As LRNT 527 comes to an end, we have all been tasked with reflecting on our empathetic design challenge. To start my reflection process, I reviewed my own notes and my past blog posts. This course could be best described as a journey, and like many journeys, I found I had forgotten some of the earlier moments. The journey map that I created in the design phase would have been the most surprising for me. At first I was not sold on the idea, but after completing, it gave me the ability to visualize my thoughts and my time spent reviewing my course differently.
Moving into the prototype phase, my goal was to add a digital learning resource that allowed for more engagement between the instructor and students, and gave the students a better understanding of the course expectations. Overall, I think my prototype is a good step in that direction, but could be expanded to make it even more clear for my students. Feedback received from peers included incorporating the learning goals and intentions of the DLR for the students to see (D. Hatzigeorgiou, & T. McLeod-Treadwell, personal communication, August 15, 2019).
If I were to do this project over again, I would scale back my ideas sooner. I originally went into the prototype thinking I was going to make a few smaller activities. However, the amount of time it took to complete the prototypes that were (in my opinion) good enough for my end user took me much longer than anticipated. One of the reasons for this is because the prototypes were developed with an emphatic approach, which gave me a different perspective on why I was creating them.
To end this post and 527, we were tasked with answer the below questions
What was the most surprising thing that you learned by participating in the design thinking process and designing and developing your digital learning resource?
How much I wanted to work with other people and discuss my prototype and process. I normally think of myself as fairly independent, but through the different stages I found myself wanting to work and collaborate with others. This is most likely due to the design process being very different than other types of improvements or innovations I have added to my courses.
What suggestions and improvements did you receive? Did you get any feedback that you did not expect? What feedback needs further investigation?
Throughout the entire course, I received feedback on blog post and then finally on my prototype. One revision, which was received through feedback, would be to increase the amount of instructions given to the students once they receive the Excel spreadsheet (J, Christie, personal communication, August 11, 2019). It was something that I did not think about, as in my mind the prototype was over. But adding it makes a lot of sense for accessibility and ease of use for my students.
What are the next steps you would like to take to build upon your digital learning resource?
By building this prototype, my hope is to integrate it into my new course in the fall. Hopefully this will allow me to start building stronger connections with more students, and give all of them another tools to utilize for their own success. Before doing so, there are a few more revisions I would like to make. I would like to develop the Moodle version of my quiz, and add more instructions into my resource as suggested in my feedback. These instructions would be for the how the student could download and access the excel sheet.
Also, consider how you might utilize the design thinking process for the design and creation of digital learning resources in the future, or for other tasks that you may encounter within your instructional context.
I often collaborate with another colleague at work regarding similar class features. I would utilize a few of the more collaborate stages of the design challenge. There are also a few that are methods I have never used but would be interested in trying, such as Analogous Empathy and Story Share-and-Capture (Stanford University Institute of Design, 2016, p. 12-13). I enjoyed doing it by myself, but I think having more ideas in some of the earlier phases would have been able to open up the topic and ideas a bit more.
Thank you for reading my blog. Time for a week off before we jump into LRNT 528!
Reference
Stanford University Institute of Design. (2016). Bootcamp Bootleg. Retrieved from http://dschool-old.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/METHODCARDS-v3-slim.pdf