Abstract:

Alongside supporting and developing students' English language skills, Zayed University’s Academic Bridge Program aims to develop students' academic skills, increase their ability to use and incorporate technology in their learning and widen their general knowledge base. To this end, the program has a ‘project’ component which aims to enhance students’ general academic skills such as critical thinking, creative problem solving and collaboration.

This presentation will showcase how the presenter has adapted Stanford d. school’s ‘design thinking’ framework to a real-life project she got her students involved in. To make a real impact in their world, students were asked to collaboratively tackle a real challenge the university was facing – how to increase the number of the volunteers for the Special Olympics MENA Games 2018 for which Zayed University was a key contributor of volunteers.

In this talk, the speaker intends to:
• describe the overall framework of the design thinking process
• present the specific steps students took in each of the stages – empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping and testing
• summarize the learning points both from the students’ and her own point of view

Keywords:

Design thinking in the language classroom, teaching generic skills, 21st century skills, real life tasks.