Abstract:

Students today have a wide range of assistance systems at their disposal, which promise them orientation in various aspects of university life: Lecture capture apps, revision apps, exam prep apps, student planner apps, bibliography helper apps, and budget planner apps. Only very few of these systems pursue a broader approach of supporting students’ everyday life with a specific focus on the ability to self-regulated studying and learning. The research project “Study individualization through digital, data-based assistants” (SIDDATA), in which a tool is developed, has the overall goal of supporting students in defining and pursuing individual educational goals. Target dimensions are furthering the ability for self-regulated study, self-monitoring and promoting study individualization. For this purpose, previously unlinked data are integrated within a digital study assistant.

In order to explicate this idea of SIDDATA and to develop long-lasting solutions for the students, workshops were held at three university locations in Germany, which we developed based on the design thinking approach (HPI 2020). Design Thinking aims to come up with innovative ideas and solutions using tight time boxing and fast idea cycles. The central momentum is user centricity. A specific problem, the so-called challenge, is reflected and solved with regard to a specific user type in order to achieve the greatest possible acceptance of the future customer.

The challenge in a project like SIDDATA is that it will be implemented at full universities which are characterized by a very diverse student body. However, our student workshops show the positive effect of working with personas in terms of the breadth and diversity of the ideas generated. We developed the personas for our workshops along the student life cycle (SLC) and differentiated five personas, which were then visualized in male and female form and integrated into the workshop concept with a short narrative description.

The five types are the following ideal types (Gerhardt 2001):
- student in the early stages, first generation student
- student in transition from bachelor to master or job employment
- student successfuly engaged in the middle study phase with interest in a stay abroad
- incoming guest student
- student that has changed subject and university

The workshop concept was that students should start with a short description of how SIDDATA could help them in their studies. Then the personas were introduced and the students could exchange ideas about a chosen persona in small groups. In the following workshop round solutions for the chosen persona were developed.

In this phase a couple of interesting aspects were observed:
- The proposals had nothing to do with the proposals mentioned before. The workshop design actually encouraged the participants to think beyond their own experiences and to arrive at different solutions.
- Depending on the persona chosen in the groups, different solutions developed.
- Over the course of four workshop rounds, a multitude of ideas have come together which will be presented and evaluated in more detail.
- Although the workshops were purely virtual contrary to the approach originally intended, the atmosphere was highly productive.

With respect to technology in teaching and learning the presentation will address Creativity and Design Thinking in times of crisis by presenting the innovative character of persona in design-thinking workshops and its results.

Keywords:

Digital study assistant, design based thinking, requirements engineering.