Designing for the future of teaching using a design thinking approach

Facilitator: Olivier St-Cyr, PhD, LEL (he/him/his), Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, UXD Concentration Liaison, Faculty of Information

Over the past two years, members of the University of Toronto have had to reinvent their teaching environments, delivery methods, and interactions with colleagues and students. While many are looking forward to post-pandemic teaching, some of us are also uncertain of what the future of teaching in higher education will bring. Now is a great time to reflect on the past, understand the present, and start shaping the future.

This workshop focuses on using a design thinking approach to reflect on teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic and design what the future may be. Throughout the session, participants will use design thinking methods to: 1) reflect on the lessons learnt in the last two years; 2) propose opportunities given the current situation we are in; and 3) sketch out big ideas to define the future. To guide these activities, participants will be asked to think about the three following questions:

• What are you leaving behind?
• What are you taking forward?
• What are you looking for?

These questions will serve as the starting point to collect participants’ thoughts, which will then be fed into the design thinking process presented during the workshop. The session will start with an introduction to design thinking and how it can be applied to teaching. Then, each participant will work individually and in small groups using a subset of design thinking methods to propose ideas on the future of teaching in higher education. The session will also introduce fundamental concepts of design thinking such as divergence and convergence, individual versus group data generation, and playbacks.

The goal is for participants to leave the session with some design thinking tools, methods, and practice they can apply in their own teaching.

This workshop will feed into the work of the 2022 U of T Teaching & Learning Symposium: Designing for the Future. The theme for this year’s symposium seeks to answer the questions “where are we now and where are we going?” To learn more about the Teaching & Learning Symposium and be part of the premier teaching showcase for the University of Toronto, please visit the TLS website.