CHALLENGE FACED: Developing curiosity amongst students studying engineering.

One of the frequent fusses that professors at my college made was that ,the students who had  just finished high school and entered into our engineering college , weren’t curious enough about the subject as they were about to learn and this momentum of not being curious hindered their creativity which was very essential to solve engineering problems in the near future. So, the professors asked us , as seniors of the recently joined students , what could be done to solve that problem. What could be done to reignite the lost curiosity of the juniors. This posed as a serious challenge, as the quality of students graduating from the institute was at stake, and in addition to that, the reputation and the respect our college had garnered passed years.

SELECTION:  The design thinking tool we used here was “Learning Launch”. https://youtu.be/fPAnKZjejmU

A council of students was formed who were given the responsibility of solving this problem. At the beginning, we collected data about the juniors through Google-forms. Asking them to fill in the answers for the  asked questions, which were related understanding them better and what interested them the most.

Then, by carefully assessing the collected data, we came to some relevant conclusions that………1)Students had lost touch with their creative side, as they had been academically focused for the past two years. 2) They pointed out that they would like to start their engineering studies by doing/involving in something practical, and not in the classroom, doing anything theoretical.

We selected the designing tool “ Learning Launch”, because this is the best suited tool in this case scenario. This tool demands discussions, interactions, asking questions and finding solutions. This tool captured the essence of what we wanted to do, that is, give students to get curious on their own.

APPLICATION: Now that we had to use the learning launch tool, we decided that every last Friday of each month, we would organize a “Curioboot” exhibition, where projects related to the subjects students were about to learn were exhibited. Beside each project, an expert or the person who had made that project were stationed. This was done so that , students , if they had to satisfy their curiousity and ask some questions, they would be the people, the students would go to. In addition to this, we would also introduce everyone with the latest trends in technology and all innovation happening around, which gave a sense of wonder to the students.

INSIGHT:  As expected, the decision of using learning launch was a great one. The atmosphere and environment created around was responsible for the impact it had on the students. This experience also gave us a fare idea so as to how to attract young minds with the help of changed ambience, better hospitality and mental comfort of the students. In addition, the experts/ project creators were also instructed to be patient and sympathetic towards the students, so that it doesn’t  disrupt the intended function of applying learning launch, and also facilitate the understanding of the students.

APPROACH: Since we are talking about using design tools, the next one I’m interested to use is mind mapping. Despite the fact that a certain amount of mind mapping was used in the previous approach, its quite clear to me that main mapping will yield better results and would be cost effective Because, here we strive  to understand the patterns arising from the perspective of the newly joined students. These results can be used in the future for a longer time than compared to learning launch. This tool also lets us understand the students better, which in turn will cater to the way the subjects are taught by the professors at our college.

