Good question

This week I would like to share a recent article on encouraging students to ask better questions. The article is entitled, “That’s a Good Question: Using Design Thinking to Foster Question Formulation Skill Development.” by Dorland (2022).

The study explores how design thinking practices can help undergraduate students develop better question-asking skills. The author compared the impact of four methods of question formulation used in higher education classrooms (group discussion, brainstorming, mind mapping, and case study analysis) with four methods of design thinking-based learning (ethnographic futures, shadowing, user experience journey mapping, and informance). More specific information on the methods for design thinking-based learning include: 

1. Ethnographic future studies (wherein students used samples of media representations of the future to conduct desk-based hypothetical ethnographies of future states and to generate new questions about what might be possible in that future). 

2. Shadowing (whereby students are embedded within a social setting of their choice to develop an understanding of a different context and to generate questions from the point of view of a different person with a different perspective than their own). 

3. User experience journey mapping (wherein students mapped the experience of a subject involved in a possible solution to the class project to generate questions that the subject might pose at any given intersection on their journey).

4. Informance (whereby students studied a social practice and then used performance to share that social practice with team members who asked new kinds of questions about the performance itself). 

The research questions for the study included: 

1. Do participating students ask questions in a different way after engaging with design thinking practice during an interdisciplinary undergraduate course? 

2. How is the student’s learning experience affected by the use of design thinking-based learning approaches?

The research was conducted in two first-year undergraduate course sections. The author compared traditional question formulation methods with design thinking methods. The data analyzed student reflective statements and question generation processes.

Major findings indicated that design thinking strategies:

• helped students generate more divergent and strong questions;

• develop a more exploratory approach to research;

• take on multiple perspectives;

• improve creative and critical thinking skills;

• allowed more freedom in idea exploration; and

• enabled looking at problems from different viewpoints.

The core of all student learning is in asking strong and resonant questions—this study demonstrates that the inclusion of design thinking practices in an undergraduate learning community may foster the skills required to do this critical work.

References

Dorland, A. (2022). That’s a Good Question: Using Design Thinking to Foster Question Formulation Skill Development. Journal of Effective Teaching in Higher Education, 5(1) https://doi.org/10.36021/jethe.v5i1.115