Abstract
Objective. To describe and evaluate how a design thinking approach aided the creation of the 2021 American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) Teachers’ Seminar.
Methods. The design thinking framework (ie, inspiration, ideation, and implementation) was used to structure the seminar development process from July 2020 to July 2021. Nine committee members engaged in a persona activity (ie, inspiration), a brainstorming activity (ie, ideation), and a prototyping activity (ie, implementation) to create a user-centered learning experience. Twenty-five small group facilitators were then recruited to create and deliver breakout session content. After the seminar, the team was invited to debrief their experience in a focus group and an electronic survey to evaluate the perceived impact of using design thinking in the planning process.
Results. Twenty-one (62%) of the 34 committee members and small group facilitators attended the focus group, and 28 (82%) completed the electronic survey. Most agreed that design thinking was a useful approach to support the Teachers’ Seminar, and they were generally positive about the experience. There was a significant increase in self-reported creative self-efficacy for coming up with novel ideas, ability to solve problems, and helping expand others’ ideas. Team members identified positive attributes about the seminar and planning process as well as areas for improvement. Team members also acknowledged challenges and potential solutions for professional organizations and program developers to consider when creating user-centered experiences.
Conclusion. Design thinking can be a useful framework for seminar planning and implementation to create engaging, meaningful, and valuable educator development experiences.
INTRODUCTION
Reflect on your past experiences attending educator development and continuing education sessions. Can you identify when you last participated in a seminar that was highly engaging, led to a meaningful change in your behaviors, or one that you would describe as a valuable use of time? It may be unsurprising that few educator experiences meet these criteria. As educators, we often focus on creating valuable learning experiences for our students; however, there may be less attention to our own experiences for learning.1-4 Recent challenges with COVID-19 have required pivoting to virtual education, a landscape that may be unfamiliar to some and include barriers not previously encountered.5-7
Based on this observation, we propose that educator training sessions could benefit from a more user-centered approach. Using a process (eg, design thinking) can help trainers connect with their anticipated audience, learn about their needs, generate a host of potential options to pilot, prototype various solutions, and implement an option with continuous feedback systems.8,9 More specifically, design thinking is a framework for promoting creative problem-solving through iterative divergent and convergent practices that help generate a large number of innovative ideas, which are then narrowed to the optimal solution through prototyping and testing.10,11 A simplified version of this process often includes three stages: inspiration (ie, empathy building), ideation (ie, solution generation), and implementation (ie, piloting).10-12 Design thinking has been used frequently in the health professions and health professions education to spark innovation.13-15 It is now suggested as a plausible framework for training and development processes, also known as learning experience design (LXD or LED).16,17
The goal of this research was to evaluate how design thinking was used as the framework to guide the creation of the 2021 American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) Teachers’ Seminar. The experience, typically held the day prior to the AACP Annual Meeting in July, provides continuing education hours and includes a diverse audience of learners and pharmacy educators from biomedical sciences, clinical sciences, experiential education, and social and administrative sciences. Additionally, learners selected for the Walmart Scholars program and their faculty mentors have historically been invited to learn with one another about relevant teaching strategies.
METHODS
Planning for the 2021 AACP Teachers’ Seminar began immediately after the 2020 AACP Annual Meeting and was facilitated by the chair of the Council of Faculties. This chair (AP) then recruited a team (the Teachers’ Seminar Planning Committee) to assist in the design process and implementation. To ensure diversity of perspective, the 2021 committee included nine faculty members ranging in age, gender, and racial/ethnic identities from early to advanced career and broad areas of educational practice. Prior to convening the group, the chair decided design thinking could be a helpful strategy for creating the seminar based on previous experiences using the framework in other settings. A researcher familiar with design thinking was recruited to facilitate the application to the seminar. A timeline of the planning and research process is provided in the supplemental appendix for clarity. Artifacts from the various steps in the design process were recorded to document the evolution of seminar development and provided to illustrate how this approach could be used to design learning experiences.
The first committee meeting occurred in late July 2020 and began with the first step in the design thinking process, “inspiration.” At this session, committee members created personas for potential participants at the seminar. The persona activity is a common design strategy in which groups generate profiles of possible users (eg, seminar attendees) to describe how the needs and challenges of users may differ based on their roles and experiences.18 These profiles, available in Figure 1, were created in Microsoft PowerPoint and included a fourth-year student pharmacist, a pharmacy practice resident, an early career pharmacy practice faculty member, a midcareer biomedical sciences faculty member, an advanced career administrative faculty member, and a preceptor. The empathy activity was used to define the challenge, what the seminar would address, and how it would be most useful to each attendee.
Sample Persona Profiles Created by the Teachers’ Seminar Planning Committee During the First Meeting of the Design Process (August 2020) to Empathize With Potential Attendees
After the first meeting, committee members engaged in the next phase of design thinking (“ideation”) by individually generating ideas for the possible theme and/or focus of the seminar through a Qualtrics (Qualtrics International Inc) electronic survey. All participants completed a brief creativity exercise to prime their thinking (ie, list as many possible uses for a paperclip in one minute) and then created a list of possible topics/content (eg, learning sciences, evidence-based education) for the seminar as well as ideas for the format (eg, mini-sessions, roundtables, tracks).19 All ideas (92 for content and 51 for format) were aggregated into a list distributed before the next meeting and included in the supplemental appendix for reference. The frequency of ideas was tabulated to illustrate the most common; however, no ideas were excluded for completeness and breadth.
The meetings in August 2020 focused on evaluating the proposed ideas compared to previous seminars and how well the idea would accomplish the needs of attendees. The committee voted on their top three ideas, which were to be prototyped and distributed for feedback. During the September 2020 meeting, committee members engaged in the next phase of design thinking (“implementation”) by working in small teams to design the three prototypes based on the most favored topics. The committee chair created a video that described the prototypes and designed an electronic survey including the video and questions about which seminar prototype would be preferred. The survey was distributed through the AACP Connect forum (https://connect.aacp.org) and emailed to 2020 AACP Teachers’ Seminar participants. The survey was available for two weeks in September 2020, and results were aggregated for committee review (provided in the supplemental appendix for reference); members then decided the seminar focus based on the feedback.
In October 2020, the seminar structure and objectives were finalized by the committee and requests for facilitators were solicited. Seminar facilitators (n=25) were recruited to create content and discussion prompts for the anticipated small group sessions that would allow participants to self-select their areas of interest and personalize their experience. In addition, large group facilitators (n=5; the research team) were convened based on their expertise in design thinking and the learning sciences. The large group facilitators were responsible for refining the structure of the seminar as well as developing and delivering the workshop content in July 2021. Facilitators met with their respective groups frequently from January to May 2021. Finally, the seminar was delivered in two four-hour sessions in July 2021 via Zoom (Zoom Video Communications Inc) to over 300 participants.
To solicit feedback about the design process, the nine planning committee members and 25 small group facilitators received an invitation to debrief their experience in one of two focus groups in August 2021. Focus groups were conducted through Zoom and started with an electronic survey followed by a 45-minute discussion about successes, their perceptions about design thinking, and areas for improvement with future seminars. Those unable to attend the focus group were sent the same electronic survey in Qualtrics to provide their feedback. The survey included questions about demographic information, their facilitation experience, perceptions about the quality of the seminar, and a retrospective evaluation of their creative self-efficacy. The creative self-efficacy assessment was derived from previously published work and requested participants to rate their beliefs about their creative potential before and after assisting with the seminar using a four-point Likert scale from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.”20-22
Data from the survey were summarized using descriptive statistics, and differences in creative self-efficacy were compared using a Wilcoxon signed rank test with a significance level set at 0.05.23 Focus groups were transcribed using the Zoom transcription feature, then reviewed and revised by the research team for accuracy. All participants were deidentified in the transcription process. Qualitative analysis used a single-coder inductive coding process where the lead researcher reviewed transcripts, identified pertinent codes, and then reanalyzed transcripts using the revised codes.24,25 The coding and thematic analysis was then confirmed by a second team member for accuracy. All discrepancies were reviewed by the two team members and resolved for complete agreement.25 This study was approved by the institutional review board at the University of North Carolina.
RESULTS
Twenty-one (62% response rate) of the 34 committee members and small group facilitators attended the focus group, and 28 (82% response rate) completed the electronic survey. There were 17 states from the United States represented among the committee and facilitator team. All members (100%) had a doctorate, five (18%) had a master’s degree, and 21 (75%) reported completing a residency and/or fellowship. On average, team members had attended approximately five AACP Teachers’ Seminars previously with a range from zero (ie, this was their first time) to 15. Additional demographic information about their institutional and teaching roles is provided in Table 1.
Summary of Demographic Information for the 2021 AACP Teachers’ Seminar Planning Committee and Small Group Facilitators (N=28)
Regarding design thinking, most team members (n=16, 57%) indicated they had heard about it but had not practiced it. As seen in Table 2, most also agreed or strongly agreed that design thinking was a useful approach to support the Teachers’ Seminar (n=27, 96%) and that the seminar was designed with seminar attendees in mind (n=27, 96%), to address their needs (n=28, 100%), and to engage those who attended (n=27, 96%). In addition, most team members (n=24, 86%) agreed or strongly agreed that the activities used in the seminar (these were also design thinking strategies) were impactful.
Summary of the 2021 AACP Teachers’ Seminar Planning Committee and Small Group Facilitators’ Perceptions About the Teachers’ Seminar, Design Thinking, and Creativity (N=28)
When asked explicitly about how design thinking impacted the planning process, team members were generally positive about the experience; one indicated it was “very effective,” another said it was “a fantastic idea [that was] good for growth of the academy,” and another mentioned it was “an interesting approach to designing a workshop and [they would] be curious how this could be built upon in the future.” Moreover, one stated, “I was unfamiliar with design thinking, and I learned a lot during the planning period. It was extremely helpful to see this process and the deliverable it produced—a great Seminar.” There were several team members who acknowledged mixed feelings, as one had a “lukewarm” response and another indicated challenges in the process, such that “a design approach needs a lot of time and engagement, and it is just hard to do.”
Responses to the creative self-efficacy assessment had a high internal consistency (Cronbach alpha=0.91), and many respondents agreed with statements related to their creative potential (Table 2). There was a statistically significant improvement (p<.05) in self-perceptions of creative ability for three of the six statements before and after participation in the Teachers’ Seminar design. There was no difference in perceptions of generating new ideas, having a lot of good ideas, or a good imagination.
There was a positive perception of the 2021 Teachers’ Seminar overall. All team members (n=28, 100%) rated it as better than any other educator development workshops attended. More specifically, three (11%) rated it as the best, 16 (57%) rated it as much better, and nine (32%) rated it as slightly better. When asked what was particularly impactful, there were many highlights, outlined in Table 3. For example, team members enjoyed the diversity of options, opportunities to interact, and the integration of active learning activities throughout. In addition, team members identified several areas for improvement (Table 3).
Themes and Sample Quotations From the Focus Groups With AACP Teachers’ Seminar Planning Committee and Small Group Facilitators
From a planning and facilitation perspective, team members expressed gratitude for having clear expectations, the opportunity to collaborate with others, and group leaders who communicated frequently (Table 3). In general, team members communicated few difficulties during their experience (Table 3). Some suggested challenges monitoring or using the chat effectively while facilitating discussion, and others indicated there were unclear instructions about whom to submit materials to, which caused some delays.
Team members did identify several challenges that should be addressed in future seminars, especially by planning committees, facilitators, and AACP (Table 3). One of the most interesting was greater clarity on the purpose and audience of the AACP Teachers’ Seminar. In general, team members expressed varying perceptions about the AACP Teachers’ Seminar and its significance. One shared it was to support the academic pipeline, whereas another person shared they believed it was for remediation of educators after poor evaluations. Others indicated that the main purpose was for networking and sharing ideas, an opportunity for team building, and broad educator development experiences.
In response to these challenges, team members offered solutions throughout the conversation. Several noted that the seminar should be hybrid (ie, mix of face-to-face and virtual) or exclusively virtual and offered over multiple days that were several days prior to the AACP Annual Meeting rather than immediately before. Moreover, they requested that there be additional support for navigating the various technologies and resources during the seminar to avoid confusion. They also shared that longitudinal experiences or opportunities to connect throughout the year may have additional impacts. Individuals suggested team and group registration be encouraged to support a more layered learning approach for activities and to find ways to intentionally mix groups for enhanced diversity of perspective. They suggested that renaming (eg, to the Educator Workshop) or rebranding the seminar may be necessary, and “door hangers” could be useful to support a culture of privacy during virtual meetings.
DISCUSSION
Creating exceptional learning experiences for educators is complex and can benefit from creative problem-solving approaches such as design thinking.1,3,10 In this study, we explored how the design thinking framework (ie, inspiration, ideation, and implementation) supported planning committee members and facilitators in their design and implementation of the 2021 AACP Teachers’ Seminar. Team members reported several advantages and limitations to the approach; there was general agreement the process helped to create an engaging, meaningful, and valuable experience for seminar attendees.
A notable contribution of the design thinking framework was the systematic approach that moved the process forward while consistently focusing on the user (ie, seminar attendees). The earliest stage (inspiration) resulted in the creation of distinct personas to help team members understand attendee needs in a new way. That was aimed to inform the idea generation process (ideation), which resulted in over 90 content ideas and 50 format options. Individuals noted that the opportunity to brainstorm and generate new ideas greatly aided the process. Lastly, several prototypes (implementation) were tested with previous participants to guide the final selection for the seminar. Each step offered unique insights and created the space for productive divergent and convergent thinking that was attentive and honored team member perspectives.
In addition, there was evidence that using design thinking had a positive impact on perceptions about the resulting AACP Teachers’ Seminar. Attendees reported that the seminar was successfully designed to be engaging and address attendee needs while keeping them in mind. Of note, additional research is planned to fully describe the seminar’s impact on attendees. Team members shared that the approach was unique and helpful, even though many had not applied design thinking previously. There was also evidence to suggest that exposing individuals to the design thinking process may increase self-efficacy beliefs about creativity, which suggests a potential way to enhance creativity among health professions educators. Educators may benefit from unlocking their creative potential if they are offered strategies to make the process more accessible in their daily practice. In this research, there was an increase in several self-efficacy measures, which should be explored further to determine how and what led to specific selections and changes in beliefs.
This research also identified important considerations for professional organizations and others who create educator training and development. Team members identified numerous challenges to address, such as meeting the needs of diverse groups, shifting the culture of attending virtual meetings, and how changes in funding may impact engagement. All of these are concerns that have been expressed elsewhere due to COVID-19.5-7 Several applauded the reduced cost and online delivery, which made it more accessible for those who could not travel or have multiple competing priorities. The suggestions and ideas generated can guide those responsible for educator development to ensure the creation of sustainable, user-centered programs.
Although our research adds to the existing literature about educator training and development design, it should be interpreted in regard to several limitations. First, these data represent the opinions and experiences of a select group of individuals with little exposure to design thinking; therefore, the findings may not be consistent in other settings or applications with a different audience. In addition, self-selection bias may be prevalent, as individuals who supported the seminar are likely those highly engaged and motivated to advance pharmacy education as well as research about it. Finally, the evidence evaluating the impact of design thinking was limited to self-perceptions and self-assessment of changes rather than broader levels of evaluation, such as changes in knowledge, behaviors, and results.26
In addition, the research focused exclusively on the designers and facilitators of the learning experience rather than the impact of the participants. Additional longitudinal research is being conducted to explore the impact on participants, and the information was separated to illustrate how design thinking can be impactful for the two audiences rather than exclusively focusing on those who receive or experience the training. The narrow focus was also considered sufficient for the purpose of this research to explore one of the few applications of design thinking for learning experience design in health professions education.13-15 Additional research should investigate the broader impact of the design thinking framework as a tool to facilitate instructional design across multiple domains.
The application in this example was also facilitated by a team of individuals with expertise in design thinking who had the available knowledge, materials, resources, and time to support the experience, which may not be accessible in other venues or locations. Individuals who are interested in applying design thinking are encouraged to collaborate with people from other institutions who may have this expertise or explore online resources to learn about the process and example applications. Individuals can also start on a smaller scale by practicing select exercises that support idea exploration, generation, and testing based on what fits within their current system; it is not necessary to have an all-or-nothing approach.
CONCLUSION
There are many ways to design an effective seminar or workshop, and the design thinking approach is one option. We advocated for this approach because we observe it to be fairly simple, generally reliable, and there is evidence it works.8-13 We also acknowledge this process may be difficult to translate to other applications without sufficient resources, expertise, and/or time to invest.10,11 We encourage individuals to explore how smaller components or features of design thinking can support learning experience design for learners, staff, and educators broadly due to the potential benefit.
Appendix
Appendix Item 1. Program Development Timeline for 2021 AACP Teachers’ Seminar.
- Received December 8, 2021.
- Accepted April 5, 2022.
- © 2023 American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy
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