Education 550

An Interdisciplinary Approach to Design Thinking in the

Humanities and Fine Arts
By Autumn, Julie, and Sharon

Design Thinking
Based on our understanding and research on Design Thinking, it is a creative process
that involves experimentation and hands-on exploration. Learners empathize to identify a
need and then follow a design process to find solutions to real-world problems by
researching, collaborating, creating, testing, and explaining their ideas.

Design Thinking
Characteristics of Design Thinking
Finding simplicity in complexity
Beauty as well as functionality
Improving quality of experience
Creating elegant solutions
Robots, 2005

Serving the needs of people

Tim Brown presents a great discussion on Design Thinking in this 2009 TED
Talk entitled Designers: Think Big!

Learning Experience - Overview

A Grade 3 study on Ukraine through interdisciplinary studies in the humanities
and fine arts areas using the Design Thinking process
Background knowledge: unique identities, different cultural practices,
what makes us feel welcome and comfortable
Design Thinking Task

Empathize with a new student from a different country

Define how to make a potential new student from another country to feel welcome
Ideate, research and brainstorm aspects of Ukrainian culture and design a method to
ensure a new student from the Ukraine may feel welcome in our classroom
Prototype and create your idea (song, dance, play, art)
Test the design by presenting to a member of the Ukrainian Canadian Club

Learning Experience - Overview (Cont.)

Assessment: Throughout this
experience teachers will perform
anecdotal assessments on student
communication and collaboration. A
co-created rubric will also be
designed with students that considers
the research, collaboration, use of
formative feedback, and presentation
of empathetic design ideas.

Rationale

We chose to base our Humanities and Fine Arts Design Thinking learning
experience on the welcoming of a new classroom student from the
Ukraine because it promotes a sense of diversity in the classroom by
discussing identity, as well as creating an opportunity to delve into
different communities in the world. This project also meets a number of
curricular outcomes in Social Studies and Language Arts, while also
including prominent opportunities for the involvement of the Arts,
Kinesiology, Science, and Math. Furthermore, we believe that by providing
our students with a real life scenario, they will be more engaged with the
interdisciplinarity of the project and will use their empathy to help the
new student. The hands-on, creative approach of this project will
encourage inquiry-based learning among the students that will push them
to experiment with and experience different ideas. It will also help them to
collaborate with others and listen to peoples ideas to build up their own.

Visual Representation of Curriculum Connections

1. Empathize
Students will be introduced to the concept of what
its like to be away from your home, family, and
culture.
By reading the two stories, The Name Jar by
Yangsook Choi and My Name is Sangoel by Karen
Lynn Williams, we hope to introduce our students to
the concept of being new in a foreign country and
the possibility of not having people understand your
background or culture.
Students can have a class discussion surrounding
these stories on their thoughts and what it must
feel like to be in the protagonists different
situations.

2. Define
How can we show the new student from Ukraine that they are welcome in
our classroom?
Students will empathize with this scenario and
work to find a solution on how to make
someone new feel welcome, safe and
comfortable
Guiding questions will be addressed among the
students in various discussions, such as:
How can they develop an appreciation
for their culture and include their ideas
in the classroom?
How can they share aspects of their
own culture with the new student?

3. Ideate
Develop an inquiry into Ukrainian culture. Students will
work in small groups to brainstorm different
aspects of Ukrainian culture within the arts and
humanities.
Students will do some preliminary research into
Ukrainian cultural aspects to gain ideas and knowledge
for the hands-on activities that they will be
experimenting with and exploring in this task
Students will brainstorm and design a proposal for
how to make a new student feel welcome in the
classroom.
Some potential ideas that students may propose: act
out Ukrainian folktales; create Ukrainian art, such as
Pysanka; having a welcome party with Ukrainian food
and music

4.
Prototype
In this stage, our students will bring to life
their design ideas.

Various materials will be provided by the

teacher, upon request, for construction
of student prototypes
Students will identify the various
strengths and weaknesses of their
prototypes and collaborate as a small
group during the creative process
Students will record their process
through video to explain why they think
their design will make a new student feel
welcome.

5. Test
After the construction of student
prototypes, the class will invite a
member of the Ukrainian Canadian
Club to observe a presentation of
their prototypes
Constructive feedback will be given
by the invited expert, peers, and
teacher in order for our students
to refine their ideas in their efforts
to make the classroom a welcoming
environment for a new student
from the Ukraine

Assessment
Empathize
(Anecdotal notes and
observation)

Define
(Co-create a rubric)

Ideate
(Anecdotal notes,
observation, and teacherstudent conversation)

Prototype
(Self reflection and
formative feedback)

Test
(Self-assessment, formative
feedback, and summative
assessment)

Teacher will make

anecdotal notes about
how students are able
to demonstrate
empathy in regards to
the things that make
them feel
comfortable and what
a new immigrant
student may need to
feel comfortable. The
teacher will also make
note of
communication and
collaboration skills
among the students
during the various
group discussions.

Students will work with

the teacher to cocreate a rubric for
how they will be
assessed throughout
the Ukrainian project.
Various assessment
categories in the
potential rubric may
include collaboration,
creativity, reflection,
presentation,
rationalization,
incorporation of
authentic Ukrainian
culture, and effective
use of teacher and
expert feedback in the
final product.

At this stage, the teacher

will continue to provide
the students with direct
formative feedback
through direct
conversations with them,
observation of their
progress, and taking
anecdotal notes. Are
students coming up with
creative ideas? Are they
completing effective
research and
understanding the
Ukrainian culture? Are
they gaining an
appreciation for the task
and creating valid
solutions?

During this stage, students

will record their work in
order to reflect on their
process and ideas and
redefine their prototypes
and possibilities. Students
will also record the
explanations of their
process and purpose of
their product. Why would
it potentially solve the
scenario presented to
them? The teacher will
continue to provide direct
feedback to students on
their prototypes and
processes.

After presenting and sharing both

their prototype and videos with the
class, students will perform a selfassessment of their work using the
co-created rubric by assigning
themselves a mark and feedback.
The teacher will also go through the
rubric and give them direct
formative feedback. Students will
use the feedback from themselves,
the teacher, and the expert and
integrate it into their final
presentation as they refine their
ideas and prototypes into a final
product. At this final stage, the
teacher will provide them with
summative assessment using the
rubric.

Reflection
This project has helped us to see how
design thinking could work in an early
childhood school setting through a
humanities and fine arts lens. By
analyzing this interdisciplinary approach
to the curriculum, we were able to
integrate different areas of interest
for our students to create a diverse
learning experience.

References
Brown, Tim. [2009]. Designers: Think big!. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_brown_urges_designers_to_think_big?
language=en#t-9198
Celebration Generation. (2016). Easy pysanky how-to. Retrieved from http://www.celebrationgeneration.com/BlogPics/Pysanky7.jpg
Creativity at Work. (2015). Design thinking as a strategy for innovation. Retrieved from http://www.creativityatwork.com/design-thinkingstrategy-for-innovation/
LSN Tutorials. (2014). Robots see the need fill the need. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFVlyKRVgwg
Lviv Today. (2009). Obligatory Ukraine. Retrieved from http://www.lvivtoday.com.ua/lviv-opinion/3445
Mark Wolfe Design. (2013). Design thinking ideo. Retrieved from http://markwolfedesign.com/2013/01/design-thinking-what-is-that/design-thinkingideo/
Russia Ukraine Travel. (2015). Ukrainian embroidery. Retrieved from : http://www.russia-ukraine-travel.com/russian-culture.html
Ukraine Postal Service. (n.d.). Ukrainian culture and traditions. Retrieved from http://ukrainepostalexpress.com/the-ukraine/ukrainian-cultureand-traditions/
Ukraine Website. (n.d.).. Famous Ukrainian style art Pysanka. Retrieved from http://orpheusandlyra.tripod.com/id25.html