Bringing Design Thinking to Curriculum Design through WeChat

I-Ling Hsu徐翊玲

论文摘要Paper AbstractDesign Thinking is gaining ground in education− to those who seek innovative strategies to gain a deeper understanding of the needs and wants of students and enrich their learning experience. Originated from the industry, Design Thinking has spread to educational institutes such as Stanford University, Foreign Service Institute, etc. Design Thinking is a human-centered approach focusing on designing human experiences for specific people when we develop language-learning curricula. Given the fact that a conventional textbook format cannot provide flexibility and accessibility that students appreciate, WeChat is introduced to the Chinese curriculum and the students can access materials and teacher’s input using their mobile devices anywhere promoting effectiveness of teacher’s feedback and student engagement. On the other hand, through the human-centered approach, the student experience embedded deeply in context is also examined, including what they care to learn, what they skip, what makes them get excited about learning, and most importantly when to avoid increasing their learning burden unnecessarily. Through Design Thinking, activities like games, simulations, active review sessions, role-play, self-assessment, interactive Q&A are sequenced carefully on the WeChat platform, which can make up for the deficiencies of a traditional classroom and thus contribute to the improvement of teaching quality.