One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries
– A. A. Milne
As a fourth year Commerce & Economics BCOM student at the brink of graduation, learning something original and completely out of the box was the last thing I expected from my final year. Of course, every BCOM course offers new material and diverse learning objectives; yet, only a select few target the core thinking process behind the learning experience.
I had recently joined the Sauder d-studio team in June of this year, not knowing the scope of tools and applications that are characteristic of design thinking. As I became familiar with this new pedagogy, which took a considerable amount of effort to understand, the next step was to determine where these applications would fit in real world learning. I found that certain COMM courses could make good use of design thinking while others proved to be a bit more challenging.
Take Operations and Logistics Management (COMM 399) as an example. The main learning objective of this course is to understand the processes that are used to produce and deliver goods and services to end-users. We were given managerial tools to analyze and continuously improve on business processes; many of which were visually oriented and would be difficult to understand without flow-charts, maps and other diagrams. At the core, COMM 399 and design-thinking share several tools, non-linear thinking being one of them, but it is the channel by which one delivers these tools that makes them different. The d-studio physical space, being built in Henry Angus, would hence be a great way of illustrating certain COMM 399 material and would facilitate student learning by fostering creativity and innovation in solution formation.
On the other hand, Development Economics II (ECON 442) proved to be a greater challenge in terms of extracting design-thinking principles. This is commonplace when it comes to university level economics, as students are exposed to a variety of models and theories, expected to use analytical thinking to reach solutions. Deviation from the norm yields falsehoods, which is why linear thinking is preferred. Nonetheless, design-thinking may play a greater role when creating (or building off) new theories and models. One of the requirements of ECON 442 was a group research paper on a specific topic in economic development. When trying to determine the thesis of our report, it was difficult to synthesize ideas and reach a common understanding. After a mediocre forty-minute discussion, we introduced concepts of idea generation, i.e. a well-defined question, visual aids, quantity before quality and a non-judgmental approach. It took a mere eight minutes to complete the outline and set the tone for the rest of our report.
As A.A. Milne puts it in the beginning of this post, being disorderly and departing from what is expected has its payoffs (by the way, A.A. Milne is author of Winnie the Pooh). More reflections from a BCOM student in our next session.
Thank you for reflecting on how design thinking can find its way into a variety of undergraduate Commerce courses. The ultimate success will be when every Sauder student has an array of thinking methodologies at their finger-tips and they easily move between critical and creative thinking — using good judgement as to when to be “disorderly” like Pooh and when order is required.
Indeed! One primary objective isn’t to depart from what’s expected but to know WHEN to depart. Like with economics, finance, accounting, etc. These type of courses would be unteachable without a formal model.
In terms of creating new models, I wonder, how effective design thinking would be and whether undergraduate students could have a chance to experience this. Might be more applicable to higher level education, such as the MBA.