Introducing Design-Led Approaches to Business Students in Project-based Learning

Abstract

At The Ohio State University, 35 business students in the Honors Cohort Program in the Fisher College of Business are tasked each year to explore and develop community impact projects that are defined by the ambiguous prompt, "to make an impact". The students are randomly assigned to one of five teams and the teams can pick any societal area in which to make an impact. In addition, the teams are free to choose how they define "impact" and how they approach their service design/impact project. This is a form of project-based learning (PBL) because it is an active student-centered form of instruction, characterized by the students' autonomy, constructive investigations, goal-setting, collaboration, communication and reflection within real-world practices (Kokotsaki, Menzies, & Wiggins, 2016).

This case study introduced two new design-led approaches to the impact project: design-thinking, and co-design. Many studies have examined the effects of design-led approaches on service design project outcomes (Sleeswijk Visser, Stappers, Van der Lugt, & Sanders, 2005; Steen, Manschot, De Koning, 2011; Liedtka, 2011). The benefits of using a design-led approach inspired the goal of this case study: to introduce and expose components of both design-thinking and co-design to business students since these approaches are not generally included in the standard business curriculum.

The five teams of seven students were exposed to the two design-led approaches through four short workshops called 'microbursts' over the course of the Autumn 2021 semester during their seminar class. The students took a survey on the approaches before the first workshop (pre-survey) and the second after (post-survey) all the workshops were completed to assess their knowledge of the three approaches (i.e., business, design-thinking and co-design), benchmark their baseline feelings toward ambiguity, and to generate associations with the term 'community impact'. The post-survey also included questions to gather open-ended feedback on the four workshops, including the workshops' influence on their impact projects.

This case study demonstrates how design-led approaches can facilitate project-based learning and collaboration and can contribute to addressing community impact challenges. A common takeaway across each workshop was how important it is to put the stakeholders needs' first and consider how decisions will impact the end-user. This case study cultivated interdisciplinary thinking through design-led approaches that exemplify user-centeredness, ability to visualize, and appreciation for ambiguity.