Students in the writing-intensive course RPTS 426 (Tourism Impacts) are undertaking a 10 week design thinking project addressing ways to make Texas A&M University more sustainable and carbon neutral. They focus on the main campus in Aggieland. The course is delivered online asynchronously. A pilot project was launched last year in a similar course that was highly insightful on the challenges and potential of design thinking for engaged learning (DTEL). We are conducting research to improve the engaged learning experience by facilitating more effective collaboration in the online student teams and better preparation to undertake the various steps of the design thinking process. Research on this project will help build on research results on various design thinking projects undertaken by SoTL instructors in other courses and enable continual refining and improvement in DTEL for this and other related courses. Furthermore, it will help complement a small Innovation [X] research project on the same topic that I am involved in along with cross-disciplinary students and team leaders from different areas of concentration across campus. The project is ongoing, but results from the previous semester illustrates immense potential for facilitating creative, collaborative engagement, as well as  meaningful, praxis oriented learning and critical thinking.

Tazim Jamal
Professor, Dept. of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences (RPTS)

Students do not always recognize the lack of diverse perspectives within their own sphere, appreciate the impact, or have practice empathizing with others. Developing empathy—the ability to understand another’s point of view—in students raises their awareness of inclusion and diversity needs and is particularly important for disciplines, including engineering, that have been traditionally less diverse. In this work, we develop and deploy empathy-driven learning activities to raise diversity awareness, teach students how to consider and empathize with diverse perspectives, and show students how their resulting solutions are richer because of it.

We create multiple learning activities focusing on developing empathy in students with the users of the solutions they create. Activities appear throughout a course and the engineering design process, including problem exploration, solution ideation, prototyping, and deployment. For example, during problem exploration, activities encourage students to seek out those with a different perspective than their own about their particular engineering problem before generating solution ideas or designs. During solution ideation, students build rapid lo-fidelity prototypes to get feedback from other students outside their team. During feedback sessions, activities emphasize considering the others’ point of view and reflecting on what specific steps they would take in light of it, thereby giving value to the feedback experience. Students then iterate on prototypes, soliciting user feedback after each iteration and identifying specific design moves and whom they would specifically affect as a result. Other activities expose students to the impact of implicit bias in general and then ask them to contextualize it for their specific engineering project. 

Based on initial classroom observations of discussions, we find that students are developing an appreciation for outside perspectives, a recognition of the existence of implicit bias and the danger it poses for the solutions they create, and a greater ability to empathize with those that will use their design solutions, thereby impacting their approach to problem exploration, their critical analysis of solution ideas, and the value they place on feedback in the design process.

Shawna Thomas
Instructional Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering 

Many of us who ask our students to work in groups are specific about the work that should be accomplished but not about HOW the work should be accomplished. Therefore, students often choose a cooperative approach by assigning individual tasks and combining the products from those tasks into a collective work. However, collaboration can produce much stronger learning because students are learning from their interactions with each other as they work together synchronously to build on each others’ ideas and create a cohesive final product. In Math 365 and Math 366, we are incorporating specific directions toward the use of collaboration in the project instructions and are asking students to reflect on their learning.

Tamara Carter
Instructional Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics

Students in the ALED 400 (Public Leadership Development) course engage in Design Thinking for Engaged Learning (DTEL) by addressing wicked problems either put forth by organizations in the Brazos County or wicked problems identified by Texas Speaks (a statewide needs assessment conducted by Texas AgriLife Extension to identify issues within Texas counties). Students work to identify and research the problem and then develop manageable solutions to the problem using the design thinking process. Some wicked problems students have addressed include: mental health for college students, healthy food choices for college students, disability awareness, and traffic issues on college campuses. We have been through multiple iterations and made changes after each iteration. Students complete reflections about the process and also describe how they develop in their problem-solving and teamwork skills. Students gain experience in a problem-solving process while working in a team.

Summer Odom
Associate Professor, Dept. of Agricultural Leadership, Education, & Communications

Preservice teachers in middle grades and secondary education engage in Design Thinking for Engaged Learning (DTEL) during the development of a series of learning plans aligned to discipline specific curriculum.   Preservice teachers work individually or with a partner to design learning activities to engage students with content appropriate for specific grade levels.  Before initiating the design, preservice teachers learn about the context for instruction, interests of students, and the identified learning outcomes for the grade level.  Preservice teachers have the opportunity to create several iterations–receiving feedback each time before implementing the learning activities in the classroom.  Preservice teachers complete reflections at the end of the process.

Dawn Parker
Clinical Professor, Department of Teaching Learning and Culture

Beginning in the fall of 2020, students in the introductory course in bioenvironmental sciences (BESC 201) participated in the Design Thinking for Engaged Learning (DTEL) process.  Students in both the online section of the course and the face-to-face section of the course participate. Regardless of the section, students were allowed to form their own teams and choose the wicked environmental problem that most resonated with the team members.  Instructions stressed that teams needed to research the problem from both an academic and a human-centric perspective, as the objective of design thinking is to provide innovative solutions for people experiencing the problem.  Teams were also charged to narrow the scope of their project to meet the needs of an audience they could realistically reach, e.g. college students at Texas A&M, citizens in their hometown neighborhoods, staff and administrators at Texas A&M.  Additionally, students were required to create a tangible solution that they could reasonably and realistically implement within about a 10 week time span during the semester.  After teams researched their topics, they also conducted interviews with people who experienced the problem or who were experts in the problem.  From there, students engaged in divergent and convergent thinking to brainstorm realistic and plausible solutions their team could develop by the end of the semester.  Teams developed both low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes of their solutions, engaged in user testing, received feedback from their peers and class, and ultimately submitted their prototypes to the instructor at the end of the term.  Data was gathered from students in the form of DTEL reflections throughout the project, which was later coded and analyzed to identify patterns and ways in which the project could be improved for the next semester.  Examples of projects created by students include a proposal for a sustainable cemetery model, complete with a prototype sustainable coffin, Instagram accounts to raise awareness on a variety of issues, and a proposal for a Lights Out festival to educate Texas A&M students, faculty, staff and the community about light pollution.  

Kati I. Stoddard
Instructional Associate Professor, Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology

Design Thinking for Engaged Learning (DTEL) was introduced to the Animal Science Capstone course (ANSC 498) beginning in the Spring 2021 semester. Students are split up into groups, and each group selects a problem related to animal science for which they want to provide solutions. Students directly or indirectly interact with industry stakeholders to gather information that relates to the industry's problem. The students conduct background research and use design thinking approaches to identify innovative solutions to the wicked problems. Students use Divergence and Convergence exercises to determine problem areas and develop solutions. As part of the prototype design process, teams build low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes and collect data to help improve their designs. Students developed multiple deliverables for different target audiences (Infographics, Public education videos, Scientific papers and presentations, Poster presentations). Throughout the semester, students reflect on the design thinking process and these reflections are analyzed to create design moves for the next semester. Additionally, we are identifying strategies that help students to reflect better by creating better reflection prompts, and guiding students through the reflection process so that they can become better thinkers.

Sushil Paudyal
Instructional Assistant Professor, Department of Animal Science