A design thinking workshop to teach medical students curriculum development skills in a student-as-teacher course

Abstract

Background: Design thinking is a human-centered, systematic method for problem-solving. To address gaps in curricula for design thinking and curriculum development for medical students, we created a Design Thinking Workshop in an existing students-as-teachers course. Our intervention aimed to teach learners two things: 1) how to apply design thinking to creatively problem solve; and 2) how to utilize design thinking as a curriculum design framework. The central aim of this innovation was to support this outcome: for learners to design curricula that meets an identified need of their learners during the students-as-teachers course. Methods: This workshop introduced the framework of design thinking and how to use design thinking tools to create curricula. Seventeen students participated and created educational projects using a design thinking approach. We evaluated the workshop using a pre/post student survey and structured rating of projects. Results: After completing the curriculum, students were more confident in identifying gaps in existing curricula and designing educational projects. After the workshop, the student curriculum projects were more likely to address a specific curricular need when compared with the student projects created during the previous year. Discussion: We found that participating in the workshop increased students’ confidence in each step of curriculum development and that, after completing the workshop, more students could design high quality educational projects by addressing a specific learner need. Despite the intervention, many students’ projects were still not “high quality”, and based on this team’s experience, more faculty support as well as near-peer mentorship can increase the quality of projects.