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Increasing Student Innovation by Immersing Students in an Intensive Design Thinking Workshop First Author Affiliation Country Email Address

Abstract: Innovation is the currency of modern industry. Students need to possess an understanding of, and abilities directly related to innovation, where they possess the aptitude and capacity to generate, develop, and implement new and meaningful ideas. The purpose of this paper is to present how we are making this happen at our university. The paper outlines our curriculum decisions and development, associated instructional activities, and assessment and evaluation methods. The curriculum we have developed, has been culled from several resources: our personal research in creativity, collaboration with the Stanford d.School and IDEO, and several other educational and industry institutions. Our findings thus far according to the Torrance Creativity Test, and our own innovation student assessment survey suggests students who participate in collaborative cross-discipline innovation focused training, will increase in innovative understanding, aptitude and skill set. We believe the findings from our study thus far have broad implications for industry, higher education, and the K-12 environment.

Introduction One of the goals of our college of technology and engineering is: increase student innovation. Despite the belief and desire to accomplish this goal, our college (like many other higher education, K-12, and industry institutions) has struggled at developing a method for making this happen. Consequently the college assembled a team of professors, and gave them the task to identify methods and ideas of how innovation might be more effectively taught and encouraged within the college. The intensive design thinking workshop, later titled, “The Innovation Boot Camp” was a product of their research and collaboration.

The Innovation Boot Camp is an intensive hands-on, collaborative experiential learning workshop. Its focus is to educate students on the principles of innovation by providing them several real-world problems they are to solve. The structure of the initial Innovation Boot Camp was a two-day experience, blending students and faculty from seven different programs/departments (Technology Engineering Education, Manufacturing Engineering, Industrial Design, Construction Management, Facility Management, Information Technology, and Animation) in the school of technology. The primary instructional techniques and curriculum was based on “design thinking.” We define design thinking as being a method of innovation that is User Centered, has a tradition of Prototyping, and a Trust in the Process of: 1) Seeking inspiration for problem finding through the activities of Look, Do, and Ask; 2) Broad divergent ideation; 3) Implementation in the form of prototyping; and 4) Public Presentation using the activities of Show, Tell, and Act.

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Wright, G., & Skaggs, P., & Fry, R., & Howell, B., & West, R. (2010, June), Increasing Student Innovation By Immersing Students In An Intensive Designing Thinking Workshop Paper presented at 2010 Annual Conference & Exposition, Louisville, Kentucky. 10.18260/1-2--16927