Using Design Thinking as a Student-Centered Approach to Enhance an Undergraduate Leadership Program

Abstract

It is widely understood that distinctive leadership programs must engage in assessment, and intentional program improvement practices. Design thinking can serve as one student-centered tool that engages students in the assessment process, while looping feedback into substantive programmatic changes. This paper explores the use of this innovative practice to enhance a co-curricular leadership program at a large university in the Southeastern United States. Practitioners found that design thinking was a useful supplemental assessment tool that led to positive programmatic changes that were focused on students' needs.

Creating Student-centred Experiences: Using Design Thinking to Create Student Engagement

“…Previous work with design thinking in educational environments revealed effective educational interventions and theory (Easterday et al, 2014; Van den Akker et al, 2006). Design thinking has been used in a variety of contexts from assessing leadership programmes (Banter et al, 2020) to designing honours courses (Chaney et al, 2020). While there has been a fair amount of research on the efficacy of design thinking in K–12 (from kindergarten to 12th grade), the work for higher education and student engagement is just beginning.…”