Becoming a design thinker: assessing the learning process of students in a secondary level design thinking course

Design thinking is a collaborative problem solving and human-centric approach that fosters innovation by elevating participants’ creative thinking abilities. Design thinking techniques and practices have been implemented into different curricula in secondary and post-secondary education to address the need for new skills to be learned for the twenty-first century. However, little work has been conducted to clarify how to evaluate the students’ design thinking skills gained in these courses. This study reports on a successful evaluation of an interaction design thinking curriculum in secondary level education. Several types of data sources, including participant observation, open-ended questions and document analysis were employed to gather extensive data on students’ skills gained during the course. The results of the study inform design thinking researchers about how to evaluate design thinking skills of students in a secondary level design thinking course