With the semester finishing in a few weeks, I am thinking ahead to what course(s) need to be revamped for the fall semester. Definitely considering my newest course, Entrepreneurship, Design and Thinking (EDT), for some serious re-work.
Parts of the course really worked well:
- Design thinking (More on Design Thinking)
- The e-book "Art of Design". My students were blown away by this book as much as I was.
- The Shell "New Lens Scenarios" stimulated a lot of original thinking from the students about the future
Willian Duggan's book "Strategic Intuition" was a book I really liked, but the students seem to have missed the point.
Someone has suggested that I make EDT a pre-requisite for my course in social entrepreneurship. I like this idea because the work on thinking and design thinking is excellent preparation before one tackles worldwide social problems. I also like the idea of having two years to teach some fairly complex subjects.
Thinking the course project might be to explain how plants identify familial offspring and "share" with them without a brain or processor. Definitely a complex question suitable for design thinking and it ties in nicely with two topics--neuroscience and AI--that I plan to expand in the seminar. May be too tough a question for under graduates. Might be a good example to learn about how to approach impossible problems :)