Medical Library Education: Design Thinking
Librarians who are engaged in medical library education are often called upon to provide instruction on a host of topics in various surroundings before diverse patron groups such as doctors, nursing students, health care consumers, and others. Instruction in the library world can include—but is certainly not limited to—information literacy, database searching, controlled subject term searching, bibliographic instruction, and evidence-based medicine. Researching current educational trends inside and outside librarianship open up many avenues of instructional theory, including the concept of “design thinking,” which has apparently been plied across a multitude of disciplines from business to engineering, from technology to education, and more.
Design is a word that conjures up images of sketches and blueprints that illustrate an actual process, activity, or physical construct. While not exactly the same, design thinking embodies the spirit of such examples. At its core, design thinking is about solution-centric stratagies that promote analytical approaches to problem-solving. Analytical thinking can be described as the process of breaking down a larger problem into smaller, less complex subsets that can then be tackled in a piecemeal fashion and used to solve the original, wider issue [1].
In this vein, design thinking centers on collaborations involving well-plotted activities that eventually transition from conceptual or analytical phases into pinnacle stages that can include concrete plans, actions, and even assessment strategies that are supplied via an orchestrated, engaging, and imaginative process. A couple of notable models attached to the theory are the ADDIE model and the IDEO model. IDEO actually serves as the basis for a library tool kit designed chiefly for public library service. IDEO refers to such stages as “getting started,” “inspiration,” “ideation,” and “getting to scale,” while ADDIE consists of “analysis,” “design,” “development,” “implementation,” and “evaluation” [2].
The article, “The Importance of Design Thinking in Medical Education,” speaks to using the concept in relation to a health sciences environment, recounting an exercise focusing on discover, define, and develop phases [3]. The initial discovery phase resulted in formulating a set of problems common to medical students worldwide. During the next two phases, participants—of whom a significant portion were medical students—received input and guidance from educators as well as representatives from technology and marketing. Phases two and three culminated in a succession of tailor-made solutions that addressed the previously established problem set. A final delivery phase was slated for a later time.
The adaptability of design thinking and its ability to be modified to fit a host of scenarios is one of its strengths as is its emphasis on group creativity and collaborative problem-solving. Not only is design thinking a concept that can be utilized to assist library managers and staff in finding solutions to knotty problems in a day and age when flat budgets abound and when the fight for relevance is an ongoing struggle, but its potential to make learning fun and challenging is equally intriguing for librarians who are involved in instructional enterprises or services. It would be interesting to learn of some ways, if any, that librarians are currently using this concept in the health sciences.
References
- Tsalapatas H. Evaluating the use of programming games for building early analytical thinking skills. EAI Endorsed Transact Serious Games. 2015 Nov;2(6):1–6. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4108/eai.5-11-2015.150610.
- Bartlett JA. New and noteworthy: design thinking in libraries. Libr Leadersh Manag. 2018 Aug;32(4):1–6. (Available from: <https://journals.tdl.org/llm/index.php/llm/article/view/7326>. [cited 5 Jan 2019].)
- Badwan B, Bothara R, Latijnhouwers M, Smithies A, Sandars J. The importance of design thinking in medical education. Med Teach. 2018 Nov;40(4):425-6. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0142159X.2017.1399203.