Study On The Design Of Digital Course In Universities For The Development Of Innovative Thinking

Innovation is the primary driving force behind development;it is the strategic underpinning for building a modernized economy.Creative thinking is one of the most important dispositions that the students in modern society must have.With the development of ICT in education in China and the promotion of digital courses,researchers and practitioners have started to focus on cultivating students' creative thinking through designing and implementing digital courses in colleges and universities.With the purpose of cultivating college students' creative thinking in the context of digital course construction,the study seeks to explore the methods and strategies of digital course design with the purpose of improving students' creative thinking.The study employed a mixed method,using literature review,content analysis,questionnaire,interview and deductive approach.First,the study investigated the current status and needs of learning through digital courses;next,the design model of the digital course was developed based on the theories of digital course development and creative thinking development;on the basis of the model,the contents and methods of curriculum design of college digital courses were developed and the study applied the model and methods to the digital course design of “Mechanical Design”;finally,the results from the questionnaires and interviews show that the design have a positive effect on the development of students' creative thinking.The dissertation comprises four parts:I.Construction of the design model of college digital courses aiming to develop creative thinkingThrough analyzing of the theories of creative thinking and digital courses,and the current status and practical needs of the college digital courses,the study constructed a course design model characterized by “three levels and nine steps” to clarify the logic of the digital course design.The three levels are “defining learning outcome”,“reversing course design” and “designing support and encouragement”.II Introduction of contents and methods of college digital courses aiming todevelop creative thinkingDrawing from the design model,the study systematically introduced the contents and methods of the course design,providing the framework to the design of a specific course.This part includes selection and classification of the contents,selection of teaching methods,design of learning tasks,design of learning activities,design of learning resources,design of learning evaluation and design of learning support and encouragement.III Design of the digital course of “Mechanical Design” aiming to improve creative thinkingTaking “Mechanical Design” as a case example,the study designed its digital course with improvement of students' creative thinking as the goal.The design followed the framework of content and method design and went through different stages of current status analysis,needs analysis,definition of the learning output,design of the reverse course,and support and encouragement.IV The analysis the implementation effects of college digital courses aiming to develop creative thinkingThe study adopted questionnaires and interviews to collect the data and analyzed the data with data processing software such as SPSS.Through the correlation analysis,the development of students' creative thinking was found to be positively related to the design contents and methods.Furthermore,the design of tasks,activities and teaching methods had significant impact on the development of creative thinking.The results not only confirm the effect of the design and implementation of the digital course but also offer guidance and reference to the theory and practice of the design of college digital courses aiming to develop creative thinking.