Design Thinking as a strategy to inculcate Problem-based Learning (PBL) in undergraduate education across South Asian Universities

Design Thinking as a strategy to inculcate Problem-based Learning (PBL) in undergraduate education across South Asian Universities

Acharya, Shakuntala (Indian Institute of Science)
Bhatt, Apoorv Naresh (Indian Institute of Science)
Chakrabarti, Amaresh (Indian Institute of Science)
Delhi, Venkata Sk (Indian Institute of Science)
Diehl, J.C. (TU Delft Design for Sustainability)
Mota, Nelson (TU Delft Space & Type)
Jurelionis, Andrius (Kaunas University of Technology)
Subra, Riina (Aalto University)

2021

The Bologna declaration states that, “successful learning and studying in higher education should involve students in deep learning”. However, a survey of faculty across institutes in Nepal and Bhutan highlights that the undergraduate students in engineering and management lack skills needed to be industry-ready.
They face difficulty in getting employed after graduation and if placed, then struggle during their employment due to insufficient practical experience, lack of good communication skills and unawareness of larger socio-economic contexts. The Erasmus+ funded project, “Strengthening Problem-based learning in South Asian Universities”(PBL South Asia) is an endeavour to address these pressing concerns in education quality, employability and overall sustainable development of the region and to imbibe deep learning capabilities. Therefore, as an empirical study to clarify and in turn, inculcate PBL in South Asian undergraduate education, the young faculty of the inexperienced institutes from Nepal and Bhutan, alongside the students from the experienced institutes from India and Europe, were mentored by faculty and researchers from the latter to undertake multidisciplinary case studies.
The strategy of ‘Design Thinking’ was employed to methodologically guide the cases and keep it consistently problem-based, i.e., the learning is driven by the
problem with no one correct solution. Results showed that the participants reflected improvement in problem-solving skills and increased motivation, apart from enhanced collaboration and improved communication ability. Based on these findings, further development of curricula to imbibe PBL in its existing courses and guidelines to train the trainers for implementation of the same, is currently in progress.

University Education
South Asia
PBL
Design Thinking
Design Pedagogy
Problem-based Learning

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:807d484a-d5ba-4be5-97b6-e3fcf5a6c452

8th International Conference on Research into Design, ICoRD 2021, 2021-01-07 → 2021-01-10, Mumbai (remote), Virtual, Online, India

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abstract

© 2021 Shakuntala Acharya, Apoorv Naresh Bhatt, Amaresh Chakrabarti, Venkata Sk Delhi, J.C. Diehl, Nelson Mota, Andrius Jurelionis, Riina Subra