Rethinking the Campus Experience in a Post-COVID World: A Multi-Stakeholder Design Thinking Experiment

Abstract

In a post-COVID world, rethinking the campus experience is critical for defining new pedagogical strategies. As higher education moves toward more student-centred action learning models, university leaders should engage in democratic design methods that empower students and professors. Design thinking (DT) is a user-centred design approach that can aid in the creation of future learning environments. While DT has been used in innovative space design, we know little about how students, professors, and other community members can act as codesign partners. To understand their role in codesign and how their experiences are incorporated into new building design decisions, we need a conceptual model. To develop this model, we examined a case study of the evolutionary co-design process of a new building for a leading information management school in Europe. Using the concept of three phases of design thinking defined by Brown (2009): Inspire, Ideate, and Implement, we collaborated with a group of 50 design thinking students and more than 500 members of the community representing different stakeholders, to create new spaces and rethink the learning experience. Our discussion will centre on the creation of a participatory design thinking model that positions students as design partners alongside university decision makers. The findings conclude that, by applying design thinking methods, it was possible to unveil new dimensions of the success of future campuses that go beyond the building design. Creating meaningful learning spaces that inspire creativity and critical thinking requires an alignment between human centred design, organizational change management and new pedagogical strategies.

My Human Rights Smart City: Improving Human Rights Transparency Identification System

“…Given the insights generated at each stage of the DT application (inspire, ideate, and implement) [48], the authors demonstrated the importance of this application for transforming cities, neighborhoods, and regions into smarter and more sustainable ones. The most significant contributions of this application to smart cities can be highlighted below:…”

Designing a Mobile Application for Children with Dyslexia in Primary Education Using Augmented Reality

“…Prototyping is the fourth stage to capture the solution at a glance, so it should be shown in the form of a mock-up or design that visualizes the solution required by the user [34]. To achieve a good prototype, the team should use specific design tools or sketches to show the solution [35].…”

Improving Design Project Management in Remote Learning

“…This increased the workload for teachers, who were under great pressure to redesign subjects and infrastructures [79]; however, remote learning is a necessity in times of lockdowns [81], preventing students from experiencing setbacks during school closures [82]. In this regard, COVID-19 has implied the opportunity to adopt remote learning, making the education system immersed in a substantial change toward new teaching and learning models [81,83,84] more student-centered [32]. In addition, according to Foo et al [85], new teaching and learning models should not be limited to crisis situations; it is necessary to learn about them to ensure sustainable education and face future and uncertain challenges.…”

“…One of the knowledge areas that positively influence the development of these skills and on which this article focuses is the design field and Design Thinking (DT) in its broadest sense [27][28][29][30][31]. DT consists of the formulation and resolution of complex problems through a creative human-centered process [27,28], being suitable for challenges characterized by a high level of uncertainty, such as most sustainability-related problems [32]. Thus, DT provides a framework (i.e., an innovation approach) for sustainability-oriented innovation (i.e., an innovation outcome) [33].…”