Design Thinking for Sustainability Outputs
Output 5
Good practices on the deployment of design thinking for sustainability education stemming from evaluation activities
A set of good practice recommendations will be developed for helping educators integrate the proposed learning intervention for sustainability education. The recommendations will be informed by evaluation activities of the DT4S tools that will be organized with the participation of students. Evaluation activities will geneate direct field feedback on experiences in relation to the deployment of the tools.
Output 4
Instructional process support
DT4S aims to build instructor capacity to enrich the educational practices through the proposed learning intervention towards the development of sustainability skills based on design thinking principles, active learning, and gamified approaches. The output aims to support educators in bringing design thinking into the classroom. It will demonstrate to instructors how design thinking empowers children by building their confidence that they can change the world. The output will help instructors understand the stages of design thinking related to empathyzing, ideating, prototyping, and validating of solutions.
Output 3
Sustainability education activities for deployment through the DT4S platform
This output refers to the development of specific learning challenges that foster the development of sustainability skills among secondary education students aged 12-16 by deploying design thinking principles. The challenges will be designed as good practice actrivities that will be integrated into the proposed educational platform described in O2. Learners will be able to execute the challenges in teams by using the platform as a means for enhancing collaboration and interaction in broader classroom activities related to sustainability. The activities will promote the development of sustainability skills as these will be defined in O1. Examples of skills to be addressed include awareness on sustainability challenges faced globally, basic knowledge in schools subjects that touch the issue of sustainability (for example physics and economy principles), analytical and critical thinking, ability to empathize, to communicate, to collaborate in diverse teams, to research information, to think enterpreneurially, to work within constraints, to design for users, to evaluate solutions in terms of validity, and more.
All the activities are available on DT4S Platform. You need to register with a teacher profile in order to see them.
Output 2
A digital learning platform for building sustainability skills through design thinking principles
A digital learning service will be designed and implemented for promoting the development of sustainability skills through design thinking principles, active learning and gamification elements. The platform will be meant to be deployed as a complementary learning tool that enriches engineering education practices. It is not meant to replace existing curricula, but rather to be deployed alongside existing approaches in the context of wider, blended learning. The platform will promote active student engagement in learning through gamification elements.
Output 1
An active methodological learning framework for building sustainability skills through design thinking
This output constitutes the theoretical framework of the DT4S project. It aims to establish a map of stakeholders that stand to gain from the enhancement of secondary education in the area of sustainability, analyze the current situation in secondary education in terms of building sustainability skills, analyze sustainability skills desirable for secondary education students, review past work in the area of sustainability education through digital resources, perform a needs analysis of direct stakeholders, namely students and educators, introduce the DT4S active methodological framework that is based on design thinking and aims to build sustainability skills. The framework will apply the design thinking principles of empathy, ideation, prototype design, and evaluation ecouraging students to come up with innovative ideas towards introducing sustainable practices for society and industry. Furthermore, the proposed educational framework will apply game-based learning, which is an approach that contributes significantly to motivation and engagement of students.
