Improving School Experience Through Design Thinking

Changes and uncertainties have become the highlight of everyone’s life in the 21st century. It is unavoidable that agility becomes the survival kit, specifically in how society, economics, technology, and job requirements have been going. Thus, education must respond by providing services and upgrading their outcome learning to match today’s labor market. Prior to the emergence of COVID-19, Madrasah, as an Islamic School regulated under The Ministry of Religion of Indonesia, was facing many challenges. Through the case study as methodology, this paper chooses two Madrasah (Islamic schools), namely SMK Ma’arif 3 Kebumen and MAN 2 Cianjur, which have had various achievements by producing student work that is relevant to products in today’s digital era as research object to observe how complex challenges are faced. This paper uses a design thinking approach to understand how all the challenges meet the solution. This paper presents the challenges and alternative solutions of research objects in improving schools to remain relevant to the current world. The result shows that both schools have high achievement in improving school experiences in terms of four improvement sectors with key strategic ways such as foreign language programs, teachers support, project-based examination policy, and third party involvement.