Applying empathy-driven participatory research methods to higher education new degree development
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/IDD-09-2018-0051 |
| Date | 01 March 2019 |
| Pages | 17-24 |
| Published date | 01 March 2019 |
| Author | Lisa Bosman,Abrar Hammoud,Sandhya Arumugam |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Library & information services,Lending,Document delivery,Collection building & management,Stock revision,Consortia |
Applying empathy-driven participatory
research methods to higher education
new degree development
Lisa Bosman, Abrar Hammoud and Sandhya Arumugam
Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA
Abstract
Purpose –Innovation and entrepreneurship are economic drivers promoting competition and growth among organizations throughout the world,
many of which would not exist without well-established new product development processes coupled with intent ional and strategic focus on
research and development. New product development processes, such as the lean start-up methodology and design thinking, are well-known and
thriving as a result of empirically grounded research efforts. Unfortunately, educational institutions and educa tional researchers, alike, are lagging
when it comes to new program/degree development processes. Although the quantity of new degree offerings has increased substantially over the
past several decades (in particular for multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary programs), limited research has been condu cted to
document key procedures associated with the creation of new degree programs. The purpose of this study is to show one approach to how students
can be involved within the new program development process.
Design/methodology/approach –This approach uses participatory research, wherein students act as researchers and actively participate in the
data collection and analysis process. Under the umbrella of participatory research, the study uses photovoice, photoelicitation and focus groups for
collecting qualitative data.
Findings –Results suggest that students in one transdisciplinary studies in technology program value the following key attributes: learning style
(agency and choice, active hands-on learning and real-world applications) and learning context (technology and design-focused ass ignments,
integration of humanities and self-selected disciplines of interest).
Originality/value –Recommendations are provided for various higher education benefactors of the user-generated data, including administration,
faculty, marketing, recruitment, advisors and the students themselves.
Keywords Innovation, Interdisciplinary, Photo-voice, Participatory research, New degree development, Student researchers
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
1.1 Problem identification
Innovation, design and entrepreneurship are economic drivers
promoting competition and growth to many for-profitfirms in
the USA, none of which would exist without well-established
new product development processes and an intentional and
strategic focus on research and development (Brown, 2009;
Drucker, 1998). New product development processes, such as
the lean start-up methodology and design thinking, are well-
known and thriving due to the vast amount of empirically-
grounded research(Sattayaraksa and Boon-Itt, 2016;Colombo
et al.,2015).
Unfortunately, educational institutions and researchers,
alike, are lagging when it comes to new program/degree
development processes. Although the quantity of new degree
offerings has increased substantially over the past several
decades (in particular for multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary,
and transdisciplinary programs), limited research has been
conducted to document key procedures associated with the
creation of new programs (Knight et al., 2013). Fortunately,
many new program developmentconcepts can be inferred from
the established new product development processes (Sweet
et al.,2017), such as gaining empathy in the human-centered
design process. Yet, due to the many stakeholders involved in
starting a new program (e.g. administration, faculty, staff,
students, industry) and the many facets differentiating higher
education from its industry counterparts, research and
guidance is necessary for educational institutions to effectively
and efficiently develop and/or improve cross-disciplinary,
value-addedacademic programs.
1.2 Prior approaches to solving the problem
Although limited processes and procedures are available to
higher education showing how new program development
should be done, there is a wealth of literature describing why
new program development is important, especially for new
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on
Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/2398-6247.htm
Information Discovery and Delivery
47/1 (2019) 17–24
© Emerald Publishing Limited [ISSN 2398-6247]
[DOI 10.1108/IDD-09-2018-0051]
This paper forms part of the special section “Higher education information
discovery, analytics, and dissemination”, guest edited by Mounir Kehal
and Dr Justin Zhang.
Received 30 September 2018
Revised 16 October 2018
13 November 2018
Accepted 23 November 2018
17
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