Course: Design Thinking
Instructor: Yuan Yanyue, Assistant Arts Professor
Students Enrolled: 10
Technology Used: Zoom, Slack, Google Docs/Slides
In Assistant Arts Professor Yuan Yanyue’s Design Thinking course, students are introduced to the concepts of ‘design thinking’ and challenged to apply them to specific problems and bring about socially-responsible innovations.
Because the class is project-based and relies heavily on group work, Yuan was concerned that the move to a digital environment might affect her ability to facilitate teamwork among students — especially those based in different time zones.
Quickly, Yuan settled on using a combination of asynchronous and synchronous online tools. From her home study in Shanghai, Yuan tapes lectures, leads live sessions, and conducts one-on-one office hours with her 10 students, half of whom are in China, while the other half are based in the U.S.
While most lectures are pre-recorded, enabling students to watch on their own schedules, Yuan requires the whole class to attend a live, one-hour Zoom session every two weeks to catch up, provide feedback on class, and participate in small brainstorming exercises. Every two to three weeks, students are also required to book a one-on-one meeting with Yuan, which she calls a “happy hour.” Class members also participate in a Slack workspace where students can ask questions at all hours and Yuan can send out announcements.
In both the live and the pre-recorded sessions, Yuan starts each lecture with the same ‘warm up’ exercises she used in live classes to set a relaxing environment for brainstorming and collaboration and to lay a foundation for the concepts/goals to be explored in the session.
For group projects, Yuan organized her students into teams based on their home time zones – providing them with ample waking hours to consult and work together on assignments. Yuan sought to make their first projects immediately relevant to the students’ current lives and states of mind, asking students to choose between challenges that addressed either online learning or personal hygiene.
For group projects, Yuan organized her students into teams based on their home time zones – providing them with ample waking hours to consult and work together on assignments. Yuan sought to make their first projects immediately relevant to the students’ current lives and states of mind, asking students to choose between challenges that addressed either online learning or personal hygiene.
So far, things are working well, Yuan says. “Most students are doing great, and I find they can collaborate with teammates very effectively, as I can tell they have spent much time on their teamwork so some of the progress work is of very high quality.”
Yuan has placed all course materials in a google folder. The course agenda includes a list of all pre-recorded videos, with action items highlighted. Students submit responses via Google Sheets that they can upload in their individual google folder for Yuan to access and offer feedback.
Building Trust
Yuan noted that the most important ingredient for a successful digital class is the same for a live one: “It is very key to build a learning community and especially strengthen the trust between faculty-students and among students themselves. As in face-to-face courses, I always strive to be open and transparent, so I will share with students the reasons behind some of the decisions I make (e.g. in terms of how to submit assignments, why some of the sessions are synchronous etc.),” she said. “And instead of complaining about the current situation, I try to turn the constraints into learning opportunities (and I believe it is very crucial for students to learn to work flexibly and fluidly as well since they would need these transferable skills in the workplace).”
Lessons Learned
Yuan said she had expected to use a variety of digital tools, but quickly found that a simple combination of Zoom, Google, and Slack more than sufficient. She said that her students had also told her that they preferred fewer platforms since too many could be overwhelming.
Yuan was also pleasantly surprised to discover that students are more willing to share/talk/type both in and outside of the class than they had been in her live classes. The online format also seemed to help more introverted students since they could pre-record their presentations, or type their answers in most cases.
While Yuan would still very much prefer to teach her course in a live classroom setting, she is confident that she is delivering a rewarding learning experience for her students. “A similar analogy would be: we can perhaps never time travel back to ancient times, but we can make every effort we can to try to recreate the past experience through archive research and archaeological research,” she said.