Design Thinking in Higher Education for Promoting Human-Centred Inno- Vation in Business and Society
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Design Thinking in Higher Education for Promoting Human-centred Inno- vation in Business and Society Erasmus+ KA2 Project 2017-1-EE01-KA203-034889 O1. Learning needs analysis and development of methodological learning frameworks for design thinking in higher education Circulation: Public Partners: UTH, CERTH-IRETETH, TLU, IPP, METROPOLIA Authors: H. Tsalapatas, O. Heidmann, K. Pata, Merja Bauters, C. Vaz de Carvalho Version: 01 Stage: Final Date: 2/7/2018 Co-funded by the Erasmus+ Program of the European Union. CONTRIBUTORS Despoina Stylla Nadia Vlahoutsou Christina Taka Vlastaridis Panagiotis Velentzas Chronis Eka Jeladze Rita Durão 14/4/2013 Validation Strategy Report 2 Table of Contents CONTRIBUTORS 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 7 1. INTRODUCTION AND DESIGNIT PROJECT RATIONALE 10 2. DESIGNIT HIGH LEVEL OBJECTIVES 14 3. EXPECTED OUTCOMES 16 4. DESIGNIT INNOVATION 22 5. DESIGNIT STAKEHOLDERS 26 6. DESIGN THINKING RETROSPECTIVE, STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES 30 6.1 ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP 30 6.2 DESIGN THINKING AND ITS TERMINOLOGY 33 6.3 EMPIRICAL STUDY RESULTS ON DESIGN METHODS 34 6.4 DESIGN THINKING AS A PROBLEM SOLVING APPROACH OR PROCESS 35 6.4.1 Design thinking as a solution-based approach 35 6.4.2 Design thinking as a creative approach 36 6.4.3 Design thinking as a user-centred approach brings design into business world 36 6.4.4 Core attributes of design thinking 37 6.4.5 Characteristics of design thinkers 38 6.5 THE DESIGN THINKING PROCESS AND ITS VARIOUS DESCRIPTIONS 39 6.5.1 Design methods versus design process 40 6.5.2 A review of design thinking process stages 40 6.5.3 The non-linear nature of design thinking 42 6.5.4 Design thinking principles 42 6.5.4 Popular design thinking frameworks 43 6.5.5 Examples of design thinking solutions 45 6.6 A CLOSER LOOK AT THE 5 STAGE DESIGN THINKING MODEL 47 O2 3 6.6.1 Stage 1 - Empathise 47 6.6.2 Stage 2 - Define 50 6.6.3 Stage 3 - Ideate 52 6.6.4 Stage 4 - Prototype 53 6.6.5 Stage 5 - Test 54 6.7 HISTORICAL RETROSPECTIVE OF THE DESIGN THINKING PROCESS 55 7. NATIONAL POLICIES AND PRACTICES FOR TEACHING ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN HIGHER EDUCATION 57 7.1 HIGHER EDUCATION EMERGING CHALLENGES 57 7.2 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF INNOVATIVE PRACTICES IN HIGHER EDUCATION TEACHING AND LEARNING 59 7.3 IN GREECE 61 7.3.1 Entrepreneurship in national agendas and initiatives 61 7.3.2 ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN HIGHER EDUCATION 65 7.4 IN ESTONIA 73 7.4.1 Entrepreneurship in national agendas and initiatives 74 7.4.2 Entrepreneurship in higher education 77 7.5 IN FINLAND 82 7.5.1 Entrepreneurship in national agendas and initiatives 82 7.5.2 Entrepreneurship education in higher education 86 7.6 IN PORTUGAL 96 7.6.1 Entrepreneurship in national agendas and initiatives 99 7.6.2 Entrepreneurship education in higher education 102 8. DEPLOYMENT OF ICT IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP HIGHER EDUCATION 118 8.1 IN GREECE 118 8.2 IN ESTONIA 120 8.3 IN FINLAND 123 O2 4 8.3 IN PORTUGAL 129 9. SERIOUS GAMES 132 9.1 SERIOUS GAMES. WHAT ARE THEY ALL ABOUT? 132 9.3 GAMIFICATION 133 9.3 CLASSIFICATION OF DIGITAL GAMES FOR LEARNING 135 9.4 DEPLOYMENT OF SERIOUS GAMES IN DIVERSE CONTEXTS 136 9.5 SERIOUS GAMES FOR DESIGN THINKING 142 10. THE DESIGNIT SMALL SCALE STUDY ON BUILDING DESIGN THINKING SKILLS 149 9.1 A SMALL SCALE STUDY ON IDENTIFYING STUDENT NEEDS ON BUILDING DESIGN THINKING SKILLS 152 9.2 SUMMARY OF STUDY RESULTS 153 11. LEARNING REQUIREMENTS DEFINITIONS 168 10.1 LEARNING REQUIREMENTS FOR STUDENTS 169 10.2 SKILL BUILDING REQUIREMENTS FOR INSTRUCTORS 180 12. LEARNING DESIGN APPROACHES FOR BUILDING DESIGN THINKING SKILLS 190 11.1 DEPLOYING DESIGN THINKING IN BUSINESS AND IN EDUCATION 190 11.1.1 Design thinking in business 190 11.1.2 Design thinking in education 191 11.1.3 Design thinking in teaching and learning through ICT 193 11.2 PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING (PBL) 193 11.3 CONSTRUCTIVIST LEARNING 195 11.4 CASE-BASED LEARNING, EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING, ACTIVE LEARNING 195 13. THE DESIGNIT PEDAGOGICAL LEARNING FRAMEWORK 198 CONCLUSIONS 211 REFERENCES 212 O2 5 APPENDIX A: THE DESIGNIT QUESTONNAIRE 233 O2 6 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Design thinking is a human-centered, solution-oriented approach to entre- preneurial innovation that aims at better understanding of how a user will experience a proposed solution. design thinking can help find solutions through empathy for understanding actual issues, creativity for innovation, prototyping, and testing with users to ensure that proposed services work (Stanford). The approach is successful both in making businesses suc- cessful through offerings that best meet client needs and in solving social issues in social entrepreneurship contexts by introducing solutions through creativity where none may appear to exist. These entrepreneurial skills are particularly relevant for today’s young generation in the face of emerging societal challenges related to population growth, poverty, unemployment, and more. The higher education sector today faces challenges that call for the adap- tation of educational practices to emerging industrial and societal needs. Rapid evolution of technology results into solutions and services becoming quickly obsolete, being replace by emerging technological and research innovations. As a result, the main challenge of higher education is to cre- ate adaptive adults that are critical thinkers. Higher education more than ever must prepare students to become knowledge builders by learning how to learn in a way that facilitates their smooth transition into the entre- preneurial and social-entrepreneurial realms. In the content of higher edu- cation activities students should be exposed to entrepreneurial practices, in order to build experience and skills that will allow them to effectively en- ter the professional sector of entrepreneurship. There is a great necessity of incorporating entrepreneurial processes into the already existent cur- ricula in a manner that allows students to build new skills and competenc- O2 7 es in a safe and user-friendly learning environment, eliminating any fear of failure. DesignIT focuses on building design thinking skills and experience which are essential for the students’ future successful career. design thinking skills will foster learners to apply a user-centric approach during problem- solving procedures. DesignIT teaches students how to empathise with us- ers, to understand how they can better define an existent problem; to ideate in order to come up with as many solutions as they can (without being judged), to prototype their best solution, and finally to test it with the user so as to understand if it meets all the user’s requirements or it needs optimization. If there are changes that should be made, the process will repeat some of its stages. Students play an active role in carrying out the aforementioned design procedure. The DesignIT project aims at introducing innovative design thinking inter- ventions into entrepreneurial higher education towards preparing students to enter evolving economies by being adaptive, resilient, innovative, and creative and by possessing the practical entrepreneurial skills that will al- low them to put ideas into action in business as well as social well-being contexts. DesignIT addresses these objectives through the development of a gamified learning platform that immerses higher education students into design thinking approaches based on ideation, brainstorming, prioritization of ideas, evaluation of ideas, leading to the design of economically viable services that best address the needs of end users. This report focuses on the analysis of the current situation in higher educa- tion on building entrepreneurial skills and on introducing a game-based, active learning framework towards building design thinking skills among higher education students. The report analysis current practices and poli- cies on entrepreneurship education in general and design thinking in par- O2 8 ticular at the national level in Greece, Estonia, Finland, and Portugal. It analyses how ICT is currently deployed to enhance related educational initiatives. It provides a map of stakeholders that stand to gain from emerg- ing design thinking approaches in higher education and provides an in- depth focus of learning needs for higher education students in relation to becoming entrepreneurial and creative thinkers. It analyses how game based approaches can contribute to fostering design thinking mind sets. Finally, the report concludes with the introduce of the DesignIT project methodological framework that is based on game and active learning ap- proaches for building design thinking skills and introduces the design of a game-based learning platform that will be implemented and validated in the context of the project. O2 9 1. INTRODUCTION AND DESIGNIT PROJECT RATIONALE Entrepreneurial skills are widely considered as a unique competency which is implemented in every subject and educational level (ET2020). It fosters individuals to explore their talents, to introduce creative ideas, and to take action towards turning ideas into sustainable solutions which con- tribute to both business development and social prosperity. Design thinking is a human-centric, solution-oriented approach to entre- preneurial innovation that aims at better understanding of how a user will experience a proposed solution. design thinking can help find solutions through empathy for understanding actual issues, creativity for innovation, prototyping, and testing with users to ensure that proposed services work. This approach is successful both in making businesses successful