What Will Schools Do in the Fall? Here are 4 Possible Scenarios

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Pandemic Planning for Distance Learning: Scenarios and Considerations for PreK-12 Education Leaders

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Asynchronous Instructional Strategies for Learner-to-Learner Engagement

As instructional designers are tasked to provide just-in-time support for online learning and instruction during this critical time, here are a few recommendations that come to mind for the asynchronous (paced) learner-to-learner engagement in online learning environments. Also, here’s a slide deck from a faculty development presentation, Engaging Students in Discussion, that I have given in the past about this timely topic.

Affordances:

• Asynchronous online discussions to bridge the gap of social interaction to construct, apply and develop knowledge while enabling learners to texturally communicate, interpret, reflect, and learn with their peers.
• The asynchronous nature enables learners to interact across time and location preferences, therefore offering more equitable learning experiences for a diverse student population.
• Online discussions support collaboration in both small-group or all-class discussions.
• Asynchronous online discussions afford learners a more active and reflective personalized experience.
• Research has shown that group learning helps build active learners rather than passive recipients of teaching; it helps distribute cognitive load among group members through the exchange of ideas. 
• Learner-to-learner asynchronous activities encourage student-centered learning, which enables learners to be active in their knowledge transformation and to apply their personal experiences, beliefs, values, and practices within their discipline and shifts away from teacher-centered learning.

 Limitations:

• Learners often report a sense of isolation in online learning environments and are challenged to establish interpersonal contact with other students and form a community of learners through asynchronous means.
• Written communication skills are critical for students to articulate their knowledge and their needs.
• Canvas all-class discussions and group discussions can be challenging to navigate.
• Discussion forums require instructor moderation to ensure students are engaging in constructive collaboration and healthy discourse.

Instructional Strategies: 

• Identify your expectations on how students should engage in asynchronous discussion spaces by offering social respect, sharing personal and social information, creating safe and open learning spaces, establishing social identity, and developing authentic intimacy. Community Groundrules is an Open Educational Resource (OER) that can be utilized in your course to articulate your expectations at the start of the semester.
• Unlike face-to-face learning environments, effective online learning environments must rely on instant messaging functions like Microsoft Teams, audio and video media technologies like FlipGrid or VoiceThread, email correspondence like Canvas Inbox, and discussion boards like Canvas, Yammer, Packback or Padlet as communication platforms.
• Facilitate a learning community; it’s not the instructor’s responsibility to carry the discussion; it encourages learners to actively and thoughtfully participate to improve the collective knowledge of the class. 
• Discussion forums should be assessed as quality over quantity and can be employed as a course artifact that demonstrates a student’s knowledge transformation to meet course objectives.
• Encourage learner-to-learner interaction through four dialogue strategies that they can employ in their discussion reply posts to promote critical thinking. 
  • conversational (cooperative and seeking mutual understanding), 
  • inquiry (answering a question and coming to a resolution), 
  • debate (critical questions with a need for agreement) and; 
  • instruction (utilizing questions and statements to come to resolution).
• In an introductory lesson to your course, create a practice discussion forum for students to introduce themselves to the class and to familiarize themselves with the discussion tool.
• In addition to practicing discussion forums in an introductory lesson, develop informal learning spaces like a student lounge or a class cafe to enable learners to connect or collectively resolve course-related issues (i.e.sharing a lesson reading that another student wasn’t able to access.) 
• Develop open-ended, problem-based discussion prompts that challenge students to think deeply about the course content and make meaningful connections.
• When creating small groups, try to select group members that are diverse in skills and knowledge and limited in size (3 low, 6 high, and 5 ideal).
• Groups need clear goals and should be enabled to have the autonomy to self-regulate and define norms within the framework provided by the instructor.
• Groups can collaborate to develop final projects, case studies, presentations, or papers by utilizing Box, Microsoft Office 365, or GSuite.
• There are many ways to encourage learner-to-learner interactions in asynchronous learning spaces, including book clubs, debates, and Canvas supported peer-review exercises. 
• The efforts happening in a group should not be siloed from the rest of the class, instead tie the group work back to the all-class discussions to present how each group is contributing to the shared body of knowledge.

Have something to add? I’d love to hear your recommendations and best practices! Please leave a reply below to keep the (asynchronous, peer-to-peer) conversation going.

Deep Learning through Dialogue

Communication technologies are a critical component in online distance education that enables learners and instructors to collaborate and cooperate in reflective and active learning spaces. In these transactional spaces, dialogue and discourse are exchanged to build knowledge among learners and their instructors. Burbules (1993) defines dialogue as, ” an activity directed toward discovery and new understanding, which stands to improve the knowledge, insight or sensitivity of its participants.” (p.9). However, as stated in the first sentence, communication technologies are a critical component. We must ask ourselves as online educators, how does the medium or delivery tool affect the online learning experience? How can it be inclusive to all learners, their characteristics and their preferences?

A familiar theoretical framework, Community of Inquiry (COI), provides us with a structure of three constructs; social presence, cognitive presence, and instructional presence to guide us in the design, interaction, and evaluation of social learning events in online learning environments. Affirmed by Akyol & Garrison (2011), ‘there is a strong relationship between collaborative constructivism and higher-order learning outcomes. The strength of the community of inquiry framework is its emphasis on collaborative constructivist approaches for designing learning environments in order to provide deep and meaningful learning experiences.” (p.246). How can we design dialogic learning experiences to support deeper learning in online learning environments? What elements should be included in the assessment strategy as we evaluate the design, interactions, and outcomes of the community?

 

References:

Abawajy, J. (2012). Analysis of asynchronous online discussion forums for collaborative learning. International Journal of Education and Learning, 1(2), 11-21.

Akyol, Z., & Garrison, D. R. (2011). Understanding cognitive presence in an online and blended community of inquiry: Assessing outcomes and processes for deep approaches to learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, 42(2), 233-250.

Burbules, N. C. (1993). Dialogue in teaching: Theory and practice. Teachers College Press.

Ke, F., & Xie, K. (2009). Toward deep learning for adult students in online courses. The Internet and Higher Education, 12(3-4), 136-145.

Diversifying Instructional Design in Distance Education

As online distance education courses continue to expand their reach and serve a broader audience, we are required to understand the affordances and challenges of supporting equitable learning environments. The globalization of online distance education requires instructional designers and educators to work outside of their own bias to address a learner population that represents a diverse set of cultures, physical and cognitive abilities, socioeconomic status, age, gender and learning preferences. Distance education offers opportunities for learners to connect over time and space barriers, engage outside of their social contexts, and access content from almost anywhere. An additional affordance is the utilization of open educational resources (OER), or the free use of high-quality, digitized materials and improved access of educational resources in online distance education (Hockings, Brett, & Terentjevs, 2012). Unfortunately, many course designers fail to take social responsibility to meet the needs and expectations of their intended audience (McAnany, 2009).

An empirical study by Baker, Dee, Evans, & John (2018) found that instructors are 94% more likely to respond to White males in discussion forums compared to any other race or gender distinctions and that peer-to-peer interactions suggest that White females are more likely to receive a response from another White female. How can we design discussion forums and online social learning spaces to support more equitable engagement?

In addition to gender bias, cultural factors influence learning and engagement in asynchronous learning spaces. Current research implies that cultural differences can have a negative effect on student perceptions and participation in online courses. For example, the cultural differences between Eastern and Western educational structures. In Eastern educational structures which are often characterized as teacher-centered (instructor holds absolute authority over learners) versus Western educational structures that are categorically deemed “student-centered” and encourage critical discourse, questioning, and dialogue within the learning process (Liu, Liu, Lee, & Magjuka, 2010). Often, cultures intersect in educational environments and students have to temporarily work within the social norms of the course instructor or course design. This can be problematic, as assumptions can be made on behaviors, perspectives, and values during the teaching and learning processes. By developing “cultural sensitivity” or the degree in which one is able to view from the perspective of a culture other than one’s own, is a necessity in instructional design. Though critically reviewed, Hofstede’s dimensional model of cultural differences is frequently utilized to analyze cultural differences in teaching in learning.

As Zhang (2001) states, “Recognizing and prizing the diversity found in many of today’s learners is prerequisite to the successful incorporation of cultural pluralism into instruction. It is critical that educators value these alternative styles, and see them viable and valid assets to instruction.” (p.299) Instructional designers are uniquely situated and ethically responsible to be aware of cultural issues, and at the minimum, be aware of their own cultural biases (Hartescu, 2012). However, Parrish states designers are challenged “…to understand which learning behaviors are based on deeply entrenched cultural values that should not be challenged and which behaviors are more superficial practices that can be challenged for the sake of promoting learning.”(p.10)

Not only do online courses connect diverse learners with unique cultural characteristics, but distance education can also reduce barriers for learners with physical and mental disabilities. Borrowing principles from architecture, Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and universal design principles, focus on creating comprehensive plans that would be ideal for all within the use of a single space. Unfortunately, educational technologies and learning platforms are often not developed specifically for distance education delivery systems and therefore, lack synchronous functionalities to support those who require translators for visual, hearing, speech, language, learning, and mobile disabilities (Schwartz, 2004).

 

Design Implications:

Course designers are responsible to create ethically-sound course designs, and this is not an easy task. Research recommends that inclusive design should reduce student anxieties by setting clear expectations, facilitate active social learning spaces with specific guidance to develop safe spaces and enabling learners to participate in critical discourse, provide multimodal designs to accommodate learner preferences, support social presence with informal learning spaces and encourage awareness of communication delivery systems within the learning management system, structure course designs to allow ample time for learners to develop relationships prior to collective or cooperative activities, review potential power dynamics among learners and with the course instructor, create course materials or legends providing context to cultural references or colloquialisms, define expectations of instructor presence, and (if possible) conduct a learner analysis or needs assessments within course development cycles (Uzuner, 2009). Designers should strive to incorporate instructional strategies to encourage learners to feel a sense of belonging within an online learning community. One way to do meet this goal is to utilize small-group learning experiences to support active learning strategies, reinforce critical reflection and promote interaction with diverse peers (Black, Krahmer, & Allen, 2018).

In the course development process, designers should seek opportunities for learners to work through multiple layers of reflection and to encourage learners to collaboratively construct knowledge within cultural, social, political, economic, and historical contexts. In addition, instructional designers should integrate multicultural perspectives within course content and materials (Higbee, Schultz, & Goff, 2010). McAnany (2009)  offers three principles to integrate multicultural perspectives into instructional materials including “do no harm”, “make the learning experience relevant” and “incorporate global concepts and images into instructional messages”. The goal is to design multicultural course materials that do not disrupt from intended learning outcomes, offer relevancy to learner contexts, are sensitive to cultural values, and engage learners to broaden their perspectives. Liu et al. (2010) recommend scaffolding and taking a well-balanced approach to learning activities and multimedia aids to reduce language barriers English as a Second language learners (ESL).

It should be mentioned that most course development processes and models do not formally or proactively call for instructional designers to design for learners with mental and physical disabilities.  Typically, accessible and universal design approaches are not applied until a student identifies themselves and requests specific accommodations to meet their needs. Often, these accommodations (i.e. note-taking assistance, closed-captioned and transcribed media, and extended time for assessments) need to be retroactively implemented into the course design and can cause a delay in the student’s progress (Silver, Bourke, & Strehorn, 1998). Unfortunately, due to faculty time constraints, limited institutional resources for training and development, and limited administrative support course designers often do not actively embed inclusive strategies into their courses (Dallas, Sprong, & Kluesner, 2016). Ideally, universal design learning (UDL) principles should be applied and interwoven throughout the entire course development process and the course design should be flexible and adaptable to just-in-time modifications. As Chandler, Zaloudk, and Carlson (2017) suggest, “…the principles of UDL offer educators a framework from which to systematically address the potential learning differences associated with each division of the learning process. By designing courses with ‘space’ for individuals to co-construct their learning opportunities and processes, educators can remove barriers for students from diverse life contexts and support their success in higher education.” (pp. 153-154) Also, instructional designers should use differentiated instructional strategies and challenge learners to personalize their learning by enabling them to select resources and activities aligned to course outcomes.

Finally, as Patrick Parrish reminds us, “Fundamentally, when we teach, we are teaching culture. Knowledge, skills, and attitudes are all manifestations of culture and are not somehow immune to it. Moreover, when we teaching, we are passing along not only what we know, but how we come to know it as well as the basis for accepting it as useful knowledge, and the values these represent. Teaching and learning are not only embedded in culture, they are cultural transmission in action- the means to culture.” (p.5)

References:

Baker, R., Dee, T., Evans, B., & John, J. (2018). Bias in online classes: Evidence from a field experiment (CEPA Working Paper No.18–03). Retrieved from Stanford Center for Education Policy Analysis http://cepa.stanford.edu/wp18-03

Black, S., Krahmer, D., & Allen, J. D. (2018). Part 6: Diversity and Inclusion. The Reference Librarian, 59(2), 92-106.

Chandler, R., Zaloudek, J. A., & Carlson, K. (2017). How Do You Intentionally Design to Maximize Success in the Academically Diverse Classroom?. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 151, 151-169.

Dallas, B. K., Sprong, M. E., & Kluesner, B. K. (2016). Multiuniversity Comparison of Faculty Attitudes and Use of Universal Design Instructional Techniques. Rehabilitation Research, Policy, and Education, 30(2), 148-160.

Hartescu, I. (2012). ONE SIZE FITS ALL?-CULTURAL DIVERSITY REFLECTED IN INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN MODELS. In Conference proceedings of» eLearning and Software for Education «(eLSE) (No. 01, pp. 501-506). ” Carol I” National Defence University Publishing House.

Higbee, J. L., Schultz, J. L., & Goff, E. (2010). Pedagogy of inclusion: Integrated multicultural instructional design. Journal of college Reading and Learning, 41(1), 49-66.

Hockings, C., Brett, P., & Terentjevs, M. (2012). Making a difference-inclusive learning and teaching in higher education through open educational resources. Distance Education, 33(2), 237–252.

Liu, X., Liu, S., Lee, S., & Magjuka, R. J. (2010). Cultural differences in online learning: International student perceptions. Educational Technology & Society, 13(3), 177–188.

Parrish, P., & Linder-VanBerschot, J. (2010). Cultural dimensions of learning: Addressing the challenges of multicultural instruction. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 11(2), 1-19.

McAnany, D. (2009). Monkeys on the screen?: Multicultural issues in instructional message design. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology/La revue canadienne de l’apprentissage et de la technologie, 35(1).

Schwartz, L. (2004). Advanced accessibility features for inclusive distance education. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 5(3).

Silver, P., Bourke, A., & Strehorn, K. C. (1998). Universal Instructional Design in higher education: An approach for inclusion. Equity & Excellence, 31(2), 47-51.

Uzuner, S. (2009). Questions of culture in distance learning: A research review. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 10(3).

Zhang, J. X. (2001). Cultural diversity in instructional design. International Journal of Instructional Media, 28(3), 299.

Integrating Microsoft Office 365 to Enhance Teaching and Learning in a Distance Education Program

Many institutions and organizations have enterprise architectures in place to enable faculty and instructional designers to make strategic decisions to embed secure technologies into course design. Enterprise solutions afford learners and educators with the technical support, quality assurance and training necessary to apply within their context (Schwartz, 2004).  Recently, The Pennsylvania State University acquired Microsoft Office 365 (O365) as an enterprise solution to “create, collaborate, and innovate through a host of email, calendaring, and premier applications that can be accessed from anywhere in the world, at any time, on any device.” (https://office365.psu.edu)  

Online distance education instructional designs are well situated to push the parameters of innovation through emerging technologies, iterative design processes, and student-centered learning. As such, the Lifelong Learning and Adult Education graduate program with World Campus has strategically adopted and implemented a myriad of the O365 applications to support instruction and learning. The Online Program Coordinator and Director of the American Center of Distance Education, Dr. William Diehl, and World Campus Instructional Designer, Rebecca Heiser, have partnered together to evaluate the appropriateness of the O365 applications to support of the alignment of learning objectives to assessment strategies, the context in which the application is used in the course and the quality of the user experience.  

In the ADTED 470, Introduction to Distance Education, students are utilizing Microsoft’s Teams to work together in an informal learning space to complete a group project. In online learning environments, learners are often confronted with a sense of isolation and are challenged to establish interpersonal contact with their instructors and other learners (Aragon, 2003). However, Teams enables learners to feel more social presence by utilizing various forms of media file attachments, synchronous video through a Skype integration, informal emoji’s and gifs, and color indicators to identify who’s active online. In addition to Teams, the Lifelong Learning and Adult Education program has adopted tools in the Canvas LTI including Collaborations and Office 365 to streamline the applications into the Canvas learning environments. In ADTED 532, Research and Evaluation in Distance Education, learners are utilizing Collaborations to work on an all-class annotated bibliography utilizing Microsoft Word in real-time. The capstone course, ADTED 588, Professional Seminar: Research and Adult Education, learners are actively using the Office 365 Canvas LTI to share ongoing progress on their Master’s Research Paper through OneDrive. OneDrive has not only streamlined the feedback loop from the instructor, but it has offered students the opportunity to reflect on their learning process. Finally, the program has adopted Microsoft Sway and Forms to scale ongoing improvements and updates including midcourse surveys, instructor recommendation forms, and a new, dynamic homepage dashboard. 

By taking a systemic approach, the program developed a Sharepoint site and Team space for online instructors to share best practices, access faculty development opportunities, review course and program documentation, and request just-in-time support. Applications like Planner, Tasks, and Flow have helped us manage projects on tight timeframes and streamline our research and course development processes. By adopting Microsoft 0365 across the program, it has centralized not only communication and management processes across a displaced team, but also has facilitated teaching and learning for our instructors and learners.  

Finally, we welcome you to join us in an exploratory research study, Microsoft Office 365 Applications for Teaching and Learning, designed to investigate the early adoption and implementation of O365 applications for teaching and learning. In this study, we aim (1) to investigate what Microsoft Office 365 applications are most useful to support and enhance teaching and learning, and (2) identify faculty and student preferences utilizing Microsoft Office 365 applications. We are working with a research team consisting of Instructional Designers across the University to review use-cases, strategies and lessons-learned as we begin to adopt and implement these applications into course design. 

In the meantime, if you are interested in learning more about these applications, we encourage you to view our OneNote space that was created for Canvas Day 2019. This OneNote page includes resources and examples listing how others across the University are utilizing O365 to enhance their course design.  

 

 

References:  

Aragon, S. R. (2003). Creating social presence in online environments. New directions for adult and continuing education, 2003(100), 57-68. 

Schwartz, L. (2004). Advanced Accessibility Features for Inclusive Distance Education. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 5(3). 

Social Presence Expectations in Distance Education

How can learning design adapt social presence to the needs and expectations of learners in online distance education?

In the book, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age by Sherry Turkle, she explores the relationship of our digital addiction to connect socially at the expense of face-to-face interactions. In her research, Turkle reports that “students in online classes do better when the curriculum includes face-to-face encounters.”(p.230) Turkle doesn’t discredit technology delivery models and tools, instead, she urges us to design for conversation, a place to have synchronous, authentic dialogue to encourage empathy.  As an instructional designer who telecommutes and designs courses for distance education, I’m curious and sympathetic about social presence in online learning spaces. If human behavior is evolving and many report they prefer asynchronous communication methods, then, what are learner expectations in online learning environments since learning is social?

Social presence theory continues to evolve as more dynamic learning technologies enable learners with enhanced media qualities, heightened perceptions of learner isolation and connection in online environments, improved learning experiences, and analytical tools to evaluate behavioral engagement (Chen et al., 2015). Beginning in 1976, Short, Williams and Christie established social presence theory from the perspective of telecommunications and concluded that not only does the selection of communication media influence the quality of communication, but also the apparent distance of one’s location. Short et al. described social presence as the “degree of salience of the other person in the interaction and the consequent salience of the interpersonal relationships” (p.65). In online learning environments, social presence is often studied in theoretical frameworks to define the degree of feeling, perception and reaction to another entity by computer-mediated communication (Tu & McIsaac, 2002).

Researchers have identified two components in online social presence and they are intimacy and immediacy. Argyle and Dean (1965) describe intimacy as non-verbal factors including physical proximity, facial expression, and topic of conversation. Whereas, Winer and Mehrabian (1968) define immediacy as non-verbal and verbal queues and the psychological distance between the communicator and recipient.

In online learning environments, learners are often confronted with a sense of isolation and are challenged to establish interpersonal contact with their instructors and other learners (Aragon, 2003). Unlike face-to-face learning environments, effective distance education environments must rely on instant messaging functions, audio and video media technologies, email correspondence, and discussion boards as communication platforms. Lowenthal and Snelson (2017) contend that social presence is not dependent on instructor presence, and it is a different construct than collaboration and community in distance education. According to a study conducted by Kim et al. (2011), high-quality media integration, instruction and interactivity support online social presence. Other researchers including Sung and Mayer (2012) confirmed through statistical analysis that there are five factors of online social presence including offering social respect, sharing personal and social information, providing comfortable and open learning spaces, establishing social identity and developing authentic intimacy. Course designs that offer and support social context, online communication, and interactivity provide positive degrees of social presence in distance learning environments (Tu & McIsaac, 2002).

Finally, social presence has been challenging for researchers to measure since is it not a static construct and because it fluctuates with the variables and components of communication in online learning environments (Chen et al., 2015).  Studies suggest that emerging technologies including interactive learning environments and more rigorous frameworks measuring social presence are needed for future examinations of social presence in distance education.

 

References:

Aragon, S. R. (2003). Creating social presence in online environments. New directions for adult and continuing education, 2003(100), 57-68.

Argyle, M., Dean, J. (1965), Eye contact, distance and affiliation. Sociometry, 28(3), 289-304.

Chen, X., Fang, Y., & Lockee, B. (2015). Integrative review of social presence in distance education: Issues and challenges. Educational research and reviews, 10(13), 1796-1806.

Kim, J., Kwon, Y., & Cho, D. (2011). Investigating factors that influence social presence and learning outcomes in distance higher education. Computers & Education, 57(2), 1512-1520.

Lowenthal, P. R., & Snelson, C. (2017). In search of a better understanding of social presence: an investigation into how researchers define social presence. Distance Education, 38(2), 141-159.

Russell, J., Rosenthal, D., & Thomson, G. (2010). The international student experience: three styles of adaptation. Higher education, 60(2), 235-249.

Sung, E., & Mayer, R. E. (2012). Five facets of social presence in online distance education. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(5), 1738-1747.

Short, J., Williams, E. & Christie, B. (1976) The social psychology of telecommunications.New York, NY: Wiley.

Tu, C. H., & McIsaac, M. (2002). The relationship of social presence and interaction in online classes. The American journal of distance education, 16(3), 131-150.

Turkle, S. (2016). Reclaiming conversation: The power of talk in a digital age. Penguin.

Wiener, M., and A. Mehrabian. (1968). Language within language: Immediacy, a channel in verbal communication. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Poodagogy – the art or science of bad teaching practice

Tired of best practices and lessons learned? Then, check out some excellent examples of bad pedagogy.

Source: Poodagogy – the art or science of bad teaching practice

Design Thinking: An Identity in Crisis

Design thinking has been accepted by many. Unfortunately, as the terminology continues to gain traction, many adopters vaguely apply design-like processes to solve wicked problems, under the guise of “design thinking”. Perhaps it’s time to do something different. Maybe it’s time to re-identify.

What is Design Thinking?

Beginning in the 1950’s creative techniques and problem-solving methods emerged in product and industrial design practices. One of the earliest adopters was John Arnold, who started his career at MIT’s Creative Engineering Laboratory and eventually accepted a dual appointment as a professor of Mechanical Engineering and Business Administration at Stanford. Within 30 years, researchers and design practitioners like Donald Schon (The Reflective Practioner), L. Bruce Archer (may be the first to use design thinking), and Peter Rowe (used “Design Thinking” as a title of his book in 1987) collectively explored design methodologies, theory, and practice.

There are many design thinking models, but for the sake of this post, we will focus on the recent-traditional methodology as an iterative process:

1. Empathize– focus on understanding human-centered challenges
2. Define– articulate the challenge intended to solve
3. Ideate– brainstorm potential solutions
4. Prototype– develop model solutions to test
5. Test– iteratively analyze solutions to continuously improve the design

One of the goals of design thinking is to remove patterns of thinking (schemas) and creatively think solutions “outside the box”. Also, design thinking begs for multidisciplinary collaboration, where each contributor leverages their own skill set and experience to contribute to the problem-solving process. Finally, design thinkers are expected to follow a data-driven approach, utilizing a system-thinking mindset, and ambiguously work through abstract processes to arrive at a solution. Design thinking utilizes linear “phases” to guide users through a step-by-step and iterative process.

But then, it gets murky. Design Thinking has evolved from a practical model to a theoretical strategy and continues to cause discourse. The challenge of design thinking is that it’s trying to please everyone, giving it an identity crisis. Let’s review further…

Business Strategy

By the 21st century, IDEO’s Tim Brown (the originator’s of Apple’s mouse device) championed design thinking strategies into mainstream media and applied design thinking to business (Roger Martin), education, and many other industries and practices (including personal lifestyle management). The application to evolve business with design thinking was easily adapted due to the competitive nature to create and support innovative products and services within a market. In a globalized, technology-driven economy, the product is often the service. As the evolution of participatory design, user-centered design, and service design lends itself to a creative business methodology, service, and product become one of the same. In addition, some corporate leadership adopted design thinking tactics with the intention to inspire organizational change through creativity. There’s an array of examples of how design thinking has been applied in business strategies including Airbnb, who utilized design thinking strategies to transition its startup operation to a profitable household entity, and IBM who used design thinking to shift corporate culture by creating their own buzzwords.

Irani suggests that globalization evolved IDEO’s strategy from tangible designs to design consultancy in the early 2000’s.  She reminds us that this is occurring during a time when US societal fears began to rise as jobs were outsourced to Asia, the housing market was about to burst, Common Core replaces No Child Left Behind, and Web 2.0 was a new way for sharing information. The solution as Daniel Pink states is to replace left-brain, task-oriented thinking, with right-brain, creative logic. Pink defines this shift from the “Informational Age” to the “Conceptual Age” with design as a valuable skill for survival (Pink, 2006, p. 49-50).

Education Strategy

As we continue to review the start of the 21st century, a time when businesses began to shun linear and automated processes, a very public perception emerged that educational school systems operated like a monochromatic factory. If business was evolving, education would need to as well. Policies like No Child Left Behind Act and the launch of the Common Core State Standards/Next Generation Science Standards challenged education to focus on productivity and data. These federal policies not only encouraged corporate philanthropy (many from Silicon Valley) to provide grant funding to support schools to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) but also influenced a new business strategy in education.

Education was ripe for aligning design thinking elements into practice due to the desire for educators to apply “21st-century skills into the classroom” (collaboration, critical thinking, creative problem-solving, etc.) to prepare students for college and careers. The K-12 education landscape began to erupt in 2007 when many d.schools (and similar) bought-in to the movement with hopes to deploy design strategies to solve interdisciplinary challenges.

As K12 continues to adopt outcome-based, student-centered, and active learning strategies to align an authentic curriculum to 21st century needs, higher education institutions like Stanford (IDEO’s academic arm), Harvard, and MIT (consider correlation to previously mentioned theorists and practitioners) offer degrees and programs in innovation and design thinking.

The Design Thinking Oasis

The internet is scattered with educational design thinking vignettes that have a lot to say about nothing. In an Edutopia article, it shares a quote from an educator who states, “Design thinking reminds me all the time why I became an educator; it all starts with empathy“, and continues with a header entitled “An Oasis for Educators“. Below is another example scattered with buzzwords offering little promise to provide strategies for improved learning outcomes.

In a recent article, How Design Thinking Became a Buzzword at School, Lahey’s word choice articulates a well-known phenomenon spreading like a virus across the educational landscape. She writes,

“At a recent teaching conference in Richmond, Virginia, a session on “design thinking” in education drew a capacity crowd. Two middle-school teachers demonstrated how they had used the concept to plan and execute an urban-design project in which students were asked to develop a hypothetical city or town given factors such as population, geography, the environment, and financial resources.

The teachers in the audience were enchanted by the details of the project; and if the photographs in the presentation were any indication, the students who participated in the lesson enjoyed it, too. The presenting teachers were bubbling over with enthusiasm for what they saw as the potential inherent in teaching design thinking.

Many of the teachers in attendance were flummoxed, however. As we filed out of the room and headed toward our next sessions, I overheard one woman remark to another that while the urban-design project looked like something she’d like to try in her own classroom, “I think I missed something. I still don’t understand what design thinking is. Do you?” The other teacher shook her head and said, “I think it’s a curriculum, but I’m not really sure.”

The K12 examples, the video, and the scenario outlined above leave the audience baffled. The overuse of buzzwords, ambiguity of design thinking terminology and lack of actual design practice is leading to a massive scale of misuse…and confusion. To be clear, design thinking is NOT a curriculum. It is a methodology for a skilled- practice.

Design thinking isn’t limited to the K12 landscape. Unfortunately, it’s also been targeted to reform higher education. Fortunately, tides may be turning as articles like Design Thinking Is a Boondoggle (previously entitled “Design Thinking is Kind of Like Syphilis- It’s Contagious and Rots Your Brains” )begin to emerge and question the practicality of the “movement”. In a personal example, I recently attended a design thinking workshop where the facilitators spent a considerable amount of time walking through the values of persona development as a technique to emphasize the challenge. One of the exercises included working in a group to develop personas… without data. This means, our personas were created on stereotypes, personal stories, bias, and assumptions. How are we expected to design an empathetic solution (without personal bias) if we do not have quantitative and qualitative data to develop archetype users, and then repeatedly test them in our prototype solutions? I realize this was an exercise to provide us with a hands-on design thinking strategy within the constraints of the workshop. However, whether it’s called design thinking or not, design decisions should never be made on assumptions and personal bias. Know your audience will always be essential whether you call it “Empathy” or not.

I have to question the return on investment (ROI) from the time and resources spent on these professional development activities. In my critical review of design thinking in education, I believe some components align with learner-centered, systems thinking, and procedural problem-solving. Also, there’s evidence about how design thinking techniques have helped foster educator collaboration. However,  most professional development activities (including IDEO U) and resources that intend to foster design thinking skills, are vague and leave participants with a false belief that they can design in practice.

Design Convergence

Instructional design’s beginning emerged from World War II as a discipline used to systematically help soldiers interpret complex tasks within a short period. Instructional design embeds learning strategies and technologies to create learning experiences that are efficient, effective, and appealing (Merrill et al., 1966).  In the 1950’s B.F. Skinner (programmed instructional materials),  Robert Mager (learning objectives), and Benjamin Bloom (Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning domains) began to lay the foundation of instructional design for education.

ADDIE Model

As previously mentioned at the start of this post, design as a discipline (specifically industrial design) escalated approximately around the same time. It wasn’t until the 1970’s (after Gagne’s nine events) that instructional design appeared in business, academia, and the military. With the adoption of instructional design, many instructional design models materialized including ADDIE (developed in 1975), AGILE, Rothwell & Kazana, Dick & Carey, and SAM. If you were to do a word cloud of the modes included in these models (including design thinking) you would get something similar to this:

Design Model Word Cloud

The most common words used in these models are Evaluate (3) and Implement (3). Most instructional design models are very similar, for example, “evaluate” is used in ADDIE, AGILE, and SAM; but Design Thinking uses “test“. Similarly, most of these models believe that the design process is iterative and ongoing. Are we splitting hairs with wordsmithing the terminology in these instructional models to create buzz? Which model is best employed for instructional problem-solving?

Daniel Scarnecchia’s Frank and Honest Re-Rendering of Stanford d.school’s Design Thinking Hexagons

Design as an Expertise

As Natasha Jen shares in her presentation, the design community should critique the outcomes of design thinking projects. She defines design thinking as, “Design Thinking packages a designer’s way of working for a non-designer audience by codifying their processes into a prescriptive, step-by-step approach to creative problem solving- claiming that is can be applied by anyone to any problem.”

And there lies the problem with design thinking, it devalues design as an expertise. Expert designers, those with more experience, are able to holistically understand the design scenario and quickly approach the challenge to determine design decisions.

Design Disciplines from ITERATIONS

These four design categories, strategic, visual, artifact, and environment are interconnected with no priority given over another, and each focuses on improving the human experience. In any design discipline, designers are tasked to solve wicked problems or complex problems that are ill-formulated and not completely solvable. They use similar methodologies, including critique, to work within complex systems and within context to make design decisions for the best possible solution to ill-structured problems. Finally, designers push innovation through their own personal philosophies and frameworks to explore elements, strategies, and principles (Buchanan, 1992).

The relationship of design methodologies and the human experience continues to be complicated and abstract. Design thinking has become a set of guiding principles for those who wish to think like a designer.  I echo Natasha’s call to action, designers need to help reshape this conversation.

 

References: In addition to all the links.

Buchanan, R. (1992). Wicked problems in design thinking. Design issues, 8(2), 5-21.

Dorst, K. (2011). The core of ‘design thinking and its application. Design studies, 32(6), 521-532.

Johansson‐Sköldberg, U., Woodilla, J., & Çetinkaya, M. (2013). Design thinking: past, present and possible futures. Creativity and innovation management, 22(2), 121-146.

Gobble, M. M. (2014). Design thinking. Research Technology Management, 57(3), 59-61.

Irani, L. (2018). “Design Thinking”: Defending Silicon Valley at the Apex of Global Labor Hierarchies. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 4(1).

Merrill, M. D., Drake, L., Lacy, M. J., Pratt, J., & ID₂ Research Group. (1966). Reclaiming instructional design. Educational Technology, 5-7.

Pink, D. H. (2006). A whole new mind: Why right-brainers will rule the future. Penguin.

Razzouk, R., & Shute, V. (2012). What is design thinking and why is it important?. Review of Educational Research, 82(3), 330-348.

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