Using Design Thinking to Redesign Student Learning Experience: the case of higher education

The health crisis in 2020 resulted in accelerated digitalization and technological innovation in higher education. However, digital technologies and innovation pose challenges and issues in pedagogy (Caputo et al., 2022). This chapter explains how to (re)design student learning experiences addressing pedagogical issues and challenges experienced by students using digital innovation. In response, we adopted design thinking allowing for a deeper understanding not just of students’ needs but also their thoughts, feelings, and overall experience. Design thinking is a user-centred problem-solving method. It starts with empathizing with users, followed by identifying the real problems, generating ideas, prototyping, and testing solutions. The design thinking method allowed engagement with students in the innovation process as the main users. Primary data were collected using interviews with students over two main waves of data collection during the health crisis in 2020 and 2021 and the post-pandemic period in 2022–2023. In total, more than 300 students from seven different programmes were engaged. For data analysis, we used thematic analysis and reflection. In analysing, we adopted a sociotechnical perspective and the nature of experience. Our findings illustrate design principles that instructors need to keep in mind while (re)designing distance (online) education to enhance the student learning experience. We discuss the practical implications of the study and how the findings can help instructors and higher education managers in innovating higher education. As digital technologies and innovation are becoming critical for teaching and learning in higher education, the findings of this study can be generalized to the post-pandemic period.