The purpose of this article is to introduce the design thinking approach and illustrate how it may be used to facilitate an online course redesign by providing a specific example. This article builds on the theoretical foundation of the design thinking literature. It reviews the stages of the design thinking process, namely empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. The paper also presents an example of design thinking steps being applied to a graduate online hospitality course. The paper used a survey with both qualitative and quantitative questions to understand student experiences in this course, to identify students’ goals and challenges, and to build student personas. This research presents one of the personas developed for the redesigned course and offers an approach to redesigning the class to improve the learning experience for this persona. The approach presented in this paper may be useful to other instructors, program directors, hospitality and tourism training professionals, and instructional designers.
1 Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic led to a rapid increase in the availability of online education within higher education in 2020. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, more than 14 million postsecondary students in the United States, constituting 75% of the total, engaged in online coursework during the fall of 2020 [1]. Online learning offers students several advantages, such as flexibility in terms of location and pace of study and access to a diverse array of educational options and resources [2, 3]. On the other hand, online learning may be criticized for lack of interaction and social engagement, feelings of isolation, and reduced motivation [4]. Questions emerge regarding whether students participate in courses as educators envision and which aspects of online courses effectively involve students to improve the learning experience. The purposeful design of online courses can maximize the potential for student engagement and consequent learning [5].
Design thinking is an approach that has been used in technology design for years. Educators can learn from the principles of the design thinking approach to build better online educational experiences. The topic of design thinking in education has been presented in the literature from two major perspectives: teaching design thinking as a part of the curriculum to develop innovation and critical thinking skills [6‐8] and applying the design thinking process to instructional design [9]. It is important to note that while both perspectives have been documented in the literature, the first one seems to have higher coverage and attention than the second one.
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In hospitality and tourism education literature, design thinking has been mainly introduced from the skill-development perspective. There is an emerging stream of literature that looks at the development of higher-order thinking skills in hospitality and tourism students, including creativity, critical thinking, teamwork, and problem-solving [10‐12]. Such skills may be applied to creating innovation in the hospitality industry, e.g., by developing future hospitality concepts [13] or envisioning smart hotel concepts and guest experiences [14]. However, the hospitality and tourism education literature lacks the instructional design view on design thinking in hospitality education. The review of relevant literature demonstrated a gap in explaining the specific steps of applying design thinking to hospitality course design.
Given the literature gaps presented above, the purpose of this article is to introduce the design thinking approach to hospitality instructional design and illustrate how it may be used to facilitate a course redesign by providing a specific example. This article builds and contributes to the theoretical foundation of design thinking and e-learning in hospitality and tourism education literature, reviews the stages of the design thinking process, and presents an example of design thinking steps being applied to an online hospitality course.
2 Literature Review
2.1 E-Learning in Tourism
With the utilization of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), higher education has transitioned to online platforms in order to connect with students and implement virtual instructional methods for the delivery of courses via the Internet [15]. Electronic learning (e-learning) can be incorporated into the tourism and hospitality sector by means of creating and executing online training programs and modules [16]. Sigala [17] suggests that the development and implementation of technologically and pedagogically effective e-learning platforms are important for enhancing e-learning effectiveness. E-learning offers several key benefits, including flexible access to course materials [18], a vast array of multimedia resources, and the promotion of self-directed learning and critical thinking skills. It also facilitates collaboration among students and instructors via online platforms, reduces costs associated with physical classrooms and travel, and enables personalized learning experiences [19].
The pandemic, while having a detrimental effect on tourism and hospitality education, has spurred researchers to investigate innovative approaches to teaching and learning and students have enthusiastically embraced novel modes of instruction, encompassing virtual lectures, discussion forums, virtual group assignments, augmented/virtual reality-based learning, simulations, and gamification [20]. While e-learning offers flexibility and accessibility, it also presents challenges as well. The transition to e-learning has created a need for educational institutions to equip themselves with online learning tools and techniques. Instructors should continuously adapt and improve their online teaching strategies based on student feedback and evaluation to enhance the effectiveness of e-learning experiences [15]. The next sections of the paper explain the concept of design thinking and illustrate how it may be used to take a user-centric approach to course design.
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2.2 Design Thinking
Design thinking may be defined as an analytic and creative process that involves an individual in opportunities to experiment, generate and develop prototype models, collect input, and revise designs [21]. It involves a human-centered and iterative process of understanding users’ needs, defining problems, ideating solutions, prototyping, and testing [22]. Design thinking is significant because it offers a systematic approach to problem-solving and innovation that can be implemented in various contexts [23].
Design thinking evolved into pedagogy in the 1950s when John E. Arnold collaborated with psychologists, designers, and industrial researchers to develop a creative and human-centered design approach. In the 1970s, the design pedagogy developed creative and humanistic designers with aesthetic and technical knowledge, resulting in inventions and entrepreneurship [24]. Design thinking has several uses in education, including developing students’ creativity, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills, fostering a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship, enhancing the quality and relevance of academic programs, improving the learning experience and engagement of students, addressing complex educational challenges, and preparing students for the demands of the 21st-century workforce [22].
Watson [25] acknowledges that there are many variations of design thinking models and he believes that having a model like the Stanford design thinking model is valuable because it provides educators with a guiding approach and tools to overcome creative blocks, generate creative insights, and develop more and better ideas. The Stanford model encompasses five phases or stages of design thinking, often referred to as modes, that are progressed through in order to arrive at solutions or resolutions for problems. Stages in design thinking include: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. It is an iterative process that fits the nature of education where it is expected that instructors improve and refine their courses based on students’ feedback [26]. The following sections elaborate further on the stages of the design thinking process.
Empathize.
Empathy, as the first mode, serves as the cornerstone of human-centered design, serving as a crucial initial step for all design work. During this phase, designers closely observe user actions and behaviors, engage in interactions and interviews with them, and deeply involve themselves in comprehending the user's experiences and viewpoints [9, 26]. These insights empower designers to tackle the subsequent phases of the process with a more profound grasp of the surrounding context and the issue at hand [26].
Personas might be highly appropriate for describing various categories of students, each with occasionally distinct needs, preferences, and anxieties related to their learning process [27]. Personas encompass brief descriptions of potential users, serving as aids for system developers in acknowledging the characteristics, needs, and concerns of potential users. Initially formulated in user experience (UX) research, personas’ utility could extend to the realm of education, contributing to the enhancement of teaching and learning experiences [27, 28]. Personas are used to induce and promote empathy with users [29]. By empathizing with the learners, educators can gain a deeper understanding of their needs and tailor the redesign efforts to meet those needs effectively.
Define.
In the second phase, known as the Define mode, designers leverage the insights garnered during the empathizing stage to concentrate on the problem. Their objective is to go beyond a basic definition as they elaborate on the complexities of the user, the problem, and the surrounding context. During this phase, designers formulate a problem statement grounded in the specifics and insights they previously acquired. They narrow down and define the problem, providing a framework to steer design endeavors in the subsequent stages [9, 26].
In the context of education and course redesign, the define stage helps educators and instructional designers to identify the specific areas that need improvement or modification in the existing curriculum or teaching methods. It allows them to clearly articulate the problem statement and set clear objectives for the redesign process. By clearly defining the problem and setting goals, the define stage ensures that the redesign efforts are focused and purposeful, leading to more effective and meaningful educational experiences for the learners [22].
Ideate.
In the Ideate phase, the objective is to delve into various solutions and concepts. The aim is to surpass the evident and engage in brainstorming, nurturing, and producing a broad spectrum of ideas, solutions, and strategies pertinent to the issue at hand. Designers are encouraged to generate a wide range of ideas while maintaining the problem's focus and to also let their imagination explore unexplored, innovative concepts. With the aim of unfettered idea generation, postponing judgment on idea assessment permits unhampered creativity [26].
In the context of education and course redesign, this stage encourages educators and instructional designers to think outside of the box and explore innovative approaches to improve the curriculum and teaching methods. This stage emphasizes brainstorming and idea generation, where diverse perspectives and viewpoints are encouraged to foster creativity and generate a multitude of ideas [22]. This stage involves encouraging educators and instructional designers to think creatively, brainstorm ideas, and explore different possibilities for addressing the problem at hand [9, 21, 30].
Prototype.
The prototype stage involves creating tangible representations or models of the ideas generated during the ideation stage to test and gather feedback from users [22]. Prototypes can take various forms, such as physical models, digital simulations, or even sketches, depending on the nature of the problem and the available resources. The purpose of prototyping is to bring ideas to life and make them more tangible, allowing designers to evaluate their feasibility, functionality, and user experience [21]. This is not an attempt to reach a definitive solution, but rather a chance to experiment with rendering ideas tangible [26].
The prototype stage in design thinking for education and course redesign involves creating tangible representations of the proposed solution [30]. It can allow educators and instructional designers to develop and test prototypes of new teaching methods, learning activities, or curriculum components. This stage helps with evaluating the feasibility, effectiveness, and user experience of proposed changes before implementing them on a larger scale [22].
Test.
In the Test stage, designers evaluate the prototype by involving real users or representative stakeholders. This can involve user interviews, observing interactions with prototypes, or employing other techniques to collect feedback for enhancing the solution(s). Testing might reveal the necessity to fine-tune the prototype or even reassess and reevaluate the initial perspective. It might prompt a return to the empathize phase for a deeper understanding of users, or a revisit to the ideate phase to explore alternative solutions [26].
In the context of education and course redesign, the test stage allows educators to pilot the proposed changes in a controlled environment, such as a small group of students or a specific course module, to observe how well they work in practice. Testing in education involves collecting data and feedback from students, teachers, and other stakeholders to assess the impact of the redesigned elements on learning outcomes, engagement, and overall satisfaction [22].
Although we depict them in a sequential manner, design thinking is inherently an iterative procedure. Designers, educators, and individuals in other roles can go through the process repeatedly or reengage with different phases as necessary, aiming to comprehend and explore issues and potential solutions [26]. This paper continues to demonstrate how the design thinking approach may be applied to designing online courses in hospitality and programs.
3 Methods
The design thinking approach was applied to a graduate-level online course in the Hospitality Management program at a university in the United States. This course was taken by both master’s and Ph.D. students. While the Ph.D. program offers a mix of face-to-face and online courses, the master’s program is delivered asynchronously online. Therefore, it was deemed important to understand the user experience of this student group with online courses and redesign the course in response to that.
3.1 Data Collection
The first stage in the design thinking approach is Empathize. This step relies on data collected from the users (learners in the case of this project). All the following design thinking steps (define, ideate, prototype, test) are grounded in the understanding of user goals, interactions with the technology, and frustrations and developed based on the authors’ thinking. Therefore, the Methods section of this study describes the approaches to data collection and analysis for the empathize stage.
To better understand student experiences in the online courses, the course instructor conducted an online survey. Students were informed that participation in the survey was anonymous and voluntary. The survey was available to students for one full week via the Blackboard course website. Also, they were offered bonus points for participating in this survey resulting in a 100% response rate.
The first item on the survey explained to students the purpose of the questionnaire. It was shared with the students that the instructor is trying to understand how they engage with the course and provided materials. The opening statements stated that the instructor is looking to understand what is important for students in an online course, their goals and frustrations, how they interact with the course, and how the instructor can improve the experience for the current and future cohorts of students. Following the opening statement, the survey instrument used a mix of multiple-choice and essay questions. While multiple-choice questions were used to collect quantitative data about students’ behavior on consistent scales, essay questions were used to collect qualitative data to yield deeper understanding and insights into learner experience with the course.
Multiple-choice questions were used to collect data about the overall rating of the course experience, technology tools used to access the course (e.g., laptop, tablet, smartphone; personal or shared device), time spent going through the course resources and completing assignments, as well as identifying the key features of the course website that students used frequently (e.g., announcements, to-do lists, assignments, etc.). The essay questions were designed to understand the story of every learner. Students were encouraged to express their thoughts in full sentences and write from a couple of sentences to a paragraph. The essay questions asked students to describe their goals, how they use the Blackboard course website (e.g., which sections they visit and in which order), their frustrations with the online course, and how they would make it a “perfect” course.
3.2 Data Analysis
The data analysis for this project included descriptive statistics that summarized the technologies used for accessing the course website, time spent on materials and assignments, and most frequently used features. Thematic analysis was applied to qualitative data collected via essay questions. The analysis of goals, frustrations, and uses of the Blackboard website were used to generate learner personas.
Personas are fictional characters that are built to represent groups of users who exhibit similar behaviors. Persona templates are widely available online as a part of resources for UX research, for example, through professional associations, such as Interaction Design Foundation [31]. User personas may include different types of information, such as the name of the persona, a catchphrase, demographic characteristics, a description of the persona, goals, frustrations, personality traits, brands that the persona uses, and other categories based on the needs of a specific project. The following section presents the results of the study, including the sample description, a persona example, and further considerations for all stages of the design thinking process.
4 Results
4.1 Sample Profile
All 14 students enrolled in the course in the Fall of 2022 participated in the course experience survey. An average overall evaluation of the course experience was 4.5. The course experience was measured on a 5-point scale anchored at 1 - poor to 5 - excellent. Only one student rated the course experience as average (3 points). All other students evaluated their course experience as good (5 students) or excellent (8 students). All students accessed the course content on their personal laptop/desktop computers.
Most frequently (42.9%) students reported spending three or more hours going through the course resources (e.g., reading announcements, watching video lectures, etc.) on an average week. The next two categories were reported equally frequently: 1.5 h and 2 h (21.4% for each category). A similar pattern was observed on the next question asking students how much time per week they spent completing assignments. The majority of students answered 3 or more hours (57.1%), followed by 2 h (21.4%), and 1.5 h (14.3%).
To understand students’ circumstances outside of the learning environment, they were also asked about their work status and other personal commitments that they had during the semester. Half of the students (50%) worked full time and another 28.6% worked half-time. Work responsibilities were the most frequently reported commitment outside of school (64.3%), followed by personal relationships (e.g., significant other/spouse; 50%), friends (50%), sport (28.6%), and children (21.4%).
4.2 Developing Personas
The next step in developing empathy with learners involved reading the essay answers along with the responses to quantitative questions, finding the key themes, and identifying similarities in user goals, interactions with the Blackboard website, and frustrations. The main goal of this activity is to identify the key personas that are present in the class and think about the course redesign from the perspective of that persona. To meet the publication length requirements, this paper further presents one of the personas developed for the subject course. Please see Fig. 1 for the persona profile.
Fig. 1.
Learner persona example. Photo credit:katemangosta on Freepik.
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Please review the card to meet Angelica who is a 35-year-old female student, who balances a full-time job, busy personal schedule, raising two kids, and working towards her online master’s degree in Hospitality Management. Angelica says: “I work full time and make progress on my online courses whenever I have free time”. Her goals are to balance school, work, and personal life, to learn effectively from her classmates and the course professor, and to submit all assignments on time. Angelica tried to use the mobile app and was frustrated by that experience. She is also looking for ways to get hands-on experience with the content she is learning and increase her real-time interactions with the course participants.
Creating personas like Angelica helps instructors of online courses better understand their students, “hear” their stories, goals, and struggles, and put themselves in students’ shoes when thinking about course redesign as suggested by Rapanta and Cantoni [32] to empathize with the end-users more. The next steps in the design thinking process include defining the problem, ideating potential solutions, prototyping, and testing. This paper continues to demonstrate how the developed persona of Angelica may be used to complete this process.
4.3 Using Personas to Improve Online Courses
Define.
Using the insights from students like Angelica, the project progresses to identifying the problems in the course design that need to be solved to improve the learning experience for this user group. When working on this step, it is important to consider the frustrations that the learner persona expressed explicitly, but also it is valuable to look at the overall context and to make conclusions about how the goals and frustrations of the user interact with the broader circumstances of their lives. If we try to put ourselves in Angelica’s shoes, we may identify the following areas that she is struggling with:
Timely submission of assignments. It is easy to miss a deadline when juggling work, school, and personal responsibilities. Angelica mentioned that she moves the to-dos and deadlines of each module to her personal planner to keep track of all the work that she needs to complete.
Extracting the key material from the video lectures that are essential for learning and completing the assignments. Angelica may have a lot of interruptions in her learning schedule. She acknowledged that she makes progress on her online classes whenever she has time. Therefore, she may be trying to learn at various opportunities, such as short breaks at work, waiting for a meeting, or interrupted circumstances.
Lacking real-time interactions. Angelica is taking an asynchronous class online. The course does offer interactive elements, such as the kick-off meeting at the start of the semester and discussion boards for the students to interact and exchange ideas. However, the discussion boards may take time for students to respond to as everyone learns on their own schedule. Therefore, Angelica is looking for ways to increase her interactions with other learners and the professor.
Gaining experience. Overall Angelica enjoys her learning experience and values the material that she has been exposed to. However, she does not feel confident yet applying this content to real-life problems and situations (Table 1).
Table 1.
Generating course redesign ideas at the ideate stage.
Calendar/Announcements
Video Lectures/Resources
Assignments/Projects
Timely submission of assignments
Create a shareable course calendar that students can import and receive reminders
Send out weekly announcements describing the scope of work
Send a reminder to students without submissions 2 days before the due date
Add timestamps to video lectures to facilitate navigation to the right content needed for the assignments
Provide students with useful methods and apps that help them manage their time
Provide learning materials in advance to allow flexibility in working through them
Break down complex assignments into smaller, scaffolded tasks
Scaffolding of term projects
Provide rubrics to clearly indicate the key concepts and skills students need to develop
Provide an estimated time of completion
Choice-based projects: Provide students an option to choose a project that aligns with their interests and time availability
Extracting key material from video lectures
Add a label for essential and supporting video lectures
Include instructions on the elements to pay attention to when studying a particular resource (e.g., articles, reports)
Include links to relevant video lectures in the description of the assignment
Encourage students to create visual aids like concept maps or diagrams to represent key concepts and relationships within the video lecture
Lacking real-time interactions
Periodically schedule live question-and-answer sessions
Enable the web conferencing feature in LMS so that students can organize meetings without the instructor
Ask students to collaborate on small projects in teams for certain weeks
Use peer review assignments where students provide feedback to their classmates
Gaining experience
Give real-life examples and case studies
Record interviews with guest speakers
Organize online guest lectures
Use virtual tours (e.g., Hyatt in virtual reality)
Assign students to keep reflective journals or blogs where they document instances where they've applied class knowledge in their daily lives
Partner with a local hospitality/tourism business for projects
Use role-playing exercises
Ideate.
After meeting Angelica and defining her learning problems, the next step is to create ideas for how these problems may be solved for the group of users represented by the persona of Angelica. There are many ways to generate ideas. Such approaches may include asking students for suggestions, e.g., the survey described in this study asked students to indicate how they would make the course a “perfect” course. Additionally, ideas may be generated by working in groups with other professors or with students who took or are taking the subject course. For this project, the instructor worked with two students who had taken the subject course previously. Therefore, these students were familiar with the content and structure of the course, and after familiarizing themselves with personas, could offer ideas for improving experiences for those students.
As a team, the authors brainstormed ways of solving Angelica’s problems across different elements of the course, such as the course calendar, announcements, video lectures, resources, assignments, and projects. The team followed the structured approach of thinking about the problem and different course elements but also left room for exploring solutions that were outside of the box. Table 1 presents a summary of various modifications that may be applied to the course based on the persona created for this project and the challenges that this persona experienced in the online hospitality marketing course.
Prototype and Test.
Following the design thinking approach, the next two steps of the process would be to prioritize the solutions to the identified problems that would be the most impactful for the student experience, prototype them, and test them with students. The presentation of the current project stops here with all the considerations that have been outlined above. It is important to note that usually the student body in any program would host at least two or more personas. It is important to consider how the changes proposed for one learner persona may affect other personas. From this point forward the judgment of each individual instructor should be used to select the elements that best fit the personas of their students and the content of the course.
5 Conclusions
This paper introduced the readers to the design thinking process and illustrated how such a process may be applied to a redesign of an online course. This approach presents a critical, data-driven, and creative framework for thinking about a course redesign and identifying the right changes to be made. The design thinking is a user-centric approach, which in this case learner-centric. It shifts the focus from the educator's perspective to the student's perspective as quite often the way a professor envisions the course may differ from the way students experience the course.
As online learning continues to grow [1], it becomes highly important for educators to understand the goals and challenges that their students are having in online courses. This commonly presents a challenge in online education as professors do not see their students in class on a weekly basis, have a harder time connecting to students, lack instant feedback, and have fewer opportunities to receive comments from students. One of the major benefits of applying the design thinking approach is being intentional in learning about the students and their experiences. When adopting such an approach, educators are asked to get to know their students, collect data, empathize, build personas, and redesign the course keeping the behavior of those personas at the center of the redesign.
While this paper brings value by demonstrating an application of the design thinking approach to redesigning an online course, it also has certain limitations. The design thinking and user experience fields have created other methods, such as empathy maps and user journey maps, that may be helpful for better understanding the students and developing empathy with them. Future research may look at the use of other user experience research tools and evaluate their value for course redesign. This study was built based on one hospitality course. Further research at a larger scale may provide deeper and more generalizable results for broader populations of online students.
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