AUTHOR=Skywark Emily Rose , Chen Elizabeth , Jagannathan Vichitra 

TITLE=Using the Design Thinking Process to Co-create a New, Interdisciplinary Design Thinking Course to Train 21st Century Graduate Students

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Public Health

VOLUME=9

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.777869

DOI=10.3389/fpubh.2021.777869

ISSN=2296-2565

ABSTRACT=<p><bold>Background:</bold> Our instructional team at the The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill led an innovative project that used <ext-link ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="https://www.ideo.org/" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">IDEO.org's</ext-link> design thinking process to create a brand-new interdisciplinary graduate course, housed in the school of public health, titled <italic>Design Thinking for the Public Good</italic>. We offer our course design process as a case study of the use of design thinking for course design.</p><p><bold>Methods:</bold> We collected data and generated insights through a variety of inspiration, ideation, and implementation design thinking methods alongside members of our three stakeholder groups: (1) faculty who teach or have taught courses related to design thinking at our higher education institution; (2) design thinking experts at ours and other institutions and outside of higher education; and (3) graduate students at our institution.</p><p><bold>Results:</bold> We learned that interdisciplinary design thinking courses should include growth-oriented reflection, explicit group work skills, and content with a real-world application.</p><p><bold>Conclusions:</bold> Our course design process and findings can be replicated to design courses regardless of area of study, level, or format.</p>