Power Up Your Economics & Personal Finance Instruction with Design Thinking!

Design thinking skills are creative, innovative problem-solving skills for the classroom, the workplace, and real life—and they’re exactly the kind of skills employers are seeking in new hires for today’s Innovation & Gig Economy. Even better, these entrepreneurial mindset process skills double as highly effective instructional strategies for teaching economics and personal finance concepts and reasoning skills while simultaneously developing workplace readiness. Join us for a fun, interactive webinar where we’ll break down the 5-step design thinking process by watching videos of teachers implementing design thinking in their classrooms, then unpack multiple design thinking examples geared toward middle and high school students. Teachers will brainstorm additional economics and personal finance problems that students care about—problems that design thinking helps solve—and identify where design thinking can be seamlessly integrated into their curricula to boost engagement and retention. Practical instructional strategies and free, classroom-ready resources will be shared to help successfully bring this next-level pedagogy to economics and personal finance classrooms. Real-world assessment strategies, including simple yet highly motivating Design Challenge friendly competitions, are included. Participants will also learn about the Online Entrepreneurship Institute for teachers and the aligned U.S. Entrepreneurship Certification Examination for high school students.