Pedagogy Apr 2023

The Twain Shall Meet

Timothy Ponce

Abstract

AbstractOn Wednesday, March 11, 2020, the author received an email that would change the course of his teaching for the following twenty-four months. The university-wide communication indicated that, due to the emerging COVID-19 crisis, all classes, activities, and university business was suspended, with the email further instructing faculty to wait at home for more details. As the author mulled over the educational shifts ahead of him, his training as a technical communicator—and more specifically his knowledge of user-experience (UX) and design thinking—kicked in, offering him a set of tools he could pull from as he sought to create courses that reflected the quickly shifting needs of his students. In this article, the author discusses how the use of design thinking expands the limited conversations about course co-creation, a practice that leads to more effective and equitable course designs. The author additionally uses his experience employing design thinking in the creation of his Shakespeare seminar course as a case study, demonstrating the value that the collaborative nature of design thinking has for pedagogy.

Journal
Pedagogy
Published
2023-04-01
DOI
10.1215/15314200-10295938
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Open Access
Closed
Topics
writing pedagogy curriculum design teacher development collaborative writing technical communication qualitative research
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (2)

  1. Coyle et al. (2026)
    Surveys as UXR: Using Design Thinking to Shape a Survey-Based UX Assessment for…
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  2. Tham (2025)
    Design Thinking in Business and Professional Communication Pedagogy: A Review o…
    Business and Professional Communication Quarterly

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CrossRef global citation count: 2 View in citation network → Build reading path →

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