Design thinking is a hot topic in education from elementary school to continuing professional education in a wide variety of industries. According to IDEO, a global design firm and one of the key players in this space, design thinking is “a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer's toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” While not dramatically different than other approaches to creative problem solving, the focus on empathy, rapid prototyping and iteration make design thinking highly relevant in courses and programs that attempt to encourage innovative thinking.

Interest in design thinking in higher education in particular has exploded in recent years. I was introduced to design thinking through Professor Michael Luchs from the Mason School of Business at the College of William & Mary. In this Luminaris podcast episode, Luchs explains why design thinking resonates with him and how he leverages the approach in a course he teaches on Sustainability Inspired Innovation and Design. Since their initial forays into design thinking, the Mason School has launched the Jim and Bobbie Ukrop Innovation and Design Studio – an amazing space that encourages innovation and creativity. Under the guidance of Mason professor Graham Henshaw, we recently engaged in a design thinking bootcamp to help reimagine a more student-centered approach to high school.

Just as with personalized learning, it can be difficult to wade through the myriad resources available online to learn more about design thinking. In this post, I wanted to provide a quick annotated list of resources related to design thinking that I’ve found helpful. Like in the personalized learning post, I hope that these resources will help to get you started on your own exploration of this engaging approach to innovation and problem solving.

Curated list of design thinking resources
Design Thinking – A Unified Framework for Innovation – In this article from Forbes written by Reuven Cohen, readers are introduced to design thinking. Cohen walks us through his three-day bootcamp experience at the Stanford d.school. This walkthrough of engaging in a substantive design thinking experience really provides some insights on the process from a participant’s perspective.

Virtual Crash Course in Design Thinking – Offered through the d.school at Stanford, this toolkit provides everything you need to host a design thinking short course using the design thinking methodology. The site provides step-by-step instructions on how to prepare for the short course, a playbook for facilitators, videos, and sets of really interesting “mixtapes” to go for a deeper dive into understanding and experimenting.

Design Thinking for Educators – IDEO has created this helpful toolkit for educators to integrate design thinking in their teaching. The site provides a great overview of IDEO’s approach to design thinking, four great examples of design thinking in schools, a number of high quality videos, and a free design thinking toolkit. While designed for K-12 teachers, the toolkit can be useful for educators at all levels to create design thinking activities for the classroom.

IDEO U – IDEO has designed and offers three online courses exploring different aspects of design thinking. While I haven’t taken any of the courses, given the high quality of IDEO’s materials and deep expertise in design thinking, I’m sure they will be good.

Design Kit: Facilitator’s Guide – This free, online course will equip you to offer your own design thinking workshop. The outcome of this asynchronous course is that you will develop the plan for a full-day, hands-on, introductory workshop for 5-20 participants on design thinking. The Facilitator’s Guide includes all of the materials you’ll need as well. I’m looking forward to beginning this experience in early February.

What resources have you found useful for design thinking?
Please post your comments below.

A career in higher education affords a significant amount of autonomy and flexibility. My friends in other fields marvel at the freedom and perceived quality of life that faculty can enjoy. The strange thing is for me and several other folks I know, we tend to fill up this time with projects, research, redesigning a class and more. So while the structure of our jobs may provide the space to “think deep thoughts,” enjoy meaningful conversations over coffee with our students, travel to connect with colleagues around the world, in reality the typical response to how things are going is either “busy” or “crazy busy.”
 
In other words, while we should have considerable “margin” in our lives, we often take on so much that we lose this wonderful benefit of the academy. Dr. Richard Swenson, author of Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives, defines margin as “... the space between our load and our limits. It is the amount allowed beyond that which is needed. It is something held in reserve for contingencies or unanticipated situations. Margin is the gap between rest and exhaustion, the space between breathing freely and suffocating” (p. 69). Margin is essentially the emotional and mental space we need to make the kinds of contributions we all hope to make in higher education.
 
Why is margin important and yet so hard to maintain?
Maintaining margin is important for our health. Limited margin leads to increased stress and, in extreme cases, mental and physical exhaustion. When our margin is limited, so are our natural reserves. When we’re over-scheduled, overwhelmed, and just plain worn out, we can’t be at our best. We can’t think clearly, be fully present with our students or colleagues, and simply cannot contribute what we’re capable of.
 
I think working in academia is a little like eating at a really good buffet. It seems like everywhere you turn there’s a great opportunity. Maybe it’s an invitation to contribute a chapter to a book a colleague is editing. It might be a request from a student to work with you on an independent study. It might be a request from your Dean or a foundation representative to write a concept paper for a project you’d like to launch. The challenge is, each time we say yes to a new opportunity, we not only reduce our margin, we also limit our future options. We really need to be more conscious of what we say yes to.
 
How can we restore some margin in our lives?
Maintaining margin isn’t something I’m great at, unfortunately. When I read Swenson's book, however, I recognized the importance of making changes. Below you’ll find five of his strategies I’ve been working on and enjoying some success with. I hope they inspire you!

1. Take a walk. When I’ve had a busy day and need to shift gears to teach a class, meet with a student or attend an important meeting, I try to get outside for a 15-minute walk. Fortunately, we have a beautiful walking path behind our building. Just these 15 minutes outdoors in nature helps me to clear my head and return to whatever is waiting for me with renewed energy, clarity and focus.
2. Turn off notifications. If you’re like me, you frequently work on your computer, tablet and/or phone. Your devices attempt to alert you to all manner of updates – a text message, an email, a Twitter message, etc. Most apps have notifications turned on by default. The result is a seemingly never-ending stream of beeps, buzzes, and alerts. Turn off all but the most critical. There’s no need to be continually interrupted and further reminded of all there is to do. Trust me, they’ll wait for you.
3. Schedule time to read. We all need to read to stay on top of new developments and contributions in our fields. Unfortunately, this is the kind of activity that while important, isn’t urgent. Consequently, it’s easy to put this off in favor of doing more time sensitive or pressing tasks. The solution? Put it on your calendar. Schedule reading time at least a few times a week – preferably when you know your creative energies will be low. For me, this is late afternoons, especially at the end of the week. Once it’s scheduled, don’t put it off. Consider it a commitment to yourself and your personal development.
4. Reserve white space on your calendar. Whether you use a paper-based calendar or a digital version, it’s easy to see when your unscheduled time is shrinking. It’s critical to reserve some white space in your calendar – both as a buffer when appointments or meetings go longer than planned, and as a means to provide you with needed breaks. If you have to, block out some time each day as downtime. I even use a white label on my Exchange calendar so that it reminds me that I have some breathing room.
5. Get your rest. We live in an always-connected world. We could literally work 24 hours a day with the Internet and access to our files from anywhere. Getting good rest (shoot for 7-8 solid hours a night), taking time off, and disconnecting from email, students, and colleagues from time to time is critical. While it can be difficult at first to set these kinds of boundaries, it’s critical for us to maintain our margin.
   
   

How else do you maintain margin in your life?
Please post your comments below. 

Like you, I imagine, I read a lot of documents, including journal articles, student assignments, documents from Web sites, and even digital books. For me to process the information effectively, I find that I need to mark them up. In fact, before I got my first iPad and nubby stylus, I preferred printed copies of documents for this reason. I felt like if I couldn’t highlight ideas and add my own notes, I wasn’t really getting the most out of them.
 
Of course, printed documents have limitations. First, there’s the simple cost of printing. You then need to organize and store the printed documents somewhere. And invariably, I always need to review my notes on a document when I don’t have it physically with me. For all these reasons, I prefer digital annotations and notes. Fortunately over time, apps that enable users to mark up and annotate digital documents have improved greatly. Then, either within the app, or via a cloud storage service like Box or Dropbox, you can organize your documents in folders that can then be accessed on any device.
 
My history with digital annotation
Over the years, I’ve tried a range of tools, devices and apps to annotate documents. One of the earlier tools I remember using for this purpose was the Kindle DX. The large format of the device (9.7 inches) and the ability to highlight text and even type notes was promising. Unfortunately, the rather clunky highlighting interface, awkward keyboard, and extreme difficulty in accessing notes later turned me off.
 
With the release of the iPad, though, the options and capabilities improved drastically. Dozens of apps are available – some for free like Adobe Reader, and others that cost anywhere from $2.99 to $9.99. Of course, each has different features and a unique look and feel. I'm sure I’ve used them all at one point or another. In fact, when I look back through my download history, it looks like I’ve tested about 12 different PDF annotation tools.
 
Key features
When you search for an app, particularly when there are a number of alternatives available, it helps to know what you’re looking for. You might have different needs, but for me, I want:

• a really intuitive interface that makes scrolling through pages easy and fast.
• the ability to make both highlights and handwritten notes.
• an easy way to share annotated files via email.
• connections with cloud services so that I can easily get documents into and out of the app.
• an easy way to see and review the annotations I’ve made and link back to the original text.

 
The following three apps both meet my criteria and I’ve found work very well. The reviews below are by no means exhaustive, but I hope they’ll help provide at least some guidance as you select one of these or begin to continue your search for the ideal app.
 
Adobe Acrobat Reader
Acrobat Reader is a simple, but effective free annotation app. The interface makes it easy to read documents and add simple annotations, including highlighting text and adding typed notes. You can also securely sign documents as well. Adobe offers a free Adobe Cloud service to store your documents. A variety of in-app purchases allow users to convert PDF’s to Word or Excel documents, create PDF’s, etc. All in all, while somewhat basic in its free version, Reader is a good app to help you get started annotating PDF’s.

LiquidText
LiquidText is a relatively new entry in the document annotation marketplace. In many ways it’s similar to Acrobat Reader, with a different approach to viewing your notes and highlights. One interesting feature is the ability to take a snapshot image of a portion of a document as a highlight, which is great for more graphic intensive documents. Each of the highlights you make in a document are “popped out” to the margin outside the document itself.

This view provides a great way to review the various notes and annotations you’ve made throughout a document. If you want to view the context for a particular note, just click on the bubble in the margin, and it takes you directly to that portion of the document. It also provides a nifty feature that allows you to “pinch” two portions of a document together to compare different sections. You can also reorder, arrange and even link multiple notes or highlights in the margin to help you to synthesize the content. Honestly, this one app I’m still trying to get my head around, but it’s a really innovative approach that’s unique to this app. To really get a sense for how LiquidText works, I suggest you watch this video overview.
 
iAnnotate PDF
In my review of the iPad Pro, I mentioned how much I enjoyed annotating PDF files on the device using PDF Highlighter.  I also really like iAnnotate PDF, a full-featured app that adds some useful additional features. It includes many of the features I mentioned in the first two apps above, plus several others. With iAnnotate, you can annotate not only PDF files, but also Word documents and PowerPoint slides. This comes in really handy for providing feedback on student work. You can modify the color and thickness of your highlighter or pen with a really quick and intuitive interface. You can open and save documents directly from a variety of cloud storage services including Dropbox, Box, Google Drive and OneDrive. One feature I find really useful that is unique to iAnnotate is the ability to email yourself a summary of annotations. All things considered, if you’re serious about using your tablet to annotate documents, the $9.99 price tag for iAnnotate is a real bargain.
 
What tools do you use to annotate and organize documents?
Please post your comments below. 

I try not to get too seduced by technology tools. It’s an occupational hazard, though, when your academic focus happens to be educational technology. I try to “keep my distance” in many respects, because my field has a long history of evangelism. Seymour Papert from MIT called it “technocentrism” to describe when one’s primary focus is on the technology rather than on teaching and learning. You have to be careful to avoid the “hammer in search of a nail” phenomenon.
 
When Apple announced the release of the iPad Pro back in November, I tried not to read the press releases or watch the introductory video. For the most part, I was successful in my avoidance. Then when it was actually released in December, I tried to avoid reading the myriad reviews. I didn’t fare as well there. And, when my Dean offered to loan me his iPad Pro setup, it was all over for me. I couldn’t help but dive in, explore the features and really try to understand how well this new device and related accessories would meet the needs of most academics. Please note, this won’t be an exhaustive or very technical review (find those here and here). I was just interested in seeing how it stood up to the main kinds of tasks academics might use it for.
 
First, what is the iPad Pro?
The iPad Pro is a really big iPad. So big it almost looks silly. If you have a standard iPad in front of you, imagine two of them side to side mashed together and you roughly have a sense of the size of this thing. It has a 12.9 inch screen, which is equivalent to “medium sized” laptops. If you’re used to working with an iPad (or especially an iPad mini) it seems “goofily” big. Interestingly, though, it’s still very thin and light – noticeably lighter than my 11-inch MacBook Air. The size certainly takes some getting used to, though.
 
One other way that it differs from either the iPad or iPad Mini is the power. This is a really, really fast device. You unlock it with a thumb scan on the home button. It’s so quick that you almost don’t need to consciously pause. Once logged in, an app like Microsoft Word launches instantly. Think about that. You can roll into a meeting, and in less than five seconds you can be logged in and typing in Word. Also unlike the iPad or Mini, Apple makes its own keyboard cover. I’m typing this review on that keyboard and I’ll tell you it’s almost as good as the excellent keyboard on my MacBook. I’ve been using a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 for a year or so and this keyboard (and whole experience) is heads and shoulders above. More than just a handy device to play a game, read a book, or watch a video, this is a serious computer.
 
It’s almost a laptop replacement
Let’s get this part out of the way. Nearly every review published since December tried to answer the question of whether the iPad Pro could replace your laptop. Honestly, as powerful as this is and with as many Apps available in the iTunes Store, it would still be difficult for most people to replace their laptop with an iPad Pro. For one thing, while you can link up with your cloud storage services (I have Dropbox, OneDrive and Box all linked and working smoothly), it can still be difficult to figure out how to get a file onto your device if you don’t live in the cloud, or get an attached file out of an email, edit it, and then send it back. All these things can be done, but you have to want to figure it out. This is one of those areas that doesn’t “just work” right out of the box.
 
That said, the Office applications (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook) are great on the iPad Pro. You can, of course, get these on your iPhone or iPad, but the larger screen and the keyboard cover make them much, much more useable. In fact, the experience is so good, I find myself picking the iPad up rather than my MacBook most of the time. The App Store is great for Apple devices. Compared with the relatively minuscule offerings for the Surface, you can find just about any app for the iPad Pro. Though many don’t yet take advantage of the larger screen as well as they might, I’m sure they will in time. 
 
All in all, if you find yourself mostly living in email, editing Word and PowerPoint documents, browsing the Web and using apps, the iPad Pro would probably work well for you – if you’re willing to figure out how to accomplish some things that you take for granted on your computer. For example, if you rely on sharing a lot of files via flash drives, need multiple monitors, edit lots of video, or record podcasts, while you can probably make this work, I’m not sure it would be worth the effort.
 
Document reading and annotating is a game changer
Most academics read a lot of documents. In a given week, I refer to several books, dozens of PDF files, read over students’ Word documents, and explore Web resources. All are amazing on the iPad Pro. Unlike a Kindle or typical tablet, you don’t need to squint to read the text or do a lot of scrolling to fit a reasonable page size on the screen. An A4 (letter-sized) document fits nearly perfectly on the screen. So, when you’re reading a PDF of a journal article on this device, it’s the perfect size. Same for Word documents. And for me, it’s so much more comfortable to read on a flat screen than on the monitor of a computer. Assuming you read a lot, this experience alone almost makes it worth purchasing.
 
When you add the Apple Pencil to the mix, it is like magic. When I’m reading something, to really understand it, I have to mark it up. I’ve been trying different PDF annotation apps and different styli for years on my iPad and for the last year on my Surface Pro. Nothing comes even close to writing on the screen compared with the Pencil. You can write with such precision that you can make legible handwritten notes on a PDF document as easily as writing on a piece of paper. Using an app like PDF Highlighter you can change from a pen to a highlighter, adjust the colors, etc. with a single button. It is an outstanding experience.
 
The other experience I really enjoy is handwriting notes in meetings and just to capture my ideas. Using the Pencil with an app like Apple’s built in Notes app, Evernote, or Penultimate is a great way to take, organize and store handwritten notes on your iPad Pro. With MyScript Memo you can even translate handwritten text into printed digital text. Even with my chicken scratch, this works great. The Pencil and these apps also enable me to do some Sketchnoting – which is all but impossible with a typical nubby stylis on a tablet. For me at least, this ability to interact with an excellent stylus on a tablet has me sold on this device.
 
Is it right for you?
I’d argue that the iPad Pro isn’t right for everyone. First of all, it’s expensive (they range from $799-1079). You also have to buy the keyboard and Pencil separately. This combined cost quickly climbs up to MacBook Pro or a nice Windows laptop price point quickly. But, I think if you value really great performance, an excellent touch interface, the ability to read and annotate full size documents very comfortably, then you’ll have to weigh the cost.
 
I think given how much reading, annotating and note taking I do, it will be painful for me to return this device to its rightful owner. I’m just hoping I can scrape together enough grant money to buy my own.

What do you think of the iPad Pro?
Please post your comments below. 

I’m working with a team here at William & Mary to design and facilitate a faculty seminar series on personalizing learning in our teaching. I’m really excited to be working with a faculty colleague from Modern Languages and two senior academic technologists to plan what we hope will be an energizing and productive experience. Our goal for the participants is for them to redesign a course syllabus or project to provide students with more choice and opportunities to personalize the learning experience. For faithful Luminaris readers, you won’t be surprised to hear that I’ll be working to weave in Universal Design for Learning principles throughout.
 
As we plan out the sessions, I’ve begun to do some background reading on personalized learning in higher education. I recently wrote about what higher ed can learn from K-12 in relation to personalized learning, but I’m just now digging into the topic from the higher ed perspective. In this post, I’ll summarize a few of my key “ah-ha” moments and finish with a selected reading list if you’re interested in digging deeper into the topic.
 
Key points related to personalized learning in higher ed
It seems to me that personalized learning is typically conceptualized a little differently in higher ed than in K-12. It seems that there is less emphasis on the instructional design side of things, with more emphasis on tools and structures in higher ed. Specifically, as I read through some of the following sources, the following major assumptions or areas of emphasis emerged:

• Personalized learning efforts allow students to move through a course, program or degree at their own pace.
• Courses and programs should be competency-based; this helps, in part, to bridge formal and informal learning experiences.
• Learning analytics connected with the course learning management system can help instructors track student progress, identify areas for further work, and ensure that students master relevant competencies.
• Adaptive learning software, while expensive, is critical to truly personalize the learning experience for students in online or hybrid courses.
• Personalized learning should open up multiple pathways for students to earn their degrees.

 
If one or more of these aspects of personalized learning is of interest to you, I encourage you to explore the following resources that I found helpful in understanding the basics and different aspects of the topic.
 
Selected readings to explore personalized learning in higher ed
What is Personalized Learning from Northern Arizona University provides a nice overview of the approach that has been recognized by a number of groups including Educause, the Gates Foundation and Next Generation Learning Challenges as an exemplary model. The page provides a nice overview of the model, including how their approach to personalization goes beyond more typical online learning approaches to personalization.
 
The Coming Era of Personalized Learning Paths by Peter Smith for Educause Review traces the historical development of personalized learning in higher education. He goes on to argue how powerful learning analytics and adaptive learning tools provide us the capacity to scale these approaches throughout higher education.
 
The ‘Personalization’ of Higher Education: Using Technology to Enhance the College Experience by Louis Soares for the Center for American Progress overviews how technology tools can help to personalize the learning experience for college students. Specifically, Soares explores how technologies can personalize how students interact with and learn from content, how they can identify courses in which to enroll, and how they can motivate students to persist in college.
 
Adaptive Learning Technologies by Brian Fleming for Eduventures explores one key component of technology-based personalization efforts: adaptive learning tools. The post highlights the key features of adaptive learning and features the work of the Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon as an example.
 
The Personalized Learning portal from Educause provides an excellent jumping off point to explore key topics and concepts related to personalized learning. Of the resources posted there, I particularly recommend 7 Things You Should Read about Personalized Learning, The Coming Era of Personalized Learning Paths, and the very cleverly named, Bigfoot, Goldilocks, and Moonshots: A Report from the Frontiers of Personalized Learning.

What readings would you add to the list?
Please post your comments below.