Abstract
Introduction Course redesign in higher education is often guided by informal impressions rather than traceable classroom evidence. This study examined how routine classroom observation records can support teacher-led diagnosis and course redesign in design-thinking-oriented innovation courses in Chinese higher education. Methods Using a teacher action research design, we drew on a broader corpus of 111 observation records from 42 class groups. We analyzed a comparable baseline subset of 98 pre-redesign records together with 13 post-redesign follow-up observations from the same class groups and comparable module types. Descriptive analysis summarized attendance, comprehensive engagement, classroom atmosphere, and interaction quality. Thematic analysis of open-text observation fields identified recurring instructional issues and informed redesign decisions. Results The baseline data showed consistently higher attendance than active engagement and only moderate interaction quality. Four recurring issues were identified: insufficient contextual relevance, limited interaction diversity, inadequate discussion scaffolding, and misaligned task pacing. These findings were translated into redesign strategies that strengthened engineering-related case use, peer interaction, questioning opportunities, prompts, and task sequencing. The follow-up observations suggested descriptive upward trends in comprehensive engagement and interaction quality, while attendance remained broadly stable. Discussion These trends are interpreted as bounded indicators of observable classroom change rather than as causal evidence of redesign effectiveness. The study contributes a traceable observation-to-redesign framework for practitioner inquiry and shows how routine observation records can function as inspectable evidence for locally grounded pedagogical change and course refinement.