behavior that is occurring. Empathy is crucial to a human-centered design process such as DT, and empathy allows design thinkers to set aside his or her own assumptions about the student to gain insight into the student’s needs. Depending on time constraints, the team will gather a substantial amount of information at this stage to use during the next stage and to develop the best possible understanding of the student(s), their needs, and the problems that underlie student behavior.  When thinking of Empathizing in relation to UDL, this is where teachers should start identifying barriers in the environment that could be contributing to the unwanted behavior in the classroom. It’s important to remember that barriers occur where the student interacts with the learning environment (CAST, 2018). Thus, when unwanted behaviors are occurring look for who, what, when, where, and how students are interacting within the learning environment.

In the next stage, you want to Define the problem. Educators should seek to define the problem as a problem statement in a human-center manner (Dam & Siang, 2018). For instance, instead of saying “Sami is disruptive in math class” a much better way to define the problem would be, “Sami needs more options for engagement in math class.” The Define stage will help the designers (e.g., teachers, support staff, administrators) gather ideas to establish features, functions, and any other elements that will allow them to solve the problems or at the very least, allow students to resolve issues themselves with the minimum of difficulty. When defining your problem consider what supports are missing from the environment, this way when you begin to implement UDL you’ll have a better idea of exactly what guidelines and checkpoints can assist you in solving the problem.

After the problem has been defined, then the team moves into the Ideate stage. The Ideate stage of the DT process is where teachers or “designers” are ready to start generating ideas for possible solutions to the problem behavior. As the teacher, one has grown to understand their students and the barriers they encounter in the Empathize stage, and observations have been analyzed and synthesized in the Define stage and ended up with a human-centered problem statement and needed supports.  With this solid background, the teacher and their team members can start to “think outside the box” to identify new solutions to the problem statement they have created and can start to look for alternative ways of viewing the problem. Within the Ideate stage teachers can begin to come up with ideas on how they want to implement UDL in order to provide (a) multiple means of representation—that is, offer flexible ways to present what we teach and learn, (b) multiple means of action and expression—that is, flexible options for how we learn and express what we know, and (c) multiple means of engagement—that is, flexible options for generating and sustaining motivation, the why of learning (Rose & Meyer, 2002).

Once ideas have been generated, the team moves into the Prototype stage of DT. The design team will now produce several inexpensive, scaled down versions of a product or specific features found within a product, so they can investigate the problem solutions generated in the previous stage. Solution-prototypes are either accepted, improved and re-examined, or rejected based on students’ experience during UDL implementation. UDL is an iterative process, thus, if there is a need to design and redesign the environment DT allows you to do so.  By the end of this stage, the design team will have a better idea of the constraints inherent within the design, the barriers that are present, and have a better/more informed perspective of how students would behave, think, and feel when interacting with the end implementation plan.

Finally, teachers move into the Test stage of DT. The Test stage of DT is where teachers rigorously test the complete implementation plan using the best solutions identified in the prototyping phase. This is the final stage of the five-stage model, but in an iterative process, the results generated during the Testing phase are often used to redefine one or more problems and inform the understanding of the student. We may have outlined a direct linear DT process in which one stage seemingly leads to the next with a logical conclusion at student testing. However, in practice, the process is a more flexible, non-linear procedure.

Research suggests that all students benefit from evidence-based instruction and proactive instructional designs (Basham & Gardner, 2010) that are responsive to learner strengths and preferences (Tomlinson, 1999) and promote academic engagement (Greenwood, Hart, Walker, Risley, 1994). These are key concepts of UDL, an instructional design framework that calls for teachers to design lessons accessible to all students thereby eliminating the need for accommodations and modifications for students with high incidence disabilities (Rose & Meyer, 2002).  UDL calls for teachers to design lessons that incorporate student strengths, interests, and preferences by planning (or Ideating) a variety of learning activities and assessment options along with supports for perception, understanding, comprehension, interest, and effort (Rose & Meyer, 2009). In addition to the flexibility and support of instructional materials and lesson plan design, UDL calls for teachers to support students’ executive functioning skills and self-regulation skills (CAST, 2011). One would expect, then, that with Design Thinking, UDL would be an ideal instructional design framework for students who are at-risk for academic failure due to behavior problems because it provides the support they need without their being singled out, and it allows them and all students to maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses.

Basham, J., & Gardner, J. E. (2010). Measuring Universal Design for Learning. Special Education Technology Practice, March/April , 15-19.  

Basham, J. D., & Marino, M. T. (2013). Understanding STEM education and supporting students through universal design for learning. Teaching Exceptional Children , 45 , 8-15.

CAST. (2018). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.2. Retrieved from http://udlguidelines.cast.org

CAST. (2011). UDL Guidelines – Educator Checklist Version 2. http://www.udlcenter.org/sites/udlcenter.org/files/Guidelines_2.0_Educator_Checklist%20(1)_0.pdf

Dam, R., & Siang, T. (2018, June). 5 Stages in the Design Thinking Process. In Interaction Design Foundation . Retrieved from https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/5-stages-in-the-design-thinking-process

Greenwood, C., Hart, B., Walker, D., & Risley, T. (1994). The opportunity to respond and academic performance revisited: A behavioral theory of developmental retardation and its prevention. In R. Gardner III, D. Sainato, J. Cooper, T. Heron, W. Heward, J. Eshleman & T. Grossi (Eds.), Behavior Analysis in Education: Focus on Measurably Superior Instruction (pp. 213-223). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Rose, D.H., and Meyer, A. (2002).  Teaching every student in the digital age: Universal Design for Learning.  Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Rose, D., & Meyer, A. (2009). A practical reader in universal design for learning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Tomilnson, C. (1999). The differentiated classroom: Responding to the needs of all learners Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD).

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June 27, 2024

The Importance of Design Thinking in Education: Sparking Creativity in Children

The Creativity Crisis

Every generation has fond memories of how much better it was when they were kids. Just 40 short years ago, children didn’t come home from playing until the street lights came on. They drank from the water hose, and an advertisement at 10:00 pm reminded parents to make sure their children were home. Kids played make-believe with friends in the sandbox, built forts, and creatively figured out how to not be bored, all while trying not to get into too much trouble.

Today’s youth are very different. Raised in a world of on-demand video, cell phones, and non-stop digital entertainment, kids have little opportunity to be bored. Without boredom, creativity is diminished. However, in today’s rapidly evolving world, creativity is no longer just a desirable skill; it is essential. Many educators and parents are increasingly concerned that children are not developing their creative potential either in school or during play. This deficiency can be attributed to an overly structured educational system and the pervasive influence of instant gratification culture. 

Recent research indicates a worrying decline in children’s creativity. A study by Kyung Hee Kim found that while IQ scores have been rising, creativity scores have been decreasing since the 1990s. This phenomenon, known as the “creativity crisis,” can be partly attributed to the structured nature of modern education systems, which often prioritize standardized testing over creative exploration.

Children today spend less time in unstructured play, which is crucial for developing creativity. Instead, they are often engaged with digital devices that provide constant stimulation and limit opportunities for imaginative thinking. To address this issue, integrating design thinking into education can be a powerful solution.

Understanding Design Thinking

Design thinking is a problem-solving approach that involves empathizing with users, defining problems, ideating, prototyping, and testing. This process, originally developed for the design and business sectors, has been increasingly recognized for its potential in education. Encouraging students to think like designers fosters creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration.

How Design Thinking Can Help with the Creativity Crisis

• Fostering Empathy and Understanding: The first stage in design thinking is empathy. Children learn to understand the needs and perspectives of others, which enhances their emotional intelligence and creativity. By empathizing with end-users, they can develop more innovative and relative solutions to problems.
• Encouraging Problem Definition and Exploration: Design thinking teaches children to define problems clearly. This process involves exploring various aspects of a problem and asking critical questions. The define stage helps children develop a deeper understanding of issues and encourages them to think critically.
• Promoting Ideation and Brainstorming: In the ideation stage, children are encouraged to brainstorm multiple solutions without the fear of failure . This stage is vital for creativity as it allows children to explore a wide range of ideas and approaches without fear of criticism or reproach.
• Hands-On Prototyping and Experimentation: The prototyping stage involves creating tangible representations of ideas. This hands-on approach helps children learn by doing, which is essential for developing creative problem-solving skills. Experimentation and iteration are key components, teaching children that failure is part of the learning process.
• Iterative Testing and Feedback: Testing is the final stage in design thinking. This stage involves testing prototypes and gathering feedback from multiple stakeholders and potential end users. This iterative process helps children refine their ideas and learn from their mistakes, fostering resilience and adaptability.

Evidence of Effectiveness

Several studies highlight the benefits of design thinking in education. For instance, a 2010 study by Carroll et al. found that incorporating design thinking into the curriculum improved students’ engagement, collaboration, and problem-solving skills. Another study, this one by Henriksen et al ., demonstrated that design thinking projects enhanced students’ creative confidence and ability to innovate.

Additionally, research by Rauth et al. showed that students who participated in design thinking workshops exhibited greater creativity and critical thinking abilities compared to those who did not participate. These findings underscore the potential of design thinking to reinvigorate creativity in children.

Practical Implementation

To effectively integrate design thinking into education, schools and educators can:

• Encourage Interdisciplinary Projects: Design thinking works best when applied to real-world problems that require knowledge from various disciplines. Interdisciplinary projects help students see the connections between different subjects and develop a more holistic understanding of issues.
• Provide Time for Unstructured Play: Allowing children time for unstructured play is crucial for fostering creativity. Schools can create maker spaces or innovation labs where students can experiment with materials and ideas without the confines of a traditional classroom setting.
• Train Teachers in Design Thinking: Educators need to be trained in design thinking principles and practices. Professional development programs can equip teachers with the skills and knowledge to effectively implement design thinking in their classrooms. Design thinking is not just for STEM or elective courses. It can be integrated into lessons in core content areas, and is a great tool for encouraging students to develop relevant and meaningful connections to content beyond test preparation.
• Incorporate Technology Mindfully: While technology can be a powerful tool for learning, it should be used with educated intentionality to enhance creativity. Educators should look for digital tools that support design thinking, such as 3D modeling software or collaborative platforms.

Creating a Culture of Creativity, Together

In a world where creative problem-solving is increasingly important, design thinking offers a valuable approach to reinvigorating children’s creative potential. By fostering empathy, critical thinking, and hands-on experimentation, design thinking can help address the creativity crisis in education. It encourages children to explore, innovate, and develop the skills needed to thrive in the 21st century. As educators and parents, it is our responsibility to provide opportunities for children to unleash their creativity and become the problem-solvers of tomorrow.

Learn more about design thinking with our training and development resources . 

Also, read our previous blog on free STEM resources , including design thinking lessons.

And if you would like to learn more about resources and programs to integrate design thinking into your school, classroom or homeschool group, please contact us at [email protected] .

Kim Reynolds

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What Is Disruptive Innovation? - Learn the 7 Traits of a Disrupter

Evolving technology, shifting markets and new legislation have disrupted the business landscape—and will continue to do so. Disruptive innovation is risky business, but it can also revolutionize technology, business models and markets.

What makes for an effective business disruptor? How can you lead the next wave of disruptive change? This article explains the traits of a successful disruptor and how to become one.

What Is Disruptive Innovation?

Disruptive innovation transforms existing business structures to create new products and services accessible to a broader market, according to Investopedia .

“Being a disrupter is not just understanding the market. It’s understanding an opportunity within the market that no one else is leveraging,” says Alok Chaturvedi , professor of management at Purdue University. “It means figuring out creative ways not just to solve problems for the end user but to give yourself a market advantage.”

Chaturvedi explains that disruption is a process, and the first step is observation.

“Observe your customers. What are their pain points? What are their challenges? When you understand this, then you can find the right kind of technological solutions to help them overcome them,” says Chaturvedi. “The process of disruption involves taking your idea and moving it upmarket, until you are confronting the established leaders in your industry and changing the system itself.”

What Are the Traits of a Disrupter?

Companies need disruptors—those who question how things are done and test strategies, products and services against the existing market. These are the people who aren’t afraid to find a new way of working to drive commercial growth. Without such employees, many businesses will fail.

Chaturvedi shared his list of the seven traits of a disrupter:

1. Entrepreneurial Mindset

Forbes describes an entrepreneurial mindset as “a way of thinking that enables you to seek out problems others have not solved, create potential solutions, overcome challenges, be decisive and accept responsibility for your outcomes.” It equips successful disruptors to recognize opportunities and take initiative.

“Having an entrepreneurial mindset really helps with your observational skills,” Chaturvedi says. “It enables you to ask, where is my next opportunity? What can I do? What is going to be different? What can I disrupt?”

2. Risk Taking

If you want to be a disruptor, you have to be a risk taker. Fear of change and non-traditional ideas kill innovation.

“There is a difference between taking risks and being reckless, however,” Chaturvedi notes. “How do you take calculated risk? How can you discount the failures? And how can you put a premium on success? To successfully manage risk is to understand the range of possible outcomes and the implications of each one.”

>>Read More: What Is Change Management and How Does It Work?

A strong vision is paramount. It gives direction and purpose to your goals.

“Have a vision of where you want to go,” Chaturvedi says. “Recognize the need for change and formulate a plan for supporting that vision.”

Agility is the ability to move fast, to pivot and react quickly to whatever change is happening and to learn quickly as you go.

“Fail fast, scale fast,” Chaturvedi says. “If you're trying something, if it works, scale it up. And if it is not working, throw it away.”

5. Persistence

"Energy and persistence conquer all things," said Founding Father Benjamin Franklin. The world’s most successful disruptors share persistence as one of their key characteristics.

“If you have a good idea and it’s new, it may not be successful right away,” Chaturvedi says. “Keep at it and adjust. This also involves risk taking and agility.”

6. Creativity

Dictionary.com’s definition of “creativity” fits well with the concept of disruptive innovation: “The ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.” This is a mandatory quality for disruptors.

“You have to observe and think about people’s problems and how you can solve them creatively,” he says. “You must transcend the current market constraints and be open to fundamentally new and untested ideas.”

7. Understanding

“To have deep understanding means to recognize and comprehend all the relationships and linkages in your industry,” Chaturvedi says. “You have to be intellectually curious and use your deep understanding to find untapped opportunities in the market.”

Earn an MBA That Will Help You Acquire the Skills to Lead Change

The Purdue Online MBA program helps you develop the analytical, strategic and problem-solving expertise you need to be a successful disruptor and innovator.

“As a program, we embrace challenges and new technologies,” Chaturvedi says. “We embrace them, and we bring these things to our students so they can learn and adapt.

“We are the disrupters we expect our students to be.”

The Purdue Online MBA offers two specializations that may appeal to aspiring disruptors:

• Leadership, Negotiation and Change Management
• Innovation and Technology Commercialization

Reach out today to learn more about the Purdue Online MBA program and how it can help you reach your career goals.

If you would like to receive more information about pursuing a business master’s at the Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business, please fill out the form and a program specialist will be in touch!

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Big Picture model part of alternative education push to improve Australia's school system

• In short: An alternative education model called Big Picture, which runs in many high schools across Australia, boasts a student-led curriculum and no exams.
• The stereotype that alternative education is only for "disruptive" students is not the case, educators in the system say.
• What's next? A diverse range of learning styles and a reduced focus on a university admission score could improve Australia's education system, some researchers argue.

Kristin Van Wyk didn't sit exams to get into university.

Instead, the now 21-year-old used a personalised portfolio she created in year 12, after completing a hands-on high school curriculum she designed herself.

Kristin is a graduate of Big Picture, an alternative education program that runs in dozens of high schools around Australia and also has a dedicated campus in Launceston, Tasmania.

"I'm a lot more independent than a lot of other people my age [as a result], I think," Ms Van Wyk said, who went to the Big Picture school for years 9 to 12.

"Personal motivation" is a central tenet of the model, which sees students guided to develop a personalised curriculum based on their interests.

Students also learn on the job. If a child wants to be a mortician, for example, they approach one to shadow.

The ABC visited the Launceston Big Picture School to speak with students and teachers.

"I'm hoping to be able to get a look into how they prepare their bodies for funerals … [I've been interested in this] since grade 7," one student said.

Others are headed to workplaces as diverse as art galleries to coding companies and farms.

Big Picture School principal Cindy Johnston said this practical experience built job-ready, independent graduates.

"Having a passion or interest and that willingness to explore … you have to be fairly self-directed, because there's a lot of accountability and responsibility."

It is believed tens of thousands of Australian students take part in "alternative" education models outside the traditional university admission system, which relies heavily on an ATAR — or Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank — a number between zero and 99.95 that shows a student's position in their year group.

While many educators who the ABC spoke to suggest alternative education models should not replace traditional schools, they argue a diverse range of learning styles and a reduced focus on ATAR could improve Australia's education system.

'Exhibitions' take place of exams

Big Picture's assessment system substitutes exams with "exhibitions", where students present their work and answer questions from teachers and family.

"You have to publicly stand up in front of all the important people in your world, and say, 'This is what I've been learning about, and this is what I've done'," Ms Johnston said.

"There is a lot of expectation and accountability."

Rather than receiving grades in traditional subjects, students are assessed against the International Big Picture Learning Credential, or IBPLC.

The IBPLC measures students against outcomes such as "empirical reasoning" and "communication and personal qualities". 

It specifically avoids ranking students against one another, as an ATAR does.

Ms Van Wyk used the IBPLC and a portfolio to apply to the University of Tasmania.

She credits her unconventional schooling with her success.

"It definitely gave me the skills that I needed," she said.

Ms Van Wyk has dyslexia and dysgraphia, which she said were barriers for reading and writing in traditional classrooms.

She said she felt isolated and left behind in the mainstream system, but the Big Picture program let her learn in her own style and at her own pace.

"They didn't print things on A3 pieces of paper or explain it to me like I was four years old," she said.

"I'm obviously not stupid. I just take a little bit longer to read things.

"When I came [to Big Picture], I could just learn."

Tens of thousands of students enrolled in 'alternative' education

More than 70,000 Australian students were enrolled in "flexible and alternative" education in Australia, according to conservative estimates from a 2014 study from the Victoria Institute.

It found the majority of students enrolled in these programs were marginalised or came from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Education policy consultant Megan O'Connell does not think models such as Big Picture should completely replace traditional classrooms, but says they could boost declining high school attendance rates.

Data from the Productivity Commission show the school attendance rate for Australian students in year 1 to 10 fell to 88 per cent in 2023, down from 92 per cent a decade ago.

"We're needing to look at different ways of engaging and assessing young people," Ms O'Connell said.

ATAR draws criticism

According to Ms O'Connell's research, only a quarter of young people achieve an ATAR and use it to get into university, yet ATAR remains the sole focus for many schools.

"[Students] are not supported to recognise and cultivate that full range of skills that they have. Their whole focus is often on those exams at the end of the year," she said.

That is a sentiment shared by the director of Monash University's Centre for Youth Policy and Education Practice.

The centre's Professor Lucas Walsh said the ATAR system attracted criticism from education researchers across the country.

"Many researchers believe ATAR is unhelpful," he said.

"It creates a centre of gravity that takes away from teaching and learning, and it's not representative of the whole child."

Professor Walsh said adding alternative methods to the current system would be ideal, but it was a hard task as schools were "already overwhelmed" by funding issues and teacher attrition.

"Making space for alternative models becomes particularly challenging, despite the fact they have proven benefits," he said.

Alternative education not just for 'bad' kids

Both Ms O'Connell and Ms Johnson said the stereotype of alternative education programs being only for 'disruptive' students who fall behind in mainstream classrooms was not the case.

"It's really unfortunate [alternative models] are seen as the pathways of last resort, rather than the way that young people can find themselves," Ms O'Connell said.

The Big Picture program interviews students to assess their suitability for the program, and Ms Johnston says students must be self-directed and disciplined to thrive in her school.

"If you want to be shy and hide, this is probably not the space," she said.

Given the lack of structure in a Big Picture classroom, you'd be forgiven for thinking the kids would run amuck.

But Ms Johnston said ditching timetables and uniforms had minimised behavioural issues by removing some of the barriers students face in regular classrooms.

"From the time they walk in the door, and they have the wrong shoes or the wrong uniform, or it's 'I can't learn in that way' or 'I struggle with that'," she said.

"[At Big Picture] they don't have to change who they are to come and learn."

Kristin Van Wyk's only regret was that she could not start Big Picture earlier.

"If this is where I've gotten from learning this way from year 9 to year 12, imagine if I had started learning these skills in year 7."

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Some companies have banned political discussions at work, but that might be easier said than done.

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