Helping teachers through design thinking

Atotal of 46 teachers and administrators from the National Union of Teaching Profession (NUTP), participated in a two-day Design Thinking Workshop, “Suara Pendidik”, at TMOne’s Experience Centre, recently. The workshop was a collaboration between Multimedia University (MMU) Business School an TmOne, a division of the Telekom Malaysia Group.

It offers cutting-edge design thinking approach based on a module from Stanford d.school of Stanford University in the United States.

MMU Business School director Professor Dr Murali Raman, said it was conducted in an environment of fun learning with several creative outcomes to address the issue of simplifying and easing school administrative duties for teachers.

They also had creative methodologies in the delivery of effective teaching to students.

“The participants, who were introduced and exposed to the concept of design thinking for the very first time, found, to their surprise, how fast and easily they adapted and internalised the process of design thinking,” said Murali.

Design thinking presents a systematic way of injecting creativity and innovative thinking in any company. It offers highly specific tools and techniques in a simplified manner. These tools are then used to derive the magical inspirational values of design thinking. It is defined as a user-centric collaborative approach in problem solving.

One of the participants, Nadarajan Karupanan, said the workshop was presented in an enthusiastic way with lots of support.

“The design thinking content can be related to many events and situations, especially in our teaching life. I definitely picked up a lot of ideas and new perspectives about the way we do things at school.”

NUTP secretary-general Harry Tan said: “The programme had guided, cajoled and squeezed every amount of idea from the participants. It was definitive as we were able to gather all necessary information needed to forward to the Education Ministry on what those below the age of 35 want to see in the classroom of the future.

“We thank all those involved in making this programme a success.”