Desenvolvimento de processo de codesign para criação de novos serviços educacionais

Abstract

Technological development generates a plethora of new demands on schools, learners and educators. One of them is the proficiency in English, which offers benefits not only to society but also to individuals who become better able to acquire jobs and to advance in their careers. The English Proficiency Index (EPI, 2020) regards Brazilian population’s English skills as low and to enhance the current state of affairs educators must innovate and create new services. Codesign has the potential to be a viable alternative to seek innovation in this industry once it is defined as a novel way of creation in which both users and designer engage in a collaborative effort to generate and test ideas. Its process views the final users as partners who play active roles in the development of the technology that will be used in the future by them. The goal of this research was to use Codesign to generate new ideas for services in foreign language education by developing and validating a toolkit able to assist teachers and students to cocreate services for this line of activity. The effort of designing the toolkit consisted of reviewing activities used in design processes inside the North American tradition following its analysis and adaptation to make them meet the Codesign requirements related to active participation of final users. It was tested in an in-person workshop hosted by an independent foreign language school in João Pessoa, Brazil. The toolkit was successful in providing an innovative process to people who had not had any experience with Codesign in which they generated ideas in an efficient way and, by the end of this endeavor, they were able to create prototypes that were used and validated. It consists of a short handbook that provides instruction to the workshop facilitator, a slide deck to assist with visuals and handouts to the participants. The workshop will be offered as a service to the market and a Business Model Canvas were filled up taking into account the strategy of maintaining costs as low as possible and bootstrapping the investment necessary to grow.