Design Thinking and Service Learning: Fostering Innovation with a Purpose

The present work explores the pressing need to provide higher education students with meaningful learning strategies that help them understand the application of theory in practice. Service learning, a teaching methodology in which the application of theory to a real-life problem is explored, along with design thinking. Together these methodologies intend to better develop engineering competences while providing innovative solutions to the community. Assessment of the implementation of this methodology indicates that students following service learning understand better the implications of theory for practical settings than those involved in traditional teaching settings, like case studies. Moreover, interesting insights are found towards students' attitude to future engage in civic commitment that will require further investigation.