Resource:How to incorporate design thinking into a freshman engineering course.
An example of a successful case study in curricular change comes with the work of Kathryn “KC” Christopher at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Christopher became a University Innovation Fellow her senior year at GVSU and used her knowledge of design thinking through and into graduate school there to affect change on the engineering curriculum.
Design thinking, however, is important for not just engineering majors, but across all areas of study in higher education. This article focuses on one example of how a student can change the course of a degree program at her school and this can be replicated in any discipline at any school.
Contents
NEED AND GOAL
The need identified in this ‘How To” is the need for change in an underclassman curriculum. A popular topic in the UIF exploration of higher education is the incorporation of design thinking, which can be incorporated into many different courses of study: art, business, and entrepreneurship are examples.
As an engineering student, Kathryn “KC” Christopher recognized an opportunity for improvement in the freshman engineering curriculum. Before KC was able to make some changes, the curriculum was very cut and dry. She worked on implementing creative thinking in design, and introducing this thought process early on in the freshman engineering courses. Her work has granted her an invitation to join the committee that develops course curriculum, and has affected real change in the course curriculum, beginning in the fall semester of 2016.
ACADEMIC PERMISSION
Once the direction and type of changes to the curriculum are decided on, the end “goal” of the work will be to gain academic permission for the changes to be made. In some cases, permission comes from faculty support and committee acceptance (in KC’s case), and in others it requires a more stringent administrative review.
For engineering curriculum change at GVSU, KC worked building momentum through conversations with faculty as well as spent time doing “the leg work” in prototyping the end product--she made mock slides for lectures, wrote out lessons, and presented her argument a number of times.
SUPPORT
KC highlighted the importance of support in her journey to curricular change--there were three major groups she interacted with that enabled her to build support and buy-in for her changes. She found that academic support was one of the hardest, but most important steps in creating change.
1. Students
She first interacted with the students during her time as a GA. She realized their needs and the importance of design thinking in their classes. As she progressed through her degree, she saw in her own work that she did not learn enough about design thinking early on and it made it more difficult as she progressed through her degree. When she became a GA she had the opportunity to start creating real change and the students were her first supporters. Getting a large audience on board was an important step.
2. Faculty
Secondly, faculty support is crucial to creating change in curriculum. They are the ones who teach the classes on a daily basis and know all of the connections needed to change the direction of a course. KC mentioned being a Grad Assistant was very helpful because she was working with these professors that eventually led her to the right people and helped her create change.
3. Administrators
Lastly, administration was the most difficult for KC to receive support from. It was important to get these large figures on campus on board, but it was harder to get them invested financially. Christopher turned to administrators last, once her plans were firm and she had a large group of support. This is always the hardest to receive support from, because they don’t see how it can change the campus immediately. They usually see it as money they have to spend, and this is why it is hard to get them invested financially.
FACULTY
Not only do faculty sometimes have great sway over the curriculum (in Christopher’s case, they were the ones who wrote it), they are the executors of it. Creating buy-in in faculty is therefore critical in making real and lasting curriculum change; if teachers do not believe in it, they will not pass it on to students.
In Kathryn Christopher’s work changing the curriculum, she used conversations with faculty on the engineering design process to learn more about the professorial perspective on what engineering is and how it should be taught. It took many conversations to understand their perspective, including their reticence and resistance to what they saw as “fad” terminology, including “design thinking.” In becoming a graduate assistant in the engineering department, Christopher eventually shifted into more of a colleague role rather than a student role when approaching faculty, which allowed her to gain a greater understanding of their perspective.
It may be important to research key positions in curriculum development at your university--are there course coordinators, like at GVSU, who take leadership roles in curriculum design? Or are there committees? Who sits on the committees? Understanding who wields the most direct power is important in targeting your efforts and effectively networking.
AUDIENCE
Students are the critical audience affected by curricular change. Understanding what engages the students, what they feel is most effective, matters a great deal. Engage with those who are participating in the course you want to change and see what they have to say. Looking at the curriculum from their perspective gives added insight when shaping a design thinking experience. But, don’t limit the audience to current students. Students who complete the courses and then advance to real-world experiences may offer valuable critiques on how well their courses prepared them for what goes on outside the classroom.
Christopher had a number of perspectives at hand in her experience: being a graduate assistant, she saw the curriculum both as a teacher and through the feedback of current students, whom she could communicate with. Having gone through those same courses herself as an undergraduate, she could also judge their historic effectiveness in her own education.
TIMELINE
Christopher utilized the existing timeline for curriculum review at her university to propose changes in the engineering lesson plan. GVSU operated on a 5-year review process, and it was during one of those turnover periods where she leveraged her long-term proposing, discussing, and prototyping efforts to propose change to the faculty.
Understanding the pace of the university, especially their timeline for curriculum review and course development, is key to understanding the environment and necessary timing for different steps in the change process.
One of the best time-related piece of advice she shared was the importance of being in the right place and the right time, but being prepared for when that time comes. So, expanding on that lesson, it can never be too early to research and get to know the atmosphere of your respective university in order to be ready for when an opportunity to advance your cause appears.
TIPS FOR OTHERS
Two of the major tricks KC found that helped make her successful were to a.) have good timingand b.) speak her audience’s language.
For timing, she was able to leverage her university’s timeline for curriculum review (5 yr cycles) to make changes--people were more apt to hear her critiques and concerns, and better equipped to support her because of her timing. For speaking the language, KC found that “trend words” like design thinkingand other, new or nuanced language wasn’t clicking with what existing faculty and administrators were looking for. They saw these words and assumed her changes would have to do with passing fads, and that (potentially) her concerns would fade accordingly. She instead focused on framing her changes as a better engineering design process, and pushed for the design thinking methodology from their more traditional perspective of what it means to design.
