Design thinking for AI integration in a leadership course

Purpose This study aims to explore the possibilities and implications of artificial intelligence (AI) in Educational Technology through the lens of design thinking (DT) theoretical framework. DT guides this study through five processes: emphasize, define, ideate, prototype and test. This research presents the process of developing a lesson plan with ChatGPT, an AI chatbot that uses natural language processing to respond to a user's prompts and produce humanlike conversational dialogue. Design/methodology/approach DT (Figure 2) as a human-centered approach to innovation is one of the teaching methods as well as a course design methodology in academia (Ward et al., 2009; Zupan et al., 2023). The primary reason for the usage of DT is because it is the process of seeking to understand the points of view of others such as students. DT has a total of five steps that flow as a cyclical process: empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test. During the process from empathy to test, “re-iterating and re-thinking” are extensively used to improve prototypes and to create a quality outcome. Findings This study employed DT as a framework to explore a course designed for educational leaders by utilizing ChatGPT. As an interactive iterative process, empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test were the five processes that this study followed. To empathize with educational leaders, an empathy map was used based on the categories: Says, Thinks, Does and Feels in the real-life-based scenarios that educational leaders shared. Accordingly, four real case scenarios having real issues that came from educational leaders were analyzed by the authors based on what they say, what they think, what they do and how they feel. Research limitations/implications One limitation of this study is that the feedback was received only by instructors. Instructors' feedback was extensively utilized to create the final version, but according to DT, any final product can always be improved by inviting current users, who will be both instructors and students in this case. Since the final users of the lesson included both instructors and students, it would be beneficial for future research to invite students who have learned through this lesson plan to provide their feedback. This would allow us to bring more diverse perspectives, leading to a better final outcome. Practical implications Overall, while ChatGPT provided rapid suggestions based on the prompts, the input needs to be curated by experts as the output is carefully appraised to ensure optimum applicability to the course syllabus and to ensure the students receive comprehensive training in applying the course contents. Originality/value This study suggests innovative practices by utilizing features of AI related to ChatGPT in supporting a leadership course. The study extensively used ChatGPT in the DT process: empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test. This study suggests possibilities for using AI so that practitioners can generate their ideas by leveraging ChatGPT for their benefit.