Week 3: Design Thinking - Enhancing Learning Using Canva

Integrating design thinking in the classroom allows students to explore solutions and consolidation of learning in more abstract ways. Design as a "process of creative and critical thinking" encourages students to gain knowledge through exploration and organisation, as well as making their own decisions to find a solution to their task at hand. (Burnette, 2005).

Design thinking utilises the principles of design to identify innovative solutions and solve problems (Adams & Nash, 2016). Li (2021) suggests that there are five stages of design thinking:

Figure 1: Stages of Design Thinking (Li, 2021).

To effectively incorporate design thinking in the classroom, giving students a task in which they have to identify a potential issue with an existing creation allows for them to engage in the creative process to find a solution. This means that students have to critically analyse something to find a deficit, and then create that is more effective.

A task that utilises this process in a science classroom could include students choosing an everyday item and creating a more efficient or environmentally friendly alternative. For example, using Tinkercad to create a new shell for a hermit crab.

Figure 2: Tinkercad Hermit Crab (LordConquest, 2016).

Design thinking also promotes critical thinking through collaboration with other students, argumentation during phases of design such as planning, trying and testing, and self-examination throughout their design process (Putra et al, 2021). Critical thinking is an integral element to the history classroom, as it facilitates opportunities for students to question evidence they are presented with and make their own judgement regarding its efficacy.

One way to use ICT in a history classroom to promote design thinking, is a task where students are asked to create a comic strip of an event based on the historical account. This way students can visualise the account and engage more deeply with it. They can do this on any comic software such as Comic Life. An example of a historical event is to make a comic strip about the death of Otzi the ice man based on the archaeological evidence. I chose to do this using Canva, as it was free and I am familiar with it

Figure 3: Comic made on Canva (Original Author Content, 2023).

Canva is a free website that can be used to create a plethora of ICT resources including posters. It is quite beginner friendly; making it more accessible. Elements can also be animated, so if students present their task, it could be more engaging for the viewer.

Figure 4: Some of the design process on Canva (Original Author Content, 2023).

Canva can be used as a base software for this comic task, and students more familiar with other softwares can use them as well. This will allow students more choice in their design process, and allow them to engage in the project more effectively and promote creativity.

References

Adams, C. & Nash J, B. (2016). Exploring Design Thinking Practices in Evaluation.

Li, M. (2021). Teaching and Learning in Classroom Based on Design Thinking. Asian Journal of Education and e-Learning, 9(3). https://doi.org/10.24203/ajeel.v9i3.6627

Putra, P. D. A., Sulaeman, N. F., Supeno, & Wahyuni, S. (2023). Exploring Students’ Critical Thinking Skills Using the Engineering Design Process in a Physics Classroom. The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, 32(1), 141–149. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40299-021-00640-3