The best learning is through teaching!

?????? ???????? ???????????????? ???? ?????????????? ????????????????! This is the testimony that I am proud of sharing based on my own experience. The learning outcomes of my students shall tell more than any professional certificate I would receive to demonstrate my expertise on #DesignThinking. Don't you agree with?;) Instead of a certificate, I have this group photo with my students who just won the First Prize and the Third Prize at a pitch competition in 2021. This photo carries much more values in documenting my professional growth, as well as realizing my purpose. I am writing this blog to share how I learn the most through teaching, as my part-time work. Taking this opportunity, I would also like to call for more professionals to join teaching/training/mentoring young people in the sake of supporting education and your own professional development.

In August 2021, I first received a call from American University of Central Asia with the request to teach their students as a Professor Associate. They recognized my work experience on social entrepreneurship (I served the Association of Social Entrepreneurs as a Chairperson previously) and my academic background on "Social Enterprise Administration" from Columbia University. Honestly saying, I was very hesitated to accept this invitation, because I have already my full-time job at the UNDP Accelerator Lab (focusing on innovations in development works). I had to acquire permission from my organization to conduct so-called "outside activities". HR manager told me that she had not seen any colleague taking a part-time job as a teacher in addition to our busy work schedule. Time is the No.1 challenge for me, even my family questioned about it.

There were a couple of factors contributing to my final decision. One of these was about challenging myself to learn more and faster. This working-from-home regime during the COVID-19 pandemic has already limited opportunities for me to get exposed to more innovations. I was holding a hope to learn from my teaching experience with students who do grassroots innovations. In terms of choosing what to teach - I politely rejected teaching the "Social Entrepreneurship", as this has become too comfortable for me after working six years in the field. I decided to take a challenge to teach "Design Thinking & Innovation". I faced the option to teach something in my full capacity, or to teach something I am myself interested in learning. I chose the later (and I'm glad that I made it;)

After confirming my decision, I had only one month to design a new curriculum with the list of reading materials for my students. Under the sense of strong responsibility, I broke my limit in reading! Within a month, I read 5-6 books and numerous teaching materials (after working hours) that I would not expect for myself! Besides books, I also looked through various video contents on teaching Design Thinking to design a better way of engaging students. I highly value resources from Stanford d.school Btw, I used #LinkedIn platform to ask for book recommendations. Many professionals have responded generously, including @Thomas Both, the Director of Designing for Social Systems at the Stanford D.School. Thomas shared the Design Project Guides of D.School, that I hope you find these useful, too: a) https://dschool.stanford.edu/resources/design-project-guide-1 b) https://dschool.stanford.edu/resources/design-project-scoping-guide

I can't thank them enough! Actually, this inspired me to make an open call at #LinkedIn to get connected to more educators and practitioners on Design Thinking & Innovation. I have proposed to the University to organize a forum for Educators to exchange our best practices in March 2022. This is another way for my learning - peer learning.

September month was the beginning of my teaching. Due to the COVID-19, almost all lectures were conducted online. I have students from Tajikistan & Afghanistan, who suffered from bad internet connection and turbulent political situations in this semester. I witness a growing learning gap among my students due to the digital divide and their sense of vulnerability. I realize that being a teacher is not only about delivering knowledge, but also about genuinely empathizing with students' needs and caring about their personal well being. How can I teach my students to be empathetic in Design Thinking, if I cannot empathize with them?! There is another long story about it, that I wish to share in the future.

In my curriculum design, I encouraged students to have peer learning - even to teach their peers. After my lecture, each team prepared their own peer learning session on each stage of Design Thinking (EMPATHIZE - DEFINE - IDEATE - PROTOTYPE - TEST). Once it came to teaching their peers, they became extremely responsible of the ways they delivered and engaged. They even designed quizzes to make sure their peers truly understood their "mini-lectures";)

After the mid-term, I sent my students to a "Real World Challenge", where they practiced Design Thinking with real businesses. Our business partners raging from the restaurant, hotels, bank, tourism, to a gender-based non profit organization reflect that Design Thinking can be applied in any sector. I kept reminding the three principles of good Innovation by Design: 1) Human desirability; 2) Business viability; 3) Technical feasibility. Students found this challenge extremely helpful, cause it helped them get out from the bubble at the university. Personally for me, this has been also very helpful, because I observed through my students how Design Thinking could be really applied in business practices in Kyrgyzstan. With my students' works, SheStarts organization is about to launch a new capacity building program for women entrepreneurs; Olive Hotel has testified their new software in the market. Businesses expressed their willingness to continue working with my students. The concept of "Design Thinking" is still quite new in Central Asia. This experience has inspired our business partners to learn more about it as well. I have already received a couple of requests from Businesses to provide additional workshops for them.

Gradually, from learning Design Thinking, teaching Design Thinking, to now providing capacity building for Businesses on Design Thinking...I wonder why I can't help my own organization UNDP. I am very glad to share with you that my Senior Managers of UNDP have presented great support on my initiative. On January 2022, I will be experimenting Design Thinking capacity building for one cluster team to test it under the UNDP context.

In results, on December 18, 2021, my first class of 24 students graduated with their incredible learning progress at the pitch competition organized by AUCA. My students won the First Prize and the Third Prize to realize their social enterprises with seed funding. I think the biggest advantage of my students is their capability to apply the Human-centric design approach to address needs of people. All my student teams have presented their prototypes, that they had turned their ideas into actionable solutions (compared to other teams presenting business plans). Throughout the semester, my students spent half of their time in the fields to study the needs of real people and to learn insights from real businesses. These are their keys to their success - Design Thinking!

In the end, I would like to share this last piece of learning experience. There are four-level of learning I identified:

1) ????????-?????????? ????????????????: you identify learning objectives, then you search for learning contents/information for your own knowledge building. You may not capture all key components in this field of learning as you are not aware of its systemic framework. The advantage is that you have your full autonomy to learn whatever you want to learn at anytime.

2) ???????? ????????????????: you identify learning objectives and you find a group of people who share the same learning interests and/or expertise that they can share for your mutual learning. The advantages are that you learn faster with your peers and you have this supportive network. Nevertheless, the credibility of your learning sources is not ensured.

3) ???????????????? ???????? ???? ????????????????????: a conventional learning model. You go to a school, a training center, an online platform (eg. Coursera, LinkedIn), or an instructor to ask for their help to provide a systemic learning program. The advantages are that you save time in designing your learning contents, and there is high credibility of your learning sources. But you are still a passive learner - you receive whatever is taught to you; you don't create. At most, you actively participate in class discussion and/or express your "creative parts" in assignments that are designed by an instructor.

4) ???????????????? ???????????? ???????????????: you need to incorporate both your theoretical knowledge and work experience into designing a learning program for other people! Becoming a better teacher requires continuous learning. Moreover, you have to instruct it in a way that other people can learn.

I would not expect that I could go this far, if I did not start my teaching experience. Within five months, I have grown so fast from learning Design Thinking, teaching Design Thinking, to promoting Design Thinking as a new way of Doing Business in Kyrgyzstan!

In a nutshell, I have become a

Design Thinking Evangelist!