Broadening non-designers' solutions for big issues: The Education DesignShop design thinking workshop

Education in America can benefit from innovation. Inventive thinking from a diverse array of people and experiences can help redefine and reinvent this important public mission. Hackathons are collaborative, short sprints that offer such collaboration opportunities. While usually coding marathons, hackathon-type events like the Education DesignShop have been developed to address broad, systemic issues, tools, and processes from design thinking. Two research questions are explored: How do non-designers transform into design thinkers? and How do educational projects address systemic changes? The Education DesignShop introduced new ways to collaborate and form sustainable solutions. Eight key structural components are identified around just-in-time modules teaching design thinking in an educational context. Projects from the Education DesignShop show a larger number of designerly attributes and are farther along Anderson's Continuum of Systemic Change. Policy implications suggest ways to support further propagation of design thinking to address problems around education.