Application of design thinking as a differentiation strategy for the education of gifted students: “City X”

This research aims to apply the City X Project as a 6-hour workshop for gifted students and evaluate the workshop. The study group consists of 25 gifted secondary school students (13 Female, 12 Male) who continue their education at the Science and Art Center (SAC) in a city center. During the application process, gifted students were introduced to the City X project, and information regarding the design thinking method was presented. The story of City X was provided to the students via a digital presentation. The given information was as follows: in the recent past, 40 people from the world were sent to a distant planet to form a colony and these people started to found City X city. City X citizens illustrate the specifics of the issues they face through "citizen cards" in many fields such as health, transportation, safety, and communication to the students and ask them for assistance in addressing the problems. The students are divided into 9 groups that have 2 to 3 participants using the game "Team Meter" during the execution of the workshop. Worksheets, a laptop or desktop computer with an internet connection, citizenship cards, a pen and paper were provided to each group to be used at each stage of the design thinking process. Students selected one of the citizenship cards and used the design thinking method to solve the problem written by the owner of the citizenship card. At the stage of empathy, they evaluated the emotions of the person they selected, and in the definition stage, they defined the social area of the problem raised by the City X citizen. The students later generated ideas for the solution of the specified problem, wrote their ideas on the worksheet, and picked an idea to prototype by group decision. The students prototyped their ideas during the prototyping and testing stages by drawing on the worksheet and completed their creations in various versions by providing feedback to each other. In the sharing stage, 2-dimensional drawings are transformed into 3-dimensional forms via Tinkercad and SketchUp programs. The 3D drawings were saved and submitted to the e-mail address of the City X administrator to be printed on the City X 3D printer. The worksheets used in the design thinking process, three-dimensional models, and the working dynamics of the groups were evaluated by students via Kahoot! web 2.0 tool. The criteria stated in the Kahoot! digital evaluation tools were scored in the range of 1-4 points. The views of students about the workshop were also collected verbally. The students reported that they enjoyed the process of design thinking, that they were pleased to do 3D drawings, that they wished to specialize in 3D design, and that they had several problems with teammates occasionally. One can suggest that the methods applied in the City X workshop can also be included in the course designs within the scope of STEM courses and design thinking methods can be adopted in SAC framework programs.