Abstract
Purpose: The current study was conducted to evaluate academic advising services in a pharmacy college in Saudi Arabia. This will result in developing solutions to overcome the identified challenges. Methods: Design thinking method uses five steps: empathising, defining, ideating, prototypes and testing. Results: Several issues were identified with students: limited awareness of academic rules and regulations; work-family life imbalance; lack of trust in academic advising and emotional support; unfamiliarity with different learning strategies; and lack of social life at the university. Discussion and conclusion: This study provides a model for enhancing students’ experiences with academic advising. It suggested several prototypes that have proven to be effective in enhancing students’ experiences in university life and how to overcome challenges. The prototypes include a peer academic advising club, personal development workshop and a series of lectures on college rules and regulations.
Highlights
Design thinking is a problem-solving approach that gained popularity in various fields [1]
We report using design thinking framework to evaluate academic advising services in a pharmacy college in Saudi Arabia, better understand the challenges associated with academic advising and develop novel solutions to overcome the identified challenges
An empirical evaluation was conducted to understand the context of academic advising for undergraduate female pharmacy students using design thinking principles, adopted from Stanford University D-school [1]
Summary
Design thinking is a problem-solving approach that gained popularity in various fields [1]. Design thinking is defined as “a systematic approach that prioritises deep empathy for users’ desires, needs and challenges to fully understand a problem, with the aim of developing more comprehensive and effective solutions” [1]. It was explained as a human-centred innovation process that emphasises observation, collaboration, fast learning, visualisation of ideas, rapid concept prototyping and concurrent business analysis [2,3,4]. The first step is empathy where deep non-judgmental understanding of the end-user’s needs, desires and values is established This stage involves engaging, observation and empathising with humans to develop personal understanding of their experiences and motivations. The testing phase involves testing the alternative prototypes developed by obtaining feedback, and refining solutions [1]
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