A collaborative School and LTEC 'design thinking‘ approach to support staff and students in re-imagining learning

The University‘s re-imagining learning project is framed within a 5-stage 'design thinking‘ methodology that is people-centred and ensures our courses are designed around learner needs. Taking forward the University‘s original design thinking initiative (2021-22) academic staff within the School of Life Sciences, Pharmacy and Chemistry prototyped this methodology to open new thinking into how the first-year bioscience curriculum could be re-imagined and to address long-standing concerns about impersonalised teaching and progression. This successively developed into a collaboration with colleagues from the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Centre (LTEC) that engaged academics and students as co-creators in a year-long, empathetic journey founded upon empathising, defining, ideating, prototyping, and testing new ideas. Such a 'design thinking‘ methodology trialled in collaboration with LTEC lays down the potential to scale up such 'future learning‘ approaches across the university. This presentation will outline the steps taken, the outcomes and lessons learned in developing this approach.