Spreading the Wonders of Design Thinking to Schools.

Developing countries face multiple problems in deploying effective methodologies for classroom transformation, frequently associated to the implementation of inexpensive and/or standardized solutions for context-dependent complex educative issues.  One methodology that encloses high capability to address such situations is Design Thinking, from which its creative human-centered approach allows a focus on the people it is designed for, resulting in better products, services, and internal processes. Given the promising results of a small pilot we deployed previously, we propose a pilot of Design Thinking teacher training in Cartagena, Colombia, aiming to assess the multiple benefits such methodology could generate in the development of competencies in disadvantaged students. By generating high-level cognitive capacities in several populations, high-quality school education could arise as an outstanding and transformative change in the behavior of learners, leading them to generate healthy and sustainable lifestyles.

For several years, multiple governmental agencies focused in economic development have claimed that a well-planned expansion of high-quality education in developing countries facilitates deep social transformations.  Such changes have the potential to improve economic, political and health welfare, leading to a reduction of inequality and creating more democratic and equitable political systems.  Deployment of high-quality pedagogical strategies is an opportunity to simultaneously promote higher incomes to disadvantaged populations and effective social development.  Therefore, such practice offers a potential scenario in which poverty, disparity and discrimination might be tackle, creating a solid ground base for sustainable economic growth and less corrupt government system. In the specific case of Colombia, school education has been under scrutiny by national and international entities for two important circumstances. First, public school students reflect a poor performance in international tests such as PISA, evidencing a lack of basic skills. Second, there is an increasing need in encouraging students to enroll in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) programs in higher education, looking to enhance economic development in the countries. Hence, hundreds of thousands of students across the country faces a lack of opportunities as a result of a non-relevant neither efficient education systems.

Cartagena is a historical city of Colombia which conglomerates of a great number of touristic places visited by millions every year.  Despite its touristic success, however, the city and its surroundings endure critical socio-economic issues mainly framed by high levels of inequity.  In Cartagena there are multiple afro-descendent communities located around the main city, mostly recognized just until 1991.  Four of those communities called Manzanillo del Mar, Tierra Baja, Villa Gloria y Puerto Rey, now belong to a massive city expansion project denominated as Serena del Mar, which includes several house complexes, hotels, educative institutions and hospitals.  As a matter of fact, the host institution of this research study, Universidad de los Andes, has recently installed a headquarter in the area.  Given that the presence of the university is now influencing the communities of the zone, we decided is an appropriate time to deploy a research project in order to generate a transfer of high-level knowledge of Design Thinking to public schools. Undoubtedly, a better educated population could be greatly benefited by being accurately incorporated in city expansion projects, which ultimately leads to a better socio-economic prosperity in the area.

There are few pedagogical approximations able to encloses the five dimensions of teaching and learning effectively in schools’ environments, which has made it difficult to develop such dimensions during the past 2 decades. Nevertheless, Design Thinking methodology has been recently described and implemented as a potential educational scheme for the successful development of 21st century skills and competences in students.  Briefly, Design Thinking can be envisioned as a pedagogical strategy of learning that focuses on increasing student’s creativity and confidence.  In essence, the Design Thinking process is iterative, flexible and focused on collaboration between creators and users, with an emphasis on bringing ideas to life based on how real users think, feel and behave.  As such, students engage in active educational settings that fosters problem-solving, develops empathy and metacognitive awareness, and encourages ideation.  Therefore, students are actively enrolled in a widely described set of five stages of Design Thinking to tackle complex problems: i) Empathizing, which involve the understanding of the human needs involved in the problem situation; ii) Defining, described as re-framing and defining the problem in a human centric way; iii) Ideating, concerning to the creation of as many ideas as possible in ideation sessions; iv) Prototyping, which adopts an inexpensive and scale down hands-on approach of the possible solution, and v) Testing, which refers to a high scale deployment of the solution to analyze its behavior in real settings.  It is important to highpoint that the five stages should not always be sequential, they do not have to follow any specific order and they can occur in parallel and be repeated iteratively. As such, the stages should be envisioned as different approaches that dynamically contributes to the development of a solution, instead of a linear set of steps to follow.

In order to generate an efficient and prosperous transfer of knowledge in the influencing area, we decided to follow four essential steps proven as successful in previous experiences to accomplish our purpose: community outreach (we have contacted with local foundations to obtain a link with public schools in the area); teacher training (three-day training session); prioritization of potential projects (project selection derived from teachers ideas); and project development accompaniment (joint monitoring and guidance from investigators and local foundations/entities). 

For several years, multiple governmental agencies focused in economic development have claimed that a well-planned expansion of high-quality education in developing countries facilitates deep social transformations.  Such changes have the potential to improve economic, political and health welfare, leading to a reduction of inequality and creating more democratic and equitable political systems.  Deployment of high-quality pedagogical strategies is an opportunity to simultaneously promote higher incomes to disadvantaged populations and effective social development.

There are few pedagogical approximations able to encloses the five dimensions of teaching and learning effectively in schools’ environments, which has made it difficult to develop such dimensions during the past 2 decades. Nevertheless, Design Thinking methodology has been recently described and implemented as a potential educational scheme for the successful development of 21st century skills and competences in students.  Design Thinking can be envisioned as a pedagogical strategy of learning that focuses on increasing student’s creativity and confidence.  In essence, the Design Thinking process is iterative, flexible and focused on collaboration between creators and users, with an emphasis on bringing ideas to life based on how real users think, feel and behave.  As such, students engage in active educational settings that fosters problem-solving, develops empathy and metacognitive awareness, and encourages ideation.  Therefore, students are actively enrolled in a widely described set of five stages of Design Thinking to tackle complex problems: i) Empathizing, ii) Defining, iii) Ideating, iv) Prototyping, and v) Testing.

Fortunately, we have deployed a small Pilot in the area of interest for Design Thinking teacher training. Three investigators travelled from the main campus of the university, located in Bogotá, to the headquarter located in Cartagena in order to offer teacher training. Teachers and staff who initially manifest their intention to participate in the project attended a two-days full time teacher training session in which all elements of design thinking were experienced through active pedagogical strategies. All attendants formed teams to develop activities regarding Empathizing, Defining, Ideating, Prototyping and Testing, as mayor contributors for the Design Thinking strategy. Teachers were encouraged to address local problems in their projects to increase their motivation in the process. The training finalized with project ideas ready for prototyping. One month later, four investigators returned to the influencing area, this time visiting teachers’ teams in their schools. Each team has the opportunity of taking with investigators aiming to solve doubts and obtain guidance about the prototyping process. Additionally, teams were informed about the availability of economic resources and extended accompaniment to support the development of some prioritized projects.

Prosperous results were obtained from rubrics of evaluation of the course as well as results from projects elaborated by teams of teachers. All those involved in the training were highly positive for a possibility of accompaniment as well as support for the development of local projects. Hence, we are highly motivated for deploying a more robust and bigger pilot program in disadvantaged schools in Cartagena, Colombia.

Taking into account that the influence of the University is barely starting in the community, we decided to get in contact with local foundations in an attempt to generate a bridge between our institution and public schools in the area. Fortunately, we encountered support in a non-profit foundation which directly works in the city expansion project, called The Serena del Mar Foundation. The foundation has already started some social projects with local schools, which facilitated communication between all the interested parties. As a result, an agreement between the university and the non-profit local foundation for teacher training and support in Design Thinking projects.

Currently, we count with an interdisciplinary team of six investigators from the faculties of Design, engineering and Science, who are specialist in the active pedagogical methodology of Design Thinking. Additionally, we work in synergy with 5 collaborators from the Serena del mar Foundation, which facilitates communication and monitoring with the area of influence. As the project could obtain more funding resources, we expect all the team to increase in size as we could engage more investigators and manage agreements with other foundations and schools located in Cartagena. By obtaining T-Prize resources, we expect to double our capacity and deploy teacher training to four schools for approximately 80 schoolteachers and staff.

Pedagogical approaches based on teacher training rely in the magnificent opportunity of teachers becoming replicators of the strategy every year. Within the next year, we expect to get involved around 80 teachers and staff in Design Thinking projects, with a successfully development of pedagogical strategies in their schools. A full Design Thinking project takes around one year to develop, involving students and communities. All students from the selected schools, therefore, could be benefited from our initiative, enhancing their competencies in critical thinking, collaboration and creativity.

Within the next five years, we expect to offer every year support and accompaniment for project development in each of the schools. IN that way, several students could contemplate multiple rounds of Design Thinking projects, leading to a strong development of competences. We expect a strong increase in rubrics regarding competences evaluation. Additionally, we would like to increment the number of agreements not only in Cartagena, but in several other cities in Colombia and Latin America and the Caribbean.

Cartagena is a historical city of Colombia which conglomerates of a great number of touristic places visited by millions every year.  Despite its touristic success, however, the city and its surroundings endure critical socio-economic issues mainly framed by high levels of inequity. The most prominent barriers we encounter is the fact that the regions of interest are heavily abandoned by government entities. Therefore, economic resources are massively scarce, making high quality education truncated for local students. This phenomenon leads to several issues regarding inequity and vulnerability, with an additional component of loss of cultural characteristics of the population.

As a matter of fact, the host institution of this research study, Universidad de los Andes, has recently installed a headquarter in the area of Cartagena.  Given that the presence of the university is now influencing the communities of the zone, we as investigators and institution are decided to deploy multiple research projects to play in favor of the communities. We will make several institutional agreements with other universities and foundations in order to generate strategies for resource obtention. If possible, we would like to empower our administrative staff in order to obtain, additionally, agreements with government institutions in order to generate a more coherent and well-focused strategy.

Pedagogical entrepreneurs are making great changes in regions of Latin America and the Caribbean, with multiple business companies looking to sponsorships such innovative actions. Therefore, we would like to continue our project in expansion to multiple cities of these regions by collaborating with local foundations in charge of generating better educational schemes. We have inquiry about this, and we have obtained a list of multiple foundations in countries like Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, Chile, Uruguay and Argentina who would be important axes in the deployment of Design Thinking teacher training in one or more cities from those countries. Such endeavor would have impulse from the results from the extended pilot we are proposing for this research call.

Currently, we count with an interdisciplinary team of six investigators from the faculties of Design, engineering and Science, who are specialist in the active pedagogical methodology of Design Thinking. Additionally, we work in synergy with 5 collaborators from the Serena del mar Foundation, which facilitates communication and monitoring with the area of influence.

Our team consists of an interdisciplinary team of investigators with a conglomerated experience in active pedagogical schemes of more that 20 years. Professionals from Design, engineering, education and science teamed-up in multiple occasions in order to generate pedagogical changes in multiple scenarios, displaying high competence in problem-solving, critical thinking, teamwork, creativity and innovation. This team counts with all the academic resources to generate an efficient and prosperous transfer of knowledge in the influencing area, providing the tools and support needs to carry out Design Thinking projects.

As explained before, the host institution of this research study, Universidad de los Andes, has recently installed a headquarter in the area of Cartagena.  Given that the presence of the university is now influencing the communities of the zone, we as investigators and institution are decided to deploy multiple research projects to play in favor of the communities. At this very moment we have an agreement with the Serena del Mar Foundation and we are working to include ADIUVO foundation for replicating such initiative in Barranquilla, Colombia.

We are fully confident in the idea that high quality education delivers multiple positive effects in populations. Five favorable consequences as product end of well-developed education systems in any nation are: i) being the workforce of a country its principal axis for economic development, more educated citizens lead to more productive and stable countries; ii) the expansion of educational opportunities in human populations allows individuals to improve social and economic circumstances; iii) high-quality education reduces imbalanced societies and encourages socioeconomic inclusion as promotes a meritocratic system of economic distribution based on skills and competencies; vi) countries with well-educated citizens have the possibility to access to better health systems, assuring more solid social structures; and v) educated societies are more democratic as a result of citizens being able to take political decisions based on critical thinking.

Therefore, our business model has as based-ground the potential economic impact that Design Thinking could generate in students and teachers, leading to the creation of multiple innovative projects that will lead, ultimately, in the obtention of a diverse range of economic sources for the communities of interest.

As a non-profit organization looking for non-profit partners, our financial status is mainly based in the obtention of grants and social resources available to deploy community projects. We have a substantial amount of experience in obtaining resources from such sources, from which we are confident we can manage to generate financial sustainability for several years.

The most prominent barriers we encounter is the fact that the regions of interest are heavily abandoned by government entities. Therefore, economic resources are massively scarce, making high quality education truncated for local students. This phenomenon leads to several issues regarding inequity and vulnerability, with an additional component of loss of cultural characteristics of the population.  If our solution would be selected, we could generate a pedagogical impact for teachers and students in the area of interest.

We are very interested in making partnerships and agreements with universities and foundations interested in education improvement as well as Design Thinking strategies.