Findings | Questions

As I believe that the opinions of the group have more validity then on the person, at the end of the class, I have the students vote for their three favorite projects.   I was not involved in the voting and only counted the votes.   At the end of the class, the top three project based on peer votes was announced.

Some of my observations from this multidisciplinary class experience are:

• STEM students did extremely well and had the highest number of votes base on the peer votes.
• The students that had the highest creative confidence or the most dramatic increase in creative confidence in creative confidence had the highest number of votes.
• The students with a decrease in creative confidence had the lowest number of votes.
• The students with a decrease in the creative confidence also had the most technical issues and did not bring their own laptop to class.  This might have diminished their ability to get into "flow" and hindered their project's quality. 
• The students that followed the class design thinking process had higher votes.
• The student that deviated from the design thinking process had the lowest votes.
• The total amount of hours spent on the project did not necessarily translate to a better project.
• Some of the students that I thought at the beginning of the class would do the worst on the project surprisingly created the best final project. 
• Some of the students that I thought would do the best at the beginning of the class surprisingly did not full their potential 
• Students that to the advantage of design thinking process had an extreme advantage over the student that did not.  
• Students that were able to get into a state of "flow" not only were more engage when working on their project, but "flow" also had more creative and entertaining project.   The state of flow helps them work harder and smarter. 
• Throughout the class, we had many computer issues which were disruptive and had some negative impact on the students.   I had the students take a survey of their experience so we can use this data to help make a more meaningful conclusion. 
• Our classroom had major computer issues throughout the term.  It got so bad that at least half of the students brought their own laptop eventually.   Overall,  the students that brought their own laptop had more votes.  What conclusion can we draw from this?

Some of the question raised from  this class experience are:

• How much of an impact does implement design thinking into the learning affect the student?
• Why does certain student excel so well in design thinking classes?
• How can we further develop design thinking so be can help students develop creative confidence?
• What are some of the issues that we need to address to help develop better controls for our research?
• How much does technology issues hinder or help student performance?
• Can a simple design thinking class have trans formative effect on students?
• How can we further research in this area and to learn more and further improve the learning environment?
• Our class suffered computer and software issues throughout the term this had a negative impact on students productity.  What can we do in the future to mitigate this issue? 
• Did the student's that brought their own laptop do better because they had more flow and less disruption?   Did they do better because they were more resourceful?