Design Thinking as a means to innovative product development in adult learning Erasmus Project

Project Title

Design Thinking as a means to innovative product development in adult learning

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development); New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The aim of the D-LEARNING project was to adapt and transfer the methodology of Design Thinking into adult learning institutions, providing educators with a state-of-the-art methodology to support the development of high quality learning opportunities and educational products (such as didactic materials, e-learning environments, educational games and more).

Design Thinking is a tested methodology for the practical and creative resolution of problems with the intent of producing a constructive result for the future. With the application of this tested methodology as a human-centric approach to innovation that allows for a deeper understanding of the customer’s issues, the project has strongly contributed to a better performance of adult learning offers as regards usability and acceptance by learners, thus making these offers more effective and efficient. Additionally, by applying the D-LEARNING methodology, adult learning networks across Europe are enabled to develop shared educational products – like project results in Erasmus+ projects – at a higher level of quality, since the methodology allows combining the knowledge and experience of the project partners in a structured and results-oriented way.

The Design Thinking methodology has been fullly applied in the intellectual outputs of the project; furthermore, the different steps of the iterative Design Thinking process guided the partner organisations through the project lifetime: from empathising and defining during the implementation phase, to ideating and prototyping in the implementation phase, and to testing the outputs in the beginning of the final dissemination phase of the project.

Main outputs of the project are the D-LEARNING manual to Design Thinking in Adult Education, and the D-LEARNING workshop guide addressing adult educators and decision makers in adult learning institutions and training them basically in the application of the methodology. All results are translated in six different languages (English, German, Italian, Danish, Greek, Macedonian), and published as open educational resources (OER) under a creative commons international licence (CC-BY-SA). They are available on-line on the project website, the Erasmus+ project result database, and in the EPALE resource centre. The outputs have been tested in several local piloting activities in the partner countries.

The consortium brought together partners from different regions across Europe, combining experience in collaborating on the level of European cooperation with the broadest possible spectrum of activities in educational strategy and practice at local, national and transnational level.

Project Website

http://d-learning.vnb.de

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 226831,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

Verein Niedersächsischer Bildungsinitiativen e.V. & Country: DE

Project Partners

• CESIE
• Videnscenter for Integration
• Eco Logic
• SYNTHESIS CENTER FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATION LIMITED
• VEREIN MULTIKULTURELL
• Compass – Beratung, Begleitung und Training Gemeinnützige GmbH