The design and examining of the effectiveness of an online project-based instruction to improve design thinking

The purpose of this research is to design an online, collaborative, project-based environment and process on the basis of constructivist learning to develop teachers' design thinking skills and to test the effectiveness in practice. In the research, design thinking skills were tried to be developed in the online environment with processes based on scenario writing and animation creation. Since there is a need for interdisciplinary collaborative work due to the nature of design thinking; It was conducted with a participant group consisting of 7 history, 7 geography and 8 social studies teachers and 6 teams. Teachers were given a total of 1080 minutes of online project-based design thinking instruction, out of 90 minutes per day, for 12 days in the summer term of 2019-2020 by the researcher. The research was designed with an embedded complex mixed methods research design. In the research; while quantitative data are collected at the beginning and end of the intervention, qualitative data are; collected before, during and after the intervention. In the study, as data collection tools, design thinking scale, material development guide evaluation scale, satisfaction form, study logbook, video recordings, web portal forum messages, semi-structured interview form were used. Prominent findings: Although ethical violations were experienced in the process, the design thinking scale's ethical dimension pre-test and post-test values were quite high; It has been determined that the quality of the team products developed makes a difference in the dimension of scientificness according to peer and instructive evaluation; At the end of the process, it has been seen that contributions to professional development such as being able to produce their own animation, a roadmap and project ideas for design thinking, interdisciplinary and teamwork, and increased self-confidence in the use of digital technology. It is thought that the findings of the research will contribute to the literature in terms of teaching design thinking.