Design thinking for innovative internationalisation of HE

When it comes to the internationalisation of higher education, most of the landscape in which we have been operating is now a thing of the past. That landscape was already partly a mirage, as John Hudzik recently reminded us, but it was thrown into complete disarray by the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the disruption happened, the challenge leaders now face in charting a way forward is not so much to think disruptively, but to learn how to see our present landscape with new eyes.

Hudzik challenges us to shape a new future by institutionalising “self-examination, innovation and open-mindedness”. This is good advice for addressing the changed circumstances we face in all aspects of our lives. But how can international education leaders apply these concepts in our work?

Self-examination

Now is the time to be transparent about why we internationalise in the first place. For decades, the dialogue about internationalisation has been polysemic – different stakeholders within and across institutions and geographies assign different meanings to the same concepts. This has often led to muddled strategic plans and poor outcomes.

While one person reads the practice of ‘international recruitment’ as ‘increasing diversity’, another sees it as ‘increasing the bottom line’. Some view ‘international research’ as a way to ‘increase quality’, while others think ‘increase ranking’.

There are many reasons why we internationalise and no reason is inherently good or bad, right or wrong. We may be attracted to internationalisation to make teaching and learning more relevant; educate for global citizenship; prepare students for a globalised job market; grow revenue, reputation and ranking; or enhance research and community engagement.

Whatever our reasons, they determine how we perceive and address the opportunities and tools available to us. Future methods of internationalisation, as with the past, will be driven by the ‘why’. Those attracted to internationalisation as a means of increasing the bottom line may retreat and retrench until more profitable pathways reveal themselves. Those who internationalise for other reasons have already looked for and found ways to innovate.

Innovation

If we are going to institutionalise innovation, we need to employ practices that make innovative thinking part of our regular organisational practice. You don’t have to do away with old ways of doing things entirely in order to generate and adopt new ones, but you do need to combine parts of the old and new in ways previously deemed unfathomable.

To do this, we have to challenge assumptions and forge new connections. There are tried and true ways of leading people through the process of novel solution-making, and one is design thinking.

Design thinking is a human-centred approach to problem solving. Design thinking starts with self-examination and gaining an empathetic understanding of people’s lived experience of a challenge. The next step is to synthesise findings and insights into a new definition of the problem, one that clarifies who the solution will serve and what people need to achieve the outcomes that are most meaningful to them.

Human-centred definitions inspire out-of-the-box thinking and innovation because they focus attention on fulfilling people’s deepest needs. This helps us suspend our infatuation with our traditions in favour of supporting the well-being of our students, faculty and community.

Let’s just take the design thinking challenge of conducting study abroad as an example. What do students really want from their study abroad experience? What are the catalysts and obstacles they face in their efforts to achieve these goals, both at home and abroad? What other tools do we have at our disposal to help students reach their goals, especially when international mobility is not an option?

Human-centred design thinking requires us to stop “defending the old and familiar”, as Hudzik asks us to do, and open our minds to a world of new ways to help people get what they really need and value.

Open-mindedness

Being open-minded doesn’t necessarily mean being clear-headed. When we are open to diverse and divergent ideas, things can get dissonant and confusing very fast. The third stage of design thinking, ideation, involves brainstorming wide-ranging solutions that go beyond the obvious and expected.

Some people thrive on ideation in any context, but others find this stage uncomfortable and will avoid it altogether, especially if it’s possible to scrape by by simply carrying on with old practices. Right now, scraping by and carrying on are not an option. We have no choice but to ideate if we want to achieve our purposes in the near- and long-term.

What’s more, we have to move beyond ideation into the final stages of design thinking: prototyping, testing and iterating new solutions.

If leaders truly want to design an innovative internationalised future for higher education, we need to cultivate curiosity and creativity in ourselves and others. We need to encourage even the most seemingly outlandish methods of connecting people and their ideas across borders. To the extent that resources are available, we must support the new ideas that excite our constituencies the most – even if they make us feel a little uncomfortable and wistful for the old.

This kind of courageous leadership is critical because it will produce a key ingredient for progressive change that Hudzik left out of his recipe, and that is hope. Hope is our ability to envision a positive future even when we have little or no control over our present circumstances. Hope fuels experimentation and persistence. And hope is what we need most to help us keep internationalising now and into the foreseeable, and unforeseeable, future.

Stephanie Doscher is director of the Office of Global Learning Initiatives, Florida International University, United States.