Design Thinking Course Overview

This comprehensive guide is designed to equip educators with a diverse array of lesson plan suggestions that leverage the power of design thinking across various year levels, disciplines, and project durations. It offers a flexible framework that allows you to adapt and implement design thinking principles to suit your unique teaching context.

Learning Intentions

• Develop Problem-Framing Skills: Understand how to present a well-defined problem that aligns with your year level and discipline.

• Master Peer-to-Peer Feedback: Provide constructive feedback to peers and learn from peers

• Recognise the versatility of Design Thinking Across Disciplines: Understand how Design Thinking can be applied to various academic subjects, recognising the importance of alignment with educational standards

• Apply Design thinking in Classroom Settings: Understand how Design Thinking can be applied to various academic subjects.

• Conduct Effective Evaluation: Learn how to evaluate the effectiveness of a Design Thinking project and how to formulate an action plan for improvement

Success Criteria

Surface understanding:

• Identify the six stages of the design thinking process
• Identify what constitutes a well-defined problem in the context of Design Thinking

Deep understanding:

• Describe how design thinking fosters skills like creativity, collaboration and critical thinking
• Explain the steps needed to frame a problem effectively, including considerations like relevance to curriculum and real-world applications
• Conduct curriculum mapping by identifying relevant achievement standards

Transfer understanding:

• Demonstrate the ability to adapt a lesson plan to include design thinking principles
• Reflect on the challenges and benefits of implementing Design Thinking in the classroom and suggest improvements for future applications.
• Provide peer-peer feedback on at least one problem posed in the course discussion board
• Evaluate the Design Thinking project, identifying at least three aspects that worked well and three aspects that could be improved. Develop an action plan based on this evaluation