Location, context, time, and duration
The 1st instructor training at University Tenaga Nasional took place on March 11, 2022. The title of the event was “Design Thinking for Impactful Learning”. The event, which was originally planned as a face-to-face activity, took place in hybrid mode due to COVID-19 restrictions still enforced in Malaysia. Those who could make it physically attended the session in the university’s problem-based learning (PBL) room, which is located on level 2, College of Engineering, University Tenaga Nasional. Online participants and the trainer joined online using the Microsoft® Teams platform.
B.6.1.2 Participants
The event was attended by 15 lecturers from the College of Computing and Informatics, College of Engineering and College of Business Management and Accounting at University Tenaga Nasional. Participants were potential pilot instructors who will be implementing design thinking approach in their respective classes.
B.6.1.3 Description of activities
The training mainly targeted instructors of ICT courses, who had expressed interest to implement design thinking techniques in their classes. The trainer was Mr. Chuah Kee Man, a Certified Design Thinking Facilitator from Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UMS). The training began with a quick recap on design thinking phases in the morning session and after that, the participants were encouraged to engage in hands-on activities to experience all design thinking phases. Participants were exposed to the key elements in creating activities at each phase of the design thinking approach. The session was conducted interactively. Participants had the opportunity to present their ideas and outputs to the trainer and receive feedback. Face-to-face participants used a white board to paste their sticky notes while on-line participants used a software called Jamboard®.
In the afternoon session, the ICT-INOV project manager at University Tenaga Nasional, Dr. Hazleen Aris, presented an early version of the ICT-INOV design thinking platform to the participants. The participants were then asked to register and start creating design thinking activities for their classes, gaining familiarity on the ICT-INOV digital services. The one-day session ended with the commitment from the pilot instructor candidates to try as much as possible to adopt design thinking in their courses based on the knowledge obtained during the training.
B.6.1.4 Feedback and web presence
A survey form was distributed at the end of the training. In general, the participants enjoyed the training activities. All of them found the workshop useful and were looking forward to implementing design thinking in their classes and to take part in more training sessions soon see more.
