How to use design-thinking in Education?

We may not know what our future holds, but we educators must prepare our students to flourish in it. The world we live in will not be the same in the future, many new occupations will come up and many existing ones won’t exist. Since we can’t accurately predict the type of jobs that would guarantee greater success, we can perhaps prepare our students the best for the challenges of the future. 

Educators need to empower learners and mold them according to market needs. They shouldn’t just prepare learners on specific skills, rather, the focus should be on their all-round development. Developing adaptability to change and creativity will enable learners to deal with challenges. It will also remove a learner’s limitation of being good in one specific field. We can use innovative and flexible methods like Design thinking to overcome this challenge.

Design thinking is a human-centric approach to solving real-world problems providing educators with the necessary steps towards finding the right solution i.e., making learners future-ready. Design Thinking is at its best when educators lead efforts towards innovation. It is a mindset of being able to apply step by step, an innovative approach to create a better future for the learners.

Educators should consider this approach from the learners’ perspective and make sure that their needs are met during the process of education. We must try and find a suitable way of educating with the only purpose of shaping adaptable and creative human beings of the future, who are thinkers and doers, capable of handling complex and new-age problems.

If you are looking to upskill and would like to learn more about design thinking, look no further and start with Stanford GSB Executive Education’s Design Thinking course in collaboration with Great Learning.