Course sprints: Combining teacher training, design thinking and hackathons

Abstract

In this work we present a teaching support action - Course Sprint - for the design and implementation of a course in a new virtual classroom. A Course Sprint is an intense and collaborative activity that brings together educators and instructional designers experts in teaching and learning technologies. The main objective is to create or redesign a set of learning activities considering the defined learning objectives and competences in the teaching program using creative thinking. The need of such an activity originated with the deployment of a new learning environment: how to get teachers to adopt this updated virtual environment for teaching and learning? The new classroom is activity-centered as opposed to calendar-centered and, therefore, requires teachers to change the design of the course and the learning activities. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.