Design Thinking

Abstract

Management and professional business education is central to developing human talent that can help organizations be competitive in today’s complex business environment. So the question for management educators is how do we know that graduates have the talent that business needs? Learning outcome assessment has been the process used by colleges of business to answer this question. Good progress has been made in integrating assessment into the culture of business colleges, yet transformative challenges remain. This article presents a preliminary overview of how the spaces of design thinking may be used to enrich the story management programs and colleges of business tell about student learning. The article is not prescriptive nor does it tell the story of how private and not-for-profit organizations use design thinking. Instead, the article considers how focusing on questions, ideas, and integration of stakeholder requirements—a central component of design thinking—can foster creativity and innovation that strengthens how assessment processes are developed so the resulting decisions support substantive change. To assist the reader, the appendix contains an overview of assessment and design thinking terminology.

Keywords

assessing learning assessment of students’ learning assessment of learning institutional/field-level issues continuous learning management learning

Introduction

The purpose of this article is to explore the use of design thinking practices to frame the assessment process. The designers of the process to assess management learning are generally the faculty. To apply design thinking principles, faculty need to be engaged in conversations about student learning while making connections across disciplines (Borja de Mozota, 2003; Cross, 2011). It is also important for the designers to consider and integrate institutional goals, the business community’s expectations, and the broader social context in designing the assessment process (Conklin, 2006).

The article opens with an overview of assessment, the gaps related to transformative assessment, and an overview of design thinking. The balance of the article focuses on applying design thinking practices to the assessment of management education. First, it is suggested to begin the discussion by asking broad questions. Next, learning outcomes are crafted to assess complex learning along with designing the assessment process to include multiple stakeholders. The article concludes with implementation suggestions that foster strategic assessment and continuous improvement.

Assessment

Palomba and Banta (1999) state that assessment is a process that addresses “the systematic collection, review, and use of information about educational programs undertaken for the purpose of improving student learning and development” (p. 4). The focus of assessment can be extended by defining it as a “continuous, systematic process, the goal of which is to improve the quality of student learning” (Martell & Calderon, 2005, p. 2). The American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) Assessment Forum (1992) developed several learning principles which included: that assessment begins with educational values; works best when the programs it seeks to improve have clear, explicitly stated purposes; and that it helps educators meet responsibilities to students and the public. In addition, the principles stress that assessment:

Is most effective when it reflects an understanding of learning as multidimensional, integrated, and revealed in performance over time

Requires attention to outcomes but also equally to the experiences that lead to those outcomes

Works best when it is ongoing, not episodic

Fosters wider improvement when representatives from across the educational community are involved

Makes a difference when it begins with issues of use and illuminates questions that people really care about

Leads to improvement when it is part of a larger set of conditions that promote change

Banta (2002b) integrated elements of AAHE’s practices with other elements to cluster characteristics of effective learning outcomes assessment into three process stages: planning, implementation, and improving. Clusters for organizing assessment are important given that an effective process is critical for continuous quality improvement and can be achieved if the correct people are part of the process and the assessment activities are taken seriously (Gardiner, Borbitt, & Adams, 2010).

To live the assessment challenge, colleges and universities have adopted a mix of assessment practices (Ewell, 2002). The drivers of this investment are varied and practices are adopted for a variety of reasons, including becoming more successful (Webber & Tschepikow, 2011), promoting academic improvement, meeting the requirements of specialized accreditation (e.g., AACSB, ACBSP, and IACBE), and/or meeting the increasing accountability expectations of government and society. An example of the expectations of the government are reflected in the Spellings Commission’s findings that “higher education must change from a system primarily based on reputation to one based on performance [and that] student achievement . . . must be measured by institutions on a value-added basis” (Shavelson, 2010, pp. 1-2). The New Leadership Alliance for Student Learning and Accountability (2012) echoes the Spellings Commission that colleges “granting educational credentials must ensure that students have developed the requisite knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes that prepare them for work, life, and responsible citizenship” (p. 3).

What colleges include in their assessment practices also varies. An electronic search of business schools’ assessment plans or published case studies finds that assessment leadership rests with a formal assessment committee or by the faculty as a whole. The methods of assessment include stated program objectives, learning goals, learning outcomes, and processes for documenting how these will be evaluated. Colleges use direct assessment methods including summative and formative assessment, e-portfolios, assessment centers, course-embedded activities, simulations, comprehensive standardized, normed exams (e.g., the ETS Field Test of Business) or locally developed exit exams, capstone courses, peer evaluations, and reflective papers. Indirect assessment feedback is gathered from students, alumni, and business surveys. The findings of the aforementioned informal electronic review are supported in published works by the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (Ewell, 2009; Ewell, Paulson, & Kinzie, 2011) as well as in peer-reviewed journal articles such as Kelley, Tong, and Choi (2010). The combination of drivers and assessment strategies has produced positive outcomes. For example:

Assessment is not only an accreditation requirement (Bisoux, 2008)

There has been a shift from an instructor paradigm to a learning paradigm (Webber & Tschepikow, 2011)

Assessment is perceived as legitimate, it is here to stay, and it has increased faculty commitment and involvement in the process (Ewell, 2009)

Colleges have shifted more resources to strengthen their culture of assessment (Bisoux, 2008)

Even with the positive changes from assessment, questions remain about its ability to address complicated issues and to be transformational. Wehlburg (2008) stresses that transformative assessment is an iterative “process that will inform decision making that is appropriate, meaningful, sustainable, flexible, ongoing, and have the potential for substantive change that can transform the learning environment” (p. 13). “Transformative assessment cannot be accomplished using cookie cutter processes—it requires trust, collectively identified goals, a shared language, and multiple-perspective concerns” (Wehlburg, 2008, p. 39). Most of all, transformative assessment cannot be viewed as something for others, it must be framed as a process relevant to those who create and use it (Wehlburg, 2008). Six examples of transformational change issues related to assessment practices and decisions are described below.

How to link assessment to employers’ needs. Employers see multiple-choice tests as ineffective, a perception supported by the difficulty in linking the results of standardized exams to improvements in learning (Banta & Blaich, 2011) and the risk that faculty will teach to the test rather than focusing on learning (Berdrow, 2008). Instead of tests, employers value internships, community-based projects, and comprehensive projects (Coates & Seifert, 2011; Hart, 2008). They want people who can draw on their integrated skills and knowledge and who can perform well from the moment they join the organization (Phan, 2011). In other words, employers value performance assessments that give stronger feedback on what needs to be done in organizations. Colleges have to prepare students for the next economy not the past one (McCann, 2006). For assessment, this reflects a key challenge of being able to better bridge the disconnect between what is taught and what is practiced (Loh, 2009).

How to incorporate emerging discipline knowledge. While more business colleges engage in closing the loop activities, there is less evidence that curriculum changes have kept pace with the business world. Colleges’ program content and delivery need to be innovative (Schoenbachler, 2009). As noted in an interview with Leonard Schlesinger, President of Babson College,

There needs to be a continual examination of the nature and the appropriateness of the things we’re teaching in the classroom, in light of what’s going on out in the world. . . . [Assessment needs to provide insight into the] compatibility of business education with the corporate sector. (Raouf, Kalim, & Siddiqi, 2010, p. 13)

How to develop integrative assessment plans that have value to multiple stakeholders. Accrediting organizations create lists of learning outcomes that can lead to cookie-cutter approaches to assessment (Glenn, 2011a). Overreliance on typical degree courses or on common core courses can limit assessment activities in areas where advanced discipline learning occurs. Also, cookie-cutter approaches to assessment can ignore perspectives that are important to organizations (Datar, Gavin, & Cullen, 2010). As a result, assessment may be broad but not deep (Ewell, 2002). This point relates to Challenge Number 2 above. Assessment needs to be “implemented across deeply embedded organization structures . . . [and become] central to planning and decision making” (Ewell, 2002, p. 23).

How to better understand knowledge and skill transfer. Assessment is limited in its ability to assess the retention of knowledge and skills from one course to the next and after graduation (Glenn, 2011b; Martell, 2007). There are also challenges related to assessing improvement in multifunctional and multidisciplinary perspectives (Datar et al., 2010). Issues remain about how to link assessment across discipline courses and/or different levels of assessment (e.g., options, majors, program, college, and university outcomes) (Coates & Seifert, 2011).

How to better understand complex thinking abilities. Complex learning “involves integrating knowledge, skills, and attitudes . . . coordinating qualitatively different constituent skills” (Van Merriënboer & Kirschner, 2013, p. 2) and transferring what is learned in college to the professional setting. Generally, assessment provides feedback on factual discipline knowledge and its application, but it is less effective at providing insight into how well business graduates can deal with complex and/or unquantifiable issues (Bennis & O’Toole, 2005; Moallem, 2007; Neumeier, 2009). Assessment has been limited in measuring the complex thinking that is critical for a resource-challenged, globally interdependent, demographically diverse, and innovation-driven economy—a world that requires intentional and integrated learning (Youatt & Wilcox, 2008).

How do we more effectively close-the-loop? Research conducted by Kelley et al. (2010) found that the majority of improvements to the learning environment that come from direct assessment were related to minor modification to teaching styles, learning objectives, or required core course. These are good changes and are part of closing the loop, but are these sufficient for colleges and programs to better brand their learning products, better respond to managing complex learning, and foster transformation?

How do colleges improve the process of assessment to address the transformational challenges as well as the general issues related to a culture of assessment? How do assessment processes strengthen Banta’s (2002a) view that assessment is a tool for continuous improvement? What processes can be used to help assessment be transformational? A fresh approach may be to use design thinking practices to frame the assessment process as one that engages assessment designers in conversations about discipline learning while also making connections across disciplines, institutional goals, the business community’s expectations, and the broader social context.

Design Thinking

Design is “a creative activity whose aim is to establish the multi-faceted qualities of . . . processes . . . and their systems in whole life cycles” (Borja de Mozota, 2003, p. 3). Design encompasses complexity, compromise, and choice while addressing behavioral and systemic paradigms. Central to design is the focus on ideas and the integration of stakeholder requirements to stimulate innovation. Designers develop innovative solutions to problems and do so while recognizing that the path between solution and problem may not be direct (Borja de Mozota, 2003; Cross, 2011). They address this challenge by engaging in reflective conversations, teamwork, integrative thinking, and prototyping. These approaches are important since organizations are designed for ongoing operations rather than for innovation (Govindarajan & Trimble, 2010). Design thinking, which draws on the creative processes associated with design, is a methodology for innovation and enablement (Leavy, 2010; Lockwood, 2010).

Brown (2009) writes in the inside cover of his book Change by Design that “breakthrough ideas emerge not by chance, but by studying and embracing the immediate challenges we encounter every day . . . we don’t simply realize solutions; we design them.” To design solutions requires building collective intelligence or the creativity and resourcefulness that a group brings to complex issues (Conklin, 2006). It also requires working to make sure that fragmentation does not occur because of the different perspectives of the people who are collaborating (Conklin, 2006). The spaces and characteristics of design thinking are a way to address creativity and lessen fragmentation.

Design thinking is “essentially a human-centered innovation process that emphasizes observation, collaboration, fast learning, visualization of ideas, rapid concept prototyping, and concurrent business analysis” (Lockwood, 2010, p. xi). It takes an experimental approach where teams learn from each other and there is a collective ownership of ideas and shared processes (Brown, 2009). Design thinking draws from abductive logic and divergent, synthetic, and dynamic thinking approaches that are balanced with convergent and analytical thinking (Brown, 2009; Gharajedaghi, 2010). The combination of thinking styles facilitates understanding structure, function, and process at the same time. The attributes of design thinking help develop creative yet practical future-oriented outcomes that can increase brand value, customer experiences, and enhancement in services (Brown, 2009; Lockwood, 2010).

Integrating Design Thinking and the Process of Assessment

Brown (2009) writes that design thinking happens in three spaces: inspiration, which relates to the problems needing a solution and the generation of insight from multiple sources; ideation, or the process of generating, developing, and testing ideas generated from the insights in the inspiration space; and implementation, where actions plans are finalized. There are activities and attributes associated with, and overlapping, the three spaces. Figure 1 highlights themes that are common in the writings of Brown (2008, 2009), Cross (2011), Fraser, (2009), Lockwood (2010), Martin (2007, 2009), Rasmus (2011), and Rodriguez and Jacoby (2007).

Figure 1.

Design thinking.

Solution Search (Inspiration) Space and Management Education Assessment

The key design thinking attributes of the inspiration space are the following: asking questions—especially “why” questions, identifying and challenging constraints related to what is desirable, technologically feasible and viable, observation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and storytelling (Brown, 2009). These attributes support creating innovative solutions. The “key to successful innovation is an internal network that actively involves people throughout the organization in the vibrancy of discovery and dialogue” (Smith & Mindrum, 2008, p. 1). The inspiration space provides this opportunity, not only for products and services but also for process and managerial innovations (Smith & Mindrum, 2008). Solution search activities are appropriate for the planning phase of assessment as they help gain insight into how stakeholders interact with the learning environment.

The solution search space encourages beginning the conversation with broad, integrated questions. What is learning? What is management? What is management learning? What is professional learning? Starting with these broad questions can help accomplish three interrelated things. First, the conversations are grounded in the learning process. This supports sharing the learning experiences of different faculty, their observations of learning in different situations, and it provides opportunities for reflection on what assessment is and how it contributes to the learning process. Learning questions also invite exploration with faculty in other departments and colleges. The multidisciplinary nature of management means that conversations with members of other disciplines (e.g., communication, graphic design, packaging, arts, computer science, economics, psychology, sociology, political science) and specialized schools (e.g., agriculture, health care, education) may add value to understanding the scope and depth of what it means to manage.

Second, learning questions stimulate thinking about how students use prior knowledge, what motivates their learning, and how they develop and demonstrate mastery (Ambrose, Bridges, DiPietro, Lovett, & Norman, 2010). Addressing the question of what is learning fosters the inclusion of students in the conversation. Doing so provides insight into their learning needs and the gaps they see in their current learning environment and professional skill development opportunities. It also provides an opportunity to learn about how students interact with the learning environment. Engaging students in the process may also help them to better understand the role of assessment for themselves as well as the program and business college.

Third, the broad questions encourage faculty to share their understanding of what constitutes the complexity and interdependencies in the management profession. The latter is important to think about since the field of management is multidisciplinary (human-talent related, financial, market orientation, sustainability, technology, etc.) and it addresses operational and strategic processes. Perhaps more important, reflecting on “what is management” helps frame the exploration as a professional one and not as an academic one. This promotes the inclusion of members from the public, private, and not-for-profit communities in reflective conversations for exploring what management currently is and what it is becoming. Joint exploration provides an opportunity for business faculty and students to hear from practitioners about what they do, how they think, and what they need in their professional lives. The professional stories enable observation, the first tool of a design thinker (Martin, 2009), that can help identify business constraints and management expertise that is not evident when only courses are used to frame the issues. Face-to-face interaction allows for delving into the details or substance of management education. Including professionals from different industries also helps identify the similarities and differences in management among industries. In addition, professional stories make the assessment process one of synthesis not just analysis. The future-oriented needs allow the participants to use abductive thinking to include what could be as well as what is.

Using a learning orientation also helps create a frame that moves beyond what is prescribed by an accrediting association or by campus assessment committees. The goal of management education is to develop people who are capable of working in today’s business environment and who have the skills to embrace the future. Although the end product of the assessment process needs to address accrediting constraints, it must also transcend the constraints if assessment is to be transformative at the discipline and practitioner level. Engaging diverse perspectives of management learning may allow for developing a deep user-centered understanding of management education, its problems, and opportunities. Overall, the inspiration step gives breadth (creative divergence) to design thinking (Van Alstyne, 2010). The inspiration orientation sets up the exploration, synthesizing, and act elements associated with scenario thinking in the ideation step.

Ideas Transformed (Ideation) Space and Management Education Assessment

The key attributes of the ideation step include taking an experimental approach, risking failure, prototyping, innovation, abductive thinking, synthesis, scenario thinking, embracing constraints, visualization, and active design. The ideation space provides the opportunity to take the broad ideas generated in the inspiration space and distill them into refined ideas that can be transformed into prototypes of the desired outcomes (Smith & Mindrum, 2008). This relates to Banta’s planning stage of assessment. Ideation space also builds on value-added outcome-based assessment that requires the generation, development, and testing of ideas (Brown, 2008) to increase the understanding of learning.

The stories generated from conversations in the solution search space encourage assessment designers to develop multiple ideas about how to craft the learning outcomes to assess complex learning and how to design the assessment process. Initially, this allows for developing strategic foresight through exploring the scenarios from different perspectives. Not only might this approach help develop a more holistic learning outcome assessment process, it also helps link assessment to the program’s or the college’s strategic planning process.

Scenarios are a way to explore solutions to the questions identified in the solution search space. An advantage of using scenarios for planning is that the uncertainties, constraints, and ways to overcome them can be incorporated into assessing management education. The storytelling inherent in scenarios facilitates uninhibited creativity, willingness to engage in lateral thinking, and drawing on diversity to identify multiple, divergent solutions (Van Alstyne, 2010). Scenarios foster blending divergent and convergent thinking into multiple “what if” stories. For example, to better meet the need of business for graduates who can make decisions that require integration of concepts for multiple disciplines what if we stopped organizing courses by discipline and instead delivered topics from an interdisciplinary perspective? What would be included in a scenario designed to create this new frame? How would learning outcomes be written? What would the learning environment look like? How would the learning experience change pedagogy? What new technology would be needed? How would colleges educate specialized accrediting bodies about the value in the new approach? And, given the increased use of blended curriculum, delivery scenarios could be developed to address how to structure assessment for face-to-face versus online learning? Similar questions could be addressed in a scenario related to what if the learning environment was structured based on organizational perspectives (investor, competitor, customer, society) instead of traditional discipline courses (Datar et al., 2010)?

Scenarios could also be created to explore what would stay the same and what would change, in terms of linkages outside the program or college with regard to curriculum design and learning outcome development. What would happen if more students expressed interest in applying their management education in the health care, or the public sector, or in engineering, or in sustainable packaging? How might assessment change from a self-contained perspective to one that encouraged feedback from other departments and colleges? Scenarios could also be developed that would address how to structure the learning experience if a college could not quickly change curriculum or hire faculty with expertise in emerging areas needed by business? What new linkages would be needed? How could learning outcomes and measurement metrics change?

The pool of scenarios may help create learning environment prototypes. Prototyping in design thinking is an iterative process and serves as a way to take risks in design, to test and rework the prototype. The unintended consequences experienced with one prototype can be addressed as a new prototype is developed. The final curriculum product, learning outcome, or assessment process can be visualized through the prototype.

From an assessment perspective, a primary product of the iterative scenario-based prototyping phase is a set of complex learning outcomes that allows for the evaluation of students’ applied knowledge and skills across time, across disciplines, and after the transition to the workplace. The benefits of developing complex learning outcomes come from the interdisciplinary, innovative attributes of design thinking. A discipline-based outcome can be written quickly. For example, graduates will be able to use financial statements to make decisions or students will be able to make time value calculations or students will be able to engage in SWOT analysis. Equally, it is easy to adopt an outcome published in an accreditation standard, “Each student shall be able to evaluate the financial position of organizations through examination of balance sheets, cash flow statements, and budgets” (AACSB, 2012c).

However, it is challenging to develop learning outcomes that will provide insight into complex thinking and applications that encompass the scope and depth of integrated management learning. The ideas transformed space with its scenarios and prototypes helps increase the likelihood that this will occur. Thinking about what might be in addition to what is, would seem to allow learning outcome development to move beyond the curriculum of a course or application of a concept (e.g., ethics) measured in two areas (e.g., accounting and human resource management). Instead, it might encourage the development of broad complex learning outcomes at the program and/or college levels. Complex learning outcomes facilitate assessment across time, courses, disciplines, and inside and outside the management program or business college. This changes the assessment orientation from summative to a combination of formative and summative. It also encourages using performance grades to show competency at the factual and single concept application level (part of the regular classroom activity) with holistic assessment being shared across the learning experience. Finally, complex learning outcomes allow the learning outcomes to become the primary linkage in curriculum currency in both pedagogy and strategy.

Related to the assessment process, prototyping in the ideation phase can span several semesters. Integrative complex learning outcomes with multiple touchpoints for faculty, students, and business partners require time to complete a full cycle. Experience leads to new questions and new avenues for exploration with faculty, students, and the business community. The process of scenario development and prototyping frames these cycles of experimentation up front. In turn, conversations can be optimistic rather than critical as programs try a new learning module or approach, get feedback from stakeholders, collect performance data, synthesize the findings, and then create new prototypes to address remaining gaps in understanding student learning.

Ideas to Market (Implementation) Space and Management Education Assessment

In the implementation step, the key attributes include synthesis thinking, visualization, identifying unintended consequences, prototyping, and active design and evaluation. This space blends Banta’s (2002b) implementation and improvement stages. The implementation space culminates in the best ideas being “developed into a concrete, fully conceived plan of action” (Brown, 2009, p. 64). Gharajedagi (2010) states that

any professional whose task is to dissolve problems, to choose, to synthesize and to create is involved with design thinking. The distinct advantage of design thinking is to produce new alternatives. It is about real choice, about selecting a desired future, and inventing the ways to bring it about. It is about the ability to deal with the real world, its “messy”’ or “wicked” or “ill-defined problems.” (p. 108)

Relating this to management education assessment entails communication that is designed to enhance understanding and to engage multiple stakeholders in the process. Often assessment is communicated to stakeholders in a handbook or plan that includes the assessment process, overall learning outcomes, course learning outcomes, and assessment posters. All this is important, but it is not sufficient. Shulman (2007) stresses the importance of the story of assessment based on narratives that tell the complexity and nuances of learning. Design thinking helps shape this story with the program’s or college’s context embedded in the story. In addition to enhanced narrative, design thinking encourages the development of visuals that show relationships, for example, mindmaps, stakeholder mapping, storyboarding, and activity system maps. Using effective visual communication helps the user more readily see what is being told in the assessment story (Krzywinski, 2013). Developing visuals that link assessment design with the multilevel expertise of management showcase the system of both management and assessment. Similarly, closed-loop diagrams can be used to show assessment and management relationships. Using strategy tools, for example, balanced scorecard, increases the understanding of the role of assessment. Assessment is then transformed from compliance to a strategic value-added, integrative process that is future-oriented on improving what is and moving toward what might be.

This change in perspective is at the heart of continuous improvement. The implementation step embraces continuous improvement since implementation by its nature actually starts the design process all over. The findings from management education assessment lead to new questions to explore. For example, management faculty discover, by using synthesis thinking as they discuss performance across several learning outcomes assessed in different courses, that a common trend exists where students cannot integrate multiple and disparate concepts. This poses a new inspiration question that (a) acknowledges the unintended consequences of having a single concept application assessment within a single course and (b) requires exploration and pedagogical prototyping that can lead to changes in the learning environment, which, in turn, requires change and implementation—an ongoing cycle of the design thinking spaces.

Why Use Design Thinking for Assessment?

Wehlburg (2008) writes that assessment often treats “learning as an assembly-line process rather than an attempt to measure something extremely complex” (p. 3). Figure 2 highlights linkages among design thinking and assurance of learning activities and visually showcases how using design thinking may help focus assessment on producing insight that will “inform the decision making regarding teaching and learning” (Wehlburg, 2008, p. 3). The relationships in Figure 2 relate to the characteristics of transformative assessment as defined by Wehlburg (2008).

Figure 2.

Linking design thinking with assessment activities.

Lederman (2010) advocated using design thinking in higher education to engage in thoughtful change to deliver sustainable education. Specific to business education, this broad support for design thinking can be extended by its relevance to branding, the use of design thinking by business, and its innovative potential for crafting learning outcomes that are multidisciplinary and help meet the needs of multiple stakeholders.

At a broad level, design helps to shape “brand image and corporate reputation . . . and enables product and service innovation” (Lockwood, 2008, pp. 7-9). Branding of management programs and colleges of business includes the currency of its learning opportunities and the quality of its graduates. Part of currency—both in curriculum as well as in practice—relates to drawing on what is used in organizations which design thinking is. IDEO (2012) is a consulting firm that works with private and public organizations in their innovation activities. Their webpage contains stories about some of the organizations with whom they have worked, including Steelcase, Medtronic, State Farm, and the Non-profit Professional Coalition. The website also includes profiles about IDEO’s work within schools to address questions related to creating platforms that allow ideas generated on the local level to be shared across the country and how tools can be created and resources generated that allow schools to employ new K-12 assessment models and curricular design (IDEO, 2012). In addition, business publications profile how organizations such as GE Healthcare, Proctor and Gamble, and Philips Electronics are using design thinking (Wong, 2009). Blog networks share design thinking organizational profiles (Richardson, 2012). And organizations tell their own stories on their webpage, for example, Mayo Clinic (2012).

As design thinking has become more widely used in organizations, business schools have started including design thinking and innovation courses in their curriculum and certificate offerings (e.g., Carlson School of Management, Darden School of Business, Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business, Pitt Business Center for Executive Education, Rotman School of Management, Stanford, and Villanova School of Business). AACSB (2012a) included “Curriculum Development for Design Thinking for Creativity and Innovation” in their Curriculum Development Series.

In addition to design thinking being added to the business curriculum, the practice of management requires the ability to deal with complex problems. This requires that graduates of undergraduate and MBA programs be able to use a mix of thinking approaches such as convergent and divergent, scenario planning, business design and future visioning, as well as deductive, inductive, and abductive reasoning.

The combination of business use of design thinking, curriculum inclusion, and the need for complex problem resolution skills indicates that design thinking by management programs and colleges of business can help strengthen assessment to tell their story of how and why graduates can do what the program states they can do. At the core of this assessment story are the learning outcomes—ones that will give insight into how well students can think to both manage in the present as well as plan for a future that does not yet exit (Shamiyeh, 2010; Van Alstyne, 2010). Developing value-added outcomes of complex learning tasks require a different approach than measuring functional knowledge (Moallem, 2007). Developing learning outcomes that reflect professional knowledge requires that students think and integrate rather than applying a concept in a given situation. More important, the rapidly changing business environment demands that learning outcomes be transformational. Single discipline learning outcomes may not be as effective as multidiscipline learning outcomes that are derived from different disciplines (Moldoveanu & Martin, 2008).

Assessment is about improvement in current practices as well as gaining insight into new practices. Assessment processes require quantitative and qualitative evidence, need to be carried out over time, rely on quality benchmarks and learning outcomes, use multiple input and feedback loops, and need revision (Dunn, McCarthy, Baker, & Halonen, 2011; Ewell, 2009). The outcome of assessment is improvement in how a program or college meets the needs of its multiple stakeholders. This requires a holistic approach—a portfolio of evidence—that can help strengthen innovation and allow for integration across different stakeholder expectations (AACSB, 2012b). Design thinking provides space to accomplish integration through reflection. As noted by Martel and Calderon (2005),

Reflection is an essential element of each phase of assessment [as it is] through reflection that faculty, administrators, and key external stakeholders consider contextual and background information from multiple sources, utilize specific data and information about their students learning experiences, paint a holistic picture of what’s going on, ask difficult questions, and find creative solutions that help to improve learning and close the loop. (p. 3)

In addition, design thinking helps address the challenges of moving assessment from measurement with incremental improvements to transformation for substantive change. These ill-defined, or in design thinking language “wicked” transformation problems, are characterized by:

Not understanding the issue without its context

Stakeholders with different views of the problem and how to solve it—what the problem is depends on who you ask, people have different views of what the issue is and how to resolve it, and multiple values can conflict

Being connected to other issue or processes—solutions often give rise to the need to adjust based on new insight or aspect of the issue

Ideological, technical, and/or political constraints

Resistance to change associated with solutions (Camillus, 2008; Conklin, 2006)

Design Thinking, Assessment Integration, and the “Wicked” Problems

Six questions related to transformational assessment were presented earlier in the article. From the authors’ perspective, engaging in design thinking has the potential to leverage a program’s ability to address all six. To do this, multiple stakeholders must be brought together in the inspiration space. Employers have the opportunity to influence the learning environment by sharing new trends that are important to their business. This gives programs and colleges the opportunity to incorporate the new trends into learning opportunities. Employers also can help shape assessment artifacts that demonstrate a graduate’s ability to hit the ground running. This increases the inclusion of artifacts that have value to the business community. Reflective conversations that engage students, employers, management, business and nonbusiness faculty strengthen the understanding complex thinking processes and how to design interdisciplinary assessment. This shapes the use of integrative assessment artifacts, builds formative and summative assessment across the curriculum, and encourages the design of methods for the evaluation of complex thinking skills. The overall result may be closing-the-loop actions that enrich learning opportunities, increase the transfer of learning, and enhance the program’s and college’s brand.

Conclusion

Kirschner (2012) summarized the compelling argument that innovation in higher education needs to address competitive challenges, to prepare students for the modern workplace, and to move beyond the status quo. From the beginning, assessment was to be a tool for such continuous improvement, yet it has not achieved its rightful place as a process for transformation (Banta, 2002a). Design thinking may help accomplish this since it draws from what academics and practitioners strive for: innovation focused on products and services, engagement in ideas, and thinking about what might be not just what is. Design is integrative and can help guide decisions at multiple levels in the organization. It helps to create a holistic experience for students, faculty, business partners, and the broader society in which management learning is experienced (Ackoff & Greenberg, 2008).

Engaging in design thinking does not require new resources to get started. The spaces of design thinking and its activities can be built into a program’s or college’s current assessment process. Conversations can begin with members of the assessment committee, a core group of faculty, professional student organizations, and members of advisory boards (e.g., student, alumni, and business). The authors have engaged in some of the design thinking practices during their tenure in business colleges. One example of using design thinking was membership on a college assessment committee that shared observations about learning engagement, high order thinking, and interdisciplinary assessment strategies. They also used mindmaps to show linkages between college and program assessment and included students on the committee. One business college used a world café format to address the question, “What should business graduates be able to do?” The retreat included faculty and members of public and private organizations. And, in one situation, the college created an integrated assessment plan that facilitated depth in the program areas of student study while deriving common major/degree learning assessment for external stakeholders. The authors also note that the ongoing success of these and other design thinking activities depends on four elements.

First, it is critical that college and program leadership support strategic transformative assessment that addresses multiple stakeholders, meaningful change, the growth in the mix of learning opportunities, and taking risks to challenge long-held beliefs. The assessment culture needs to support the interaction among faculty, the business community, dean’s advisory councils, students, and faculty from outside the business college. Same group conversations are not as effectives as integrated conversations.

Second, it is important to have a core group of faculty who view assessment as value-added rather than something for compliance only; who are willing to take risks, who will share their stories, who will actively listen to what others have to say, and who will be willing to explore new learning methods and assessment venues, and champion a culture of learning. This original “key mover” group (e.g., formal assessment committee or an informal faculty group) needs to remain stable and be publically supported by the college/program leadership.

Third, it is important to foster a design thinking attitude. Brown (2008) defines a design thinker’s aptitude as being able to draw from multiple perspectives, seeing what others may not see, imagining novel solutions that are better than existing alternatives, exploring constraints, being willing to experiment, and being an enthusiastic interdisciplinary collaborator. By using a design attitude, managers approach problems with a sensibility that draws from the broadest array of influences to shape designs for products, services, and processes (Boland & Collopy, 2010). A design attitude goes beyond default solutions to create new possibilities for the future. Each project is viewed as an opportunity for invention/innovation that includes questioning basic assumptions and breaks of familiar patterns of management and decision making. It recognizes the challenge of developing good alternatives but also recognizes that a design attitude can generate new ways to use technology, new material, and new work processes. Overall, a design attitude fosters a level of comfort with a decision-making process that remains fluid and open, celebrating new alternatives as a “best” design solution is developed.

Fourth, it is important to link closing-the-loop activities to future-oriented strategic initiatives. While incremental improvements in the amount of topic coverage in a course, increased use of the case method, or improving how assignments are written to enhance student understanding are important, these are activities that occur because the faculty member wants to improve student performance as part of their course teaching responsibilities. Value-added, outcome-based assessment needs to be put into a broader context—one that requires the input of multiple stakeholders in understanding and enhancing the core business of learning.

Overall, design thinking can help provide focus and direction for assessment that links the core competencies of management education to the strategic drivers of today’s business environment. And, to close-the-loop for this article, the spaces of design thinking support living and practicing the principles developed by AAHE (1992):

Design thinking supports focusing on the values and questions people really care about. It begins with salient but broad questions that are refined across the solution search (inspiration) and idea transformation (ideation) spaces. The reflective conversations among students, community representatives, and faculty capture values at multiple levels and provide space for them to be integrated into shared values for multiple stakeholders. Multiple-level engagement provides opportunities for asking questions that help identify what is truly important to students, faculty, and members of the community. Sharing stories from different perspectives give depth to and increase the understanding of why the questions are important as well as different ways of answering the questions.

Design thinking is multidimensional. As such the spaces support interdisciplinary conversations that give deeper understanding to learning and deeper insight into the different dimensions of assessment. This allows for the creation of processes and learning outcomes that cross program and college boundaries.

The activities in the ideas transferred (ideation) space helps to produce explicit purposes for multiple stakeholders and learning outcomes that address these purposes.

The spaces of design thinking are overlapping and allow for a continuous looping through the three spaces. This helps to frame assessment as a living process.

The interdisciplinary reflective conversations of the solution search (inspiration) space and the prototyping iterations in the ideas transformed (ideation) space provide multiple opportunities for different members of the educational community to be involved.

Design thinking encourages risk taking, exploration, and creative trade-offs. It encourages thinking about what could be. It is conducive to incremental and radical change. The prototypes and visual maps used in the ideas transformed (ideation) and ideas to market (implementation) spaces help multiple stakeholders “see” their role in assessment and how assessment links to other operational and strategic initiatives of the program and/or college.

Multiple stakeholder engagement in the solution search (inspiration) and ideas transformed (ideation) spaces helps strengthen the relationship between curriculum, learning experiences, and the needs of students, business, and society.

Footnotes

Appendix

Assessment and Design Thinking Terminology

Term	Definition
AACSB	Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business
ACBSP	Accreditation council for Business Schools
Abductive logic	Focus on thinking about what could be possible. Abductive reasoning yields the kind of daily decision making that does its best with the information at hand, which often is incomplete. The abductive process can be creative, intuitive, and even revolutionary.
Activity system	Visualization of your idea or strategy as a system of interrelated activities. Identifies core and support activities as well as their linkages.
Analytic thinking	The process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts to gain a better understanding of it. This is used in business: financial statement analysis, technical analysis, market analysis, price analysis, and so on. It assumes that the whole is nothing but the sum of its parts. Thus, understanding the structure is both necessary and sufficient to understand the whole.
Capstone course	A course that integrates the key knowledge, skills, and attitudes that students have learned during their course of study. Serves as summative assessment for the learning outcomes identified by the program. Usually taken in the final semester.
Closing the loop	The demonstration of the use of assessment results to improve the educational program.
Constraints	Brown (2009) visualizes constraints in terms of three overlapping criteria for successful ideas: feasibility (what is functionally possible within the foreseeable future), viability (what is likely to become part of a sustainable business model), and desirability (what makes sense to people and for people).
Continuous improvement	Ongoing effort to improve the quality of products, services, or processes
Convergent thinking	Follows a particular set of logical steps to arrive at one solution, which in some cases is a “correct” solution. It focuses on coming up with the single, well-established answer to a problem. Convergent thinking emphasizes speed, accuracy, and logic and focuses on recognizing the familiar, reapplying techniques, and accumulating stored information. It helps to prioritize opportunities, model benefits, and refine concepts.
Course embedded assessment	Using student work that is already part of a course.
Direct assessment	Assessment that requires students to demonstrate their achievement directly from their work.
Divergent thinking	Divergent thinking is a thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. It focuses on discovery and observations, forecasting, and identifying opportunities. Divergent thinking typically occurs in a spontaneous, free-flowing manner, such that many ideas are generated in an emergent cognitive fashion. Many possible solutions are explored in a short amount of time, and unexpected connections are drawn. After the process of divergent thinking has been completed, ideas and information are organized and structured using convergent thinking.
Dynamic thinking	Has long been focused on the process. It looks to the HOW question, for the necessary answer to define the whole.
Formative assessment	Assessing student learning over time; provides information about how well students are progressing toward the program’s expectations.
IACBE	International Assembly for Collegiate Business Education
Indirect assessment	Assessment of student learning that is based on opinion. Used alone, it is not an adequate assessment of individual student learning. Examples: Grades, GPA, graduation rates, retention, employer surveys, student surveys, alumni surveys.
Integrative thinking	Balances tensions between opposing variables. Follows a four-step process: salience—seeks to define the relevant aspects of a problem. Causality—seeks to determine the relationships between related and seemingly unrelated parts of the problem. Architecture—model creation that keeps the whole in mind while working on individual parts. Resolution—creative resolution. Steps are linked backwards and forwards.
Lateral thinking	Solving problems through an indirect, creative, out-of-the box approach.
Learning outcomes	Concise, measurable statements of what a graduate should know, be able to do, or how to behave as a result of their course work and educational experience.
Means of assessment, criteria for success	The “when,” “how,” and “how well” of assessment activities. When will assessment activities take place? Where will the program find information that will reflect accomplishment of an objective? How will assessment be accomplished? How well should the program be performing on the objects selected? When with the program discuss processes and results?
Mindmap	Brainstormed visual of a complex problem. Can be hand drawn or done using software.
Prototype	Draft of combined ideas. Can be a sketch, a process layout, model or any representation of the combined ideas into a new view or understanding.
Reflective conversations	Sharing experiences and stories to understand the dynamics of engagement with an issue, process, or institution.
Rubric	A tool that divides an assignment into the critical elements to be examined and provides detailed descriptions of what constitutes acceptable or unacceptable levels of performance for each element.
Scenarios	Imagined future based on different possibilities, innovations, or changing circumstances. Allows for inclusion of qualitative factors that can be difficult to formalize and for novel responses to changing events.
Stakeholder map	Defines roles and visualizes their relationships. Presents a network view of the dynamics in the human system of the issue/organization.
Storyboard	Captures experience, synopsis of an idea. Is consolidated into short statements with visuals—one per frame.
Standardized exam	Assessment where conditions of administration and scoring are constant.
Summative assessment	Measurement of student learning at the end of a program or course of study.
Synthetic thinking	It refers to a combination of two or more entities that together form something new—a new unified whole resulting from the combination of different ideas, influences, or objects. By defining a system by its outcome, synthesis put the subject in the context of the larger system of which it is a part and then studies the effects it produces in its environment.
Worldcafé	A flexible format for hosting large group conversations focused on a question of interest. Multiple rounds of small group conversations that are aggregated into a response to the question.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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