What's happening: Students in the Design Thinking course at Ramsey High School completed their Spring 2024 partnership challenge on May 20th when they presented their "Final Pitch" to a team of professionals at Stryker in Mahwah.
Each semester, students in the Design Thinking class partner with an outside organization to tackle a "real world, messy" challenge which the partner organization is facing. They apply a human-centered, empathy-based problem solving approach to the challenge in order to gain deep insights into the challenge and generate innovative solutions to help the partner.
Why it Matters: At its core, Design Thinking is a process that develops students' creative problem-solving skills, which are highly valued in the modern world and a key piece of the Profile of a Ramsey Graduate. Ramsey's Design Thinking course is an innovative way in which we foster innovation and creativity with our students.
In addition, by working with an outside partner, students in the class gain great experience in how to collaborate and work in a professional setting.
The big picture: The RHS Design Thinking course, the first of its kind in New Jersey, is based upon Stanford University's d.school, teaching students how to use Human Centered Design Thinking to solve an array of problems. After spending the first six weeks of the course in a Design Thinking "boot camp," students in the class are partnered with an outside company or organization in order to help them solve a real problem which they are facing.
