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Resource:How to engage students in Design Thinking on community challenges?

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~~~~How to engage students in Design Thinking on community challenges~~ ~~What is Design Thinking?~~~~

<li>Empathize</li><li>Define</li><li>Analyze  </li><li>Action:<ol style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><li>Ideate  : Brainstorm</li><li>Prototype: Build</li>

</ol></li>

<li>Test: Learn about the prototype’s viability</li><li>Measure progress.</li>

</ol>

Though the above process may seem linear and chronological. Most of the time, many of the above steps will be happening at once parallely.

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Where to start? Empathizing, identifying and defining problems

<li>Extracurricular: These are resources available outside the normal curriculum of school or university education, which are generally student driven. Clubs, workshops, hackathons, and TedX shows. These are vital as they enhance collaboration, networking and student engagement. Something like this is almost out of bounds from the general academic curriculums of colleges and universities.</li><li>Co-Curricular:  This refers to activities, program and learning experiences that complement what students are learning in school as part of the academic curriculum. For example, internships or summer fellowship programs. These resources teach skills, and often give actual experience in design thinking.</li><li>Curricular: This includes various courses that students can take as a part of their academic curriculum. These courses teach students how to have a design thinking mindset and tackle problems in society.</li>

</ol>

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Design thinking is a process. So, you must engage students at each step. The action stage is what seems to be causing problems.

Having resources may seem necessary, but, even with resources, it can be hard to undertake the task of solving complex problems without people to learn from, help and support. So, it is very important to involve stakeholders at different levels like key administrators, faculty, student leaders, local and international organizations, and any other person or group that can and wants to help. These stakeholders will help cause a bigger impact on enhancing student engagement and thus solving the pressing issues they all face.

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Re-structure the ecosystem:

Bottoms-up:The Design Thinking methodology is far from a groundbreaking innovation in problem solving techniques, it is however quite unfamiliar to incumbents within higher education and the management community. Therefore, it is essential to consider a bottoms up approach when attempting to engage students. They are typically more interested in fresh perspectives and strategies. Involving students in the design process will also provide a more clear indication of student body demand regarding community problem solving. Programs such as hack-a-thons, maker meetups, and design competitions can be implemented to attract students to the design thinking space. You should however start small, simple conversation about issues facing the community may yield a bounty of unique ideas and perspectives. This can be as simple as getting a small group together over coffee on campus. You can utilize the small scale interactions for recruitment in order to bring passionate students into the fold, further increasing the likelihood of success when implementing your overarching student engagement strategy.

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Time for Action (Activities)

All of the work done thus far provides little benefit without an understanding of it’s impact on our target segments; the community and the university. It is essential that feedback is collected throughout the design process and post implementation. The data collected will allow conclusions to be drawn regarding the effectiveness of your design as well as provide a raw guide to reference if a pivot in strategy becomes necessary. The key here is not to forget to utilize the design thinking methods to develop your design thinking implementation strategy; they are universal in nature and increase chances of a successful adoption of strategy.

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Overcoming Challenges

When people take on the task of solving some problem, especially one that affects the community, there are bound to be challenges; overcoming incumbents, organizational inertia, and lack of student and community demand just to name a few. While these challenges are certainly no small feat they are by no means insurmountable! The key is to build strong relationships with university faculty, students, administrators, and your community. By establishing trust and rapport with these key contacts it may be possible to leverage their network and resources to help you overcome more complex and difficult challenges. Try to tune your vocabulary to match that of your audience, the delivery of your message will be better received and more likely to compel action. Consider the course loads of the students and faculty you’re communicating with. Attempt to map your engagement strategy around their convenience the best you can so you may maximize its adoption. It may be difficult for students to pursue interests outside their course of study as well as for faculty to become involved when their schedule is overwhelming. A merit and compensation system may drive faculty interest in your engagement strategy but will take some work to roll out.

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