Creating Student-centred Experiences: Using Design Thinking to Create Student Engagement

Abstract

Design thinking (also known as human-centred design) is a creative problem-solving framework that focuses on developing user-centred, effective solutions to well-defined problems. Given the focus in entrepreneurship education on factors like idea generation and opportunity recognition, design thinking is especially important. While popular in several fields such as engineering, business and computer science, the authors have developed a framework to help faculties use the principles of design thinking to design more effective and highly engaging student experiences in and out of the classroom. Called the Design Framework for Student Engagement (DFSE), the article outlines the key premises of the framework as well as the tools and strategies that teachers can use to create engaging student experiences.