Design thinking can be broadly defined as a set of creative skills to understand and problem-solve ambiguous and complex problems, and a practice that places humans at the heart of the design process. Such collaborative ways of design thinking and design-doing are much needed to address twenty-first century challenges such as climate change. Design thinking methodology is well known for teaching and learning in design disciplines, and to a lesser extent, as an innovative problem-solving framework for business education. Typically design thinking has been taught and practised in physical settings and to a lesser extent online. While design thinking is also increasingly practised online, this is challenging at scale in higher education contexts. This case study analyses design thinking activities with educational technologies in a large undergraduate cohort of first-year business students. Eleven students and three teachers were interviewed to ascertain their level of engagement with design thinking with digital tools and to identify common themes that enabled or inhibited such practice. Student artefacts of design thinking are explored and compared to the interview data. Findings indicate that students may develop novice design thinking skills, process knowledge and mindsets in online and remote delivery modes, despite limited experience, technical and time constraints. Broader learning design implications of design thinking constraints in digital practice are discussed to assist educators. It is suggested that higher education adopt and support design thinking, as a subject and practice, more widely.
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The move to online learning has blurred the distinction between the Foucauldian conceptualisation of university as a ‘Heterotopia’ with the real world of contingent alternative learning spaces students create. In this paper, we highlight the need for a broader and more holistic approach to educational design which requires a re-conceptualisation of the learning environment to include the students’ real-world spaces and their socio-cultural surroundings through a postdigital paradigm. We seek to understand how Covid-19 has accelerated postdigital disruption of the concept of university as heterotopia, where learning is traditionally highly structured and segmented in slices of time for seminars, lectures, and workshops. In April 2020, the University of Sydney Business School invited students to share stories of their remote learning experience using the #OurPlace2020 hashtag. Using Actor Network Theory (ANT), we analyse 37 digital stories to provide examples of how the boundaries of the traditional learning spaces of university campus are blurred with real-life learning spaces when students are studying remotely. We argue for the need to adopt a broader analytical approach that can elucidate the complexity of heterogenous networks of interacting digital and non-digital entities through which learning spaces are constructed.
This editorial is in support of an issue of the Journal that has a focus on educational technology (EdTech). With this in mind, this editorial will provide advice on how the editorial team for this section feels that educational technology will evolve into the latter part of the 2020’s, especially given the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Examples are given of how writing in this space has changed over the years of the pandemic, with a history of EdTech given, followed by an argument for the need for technology to be used in context. This is followed by descriptions of good practice around theoretical framing, methodology rigour, inclusion of the people element, and the need for the technology to serve a purpose. The piece concludes with a summary of where the editorial teams feels the field will go from here into the future. Throughout, practical examples of submissions made over the last few years are given to help illustrate a coherent direction. It is anticipated that this editorial will serve as a guide for future authors to use in service of better educational technology outputs in the future.
In our postdigital world, unseen algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) underpin most business and educational technologies and systems. Also, the use of educational data to better understand and support teaching and learning is growing in higher education. Other AI technologies such as synthetic media and AI-generated avatars are increasingly used to present video-based content in business and society but are less common in educational content and lectures, as their effectiveness and impact on learning are still being researched and debated. In this study, an AI-generated avatar was implemented in the redesign of business ethics material in a postgraduate course to present videos and online activities and to prompt critical reflection and discussion of the social and ethical implications of algorithms. Using a qualitative research design, we then explored students’ perceptions of teaching and learning with AI-generated avatars. The students interviewed felt AI avatars were suitable, sometimes even preferred, for lecture delivery, with some enhancements. This study contributes insights into the use of AI-generated avatars in education by examining their potential benefits and challenges and generating three key pedagogical principles to consider. Future directions for educational design and research are discussed, particularly the pressing need to engage students creatively and critically with the social and ethical implications of AI avatars.
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