So what is design thinking, anyway?
Design Thinking helps us go from could do to should do to will do. @LearnerAdvocate #ATD2015 #dt4id
— Richard H. Sites (@rhillsites) May 17, 2015Willemien Visser defined design thinking as "design-specific cognitive activities that designers apply during the process of designing." Angel Green with Allen Interactions presented on how this approach to design can help make our instruction more engaging, relevant, and impactful.
Instructional designers have a problem
First, we spend a lot of money on design...
North America spent $141.7 B on training in 2013. Are we being good stewards of those dollars? #DT4ID pic.twitter.com/4bnyvSnxP0
— allen interactions (@customelearning) June 26, 2014...yet we have a lot of dissatisfied learners
Green suggested that a simple twitter search on "I hate training" will highlight many of the concerns most learners have with instruction.
Learners are excited about training! How do we change this? #DT4ID pic.twitter.com/JRDTMqRGsK
— allen interactions (@customelearning) June 26, 2014How can we solve the negative sentiment problem?
We participated in a number of design thinking activities to help us as instructional designers identify ways to improve learning. Instructional Designers can:
- employ design thinking techniques to instructional design
- involve the learners in design
- continuously make improvements to design based on learner feedback
- help students better manage their time by providing them with clearly identified learning tasks
Angel suggests that prototyping can help us gain feedback and increase or creativity in our design.
What does it mean to learn? Is it the reception and storage of knowledge and information, or does learning encompass more than instruction and learning often exemplified in traditional classrooms?