Reflection – Learning Launch

I am just a soon-to-be bachelor’s degree graduate who has little to no experience in working with a  company. Therefore my idea might seem to be small but this is what the best I have done where I  have incorporated design thinking for innovation

Challenge

As per my University, we, the students are supposed to create a final year project based on what we  have learned in the entire degree. It should be different and innovative that what our predecessors  have done. All students were grouped in members of 4 and were busy working on it. Every year, this  routine happens and students present their projects to the evaluators and marks were allotted. This  happened every year and the trend observed by the lecturers is the lack of innovation in their  projects. Students always kept making similar projects year after year. This was when my team along  with a professor to guide us started thinking of a way to tackle this situation for the next batch. We  wanted to make this into something interesting what our juniors will love to come and learn.

Selection

The case scenario of IBM was somewhat similar to our case which really surprised me. To begin with,  we needed information from the graduated students and also from students from our batch about  why they all presented/want to present a similar project and not something interesting. Only with  such information can we come up with an idea on how to tackle this situation. Learning launch  seemed to be the apt for this situation because we wanted to try out our ideas as soon as possible.  Learning launch can help us to understand about the mentality and relationship in place where a  large gathering can take place, similar to what IBM did.

Application

My team decided to experiment our idea in a small scale first and then into the main program. We  came up with a plan to conduct a gathering of all teams in an open room in the university premises  to showcase all their projects to other team members. They were also instructed to create a poster  which explains about the project more visually than just junk information. Students were instructed  to prepare posters which had 80% visual depiction and the rest 20% written information. With such  an experiment, our team could find out that the students were more interested and wanted to know  more about the project once they glanced through the poster. The poster helped even a common  student to raise good questions about the project to its team members. This improved their  intellectual mind to think in a more innovative way. Students even borrowed ideas from other  groups so that could be implemented into their own projects.

Once this phase was success, we wanted to implement this same again for our juniors. Students  came in huge numbers into our so called project expo where they were indulged in getting all  knowledge from all of us. Our projects were demonstrated, questions are answered and the  relationship between the seniors and juniors deepened. Lecturers and students from other  departments also flocked to see our projects.

Insight

Such a simple experiment has benefited us and the entire college in a better way. The students  including juniors, seniors and lecturers improved their relationship significantly. Even juniors  suggested their small modifications to our projects which improved our innovative ability and  creative thinking mentality. Students were inspired by our project so much that most of them  started to work on their projects the next day onwards.

Incorporating such an event has improved the learning process of all the students and lecturers. All  departments started to implement this concept from this year onwards for their students. Students  not only enjoy such activities but also improve their learning mindset and thinking ability to tackle  different problems.

Approach

The department now plans to incorporate such activities into our university. Recently, the space  organization and also various major industries who wanted to conduct normal talks and discussion  were modified into an interactive environment where they demonstrated their prototypes and also  brought posters for better visual understanding. Miniature rockets and satellites were brought to  the campus for giving insight into the space research organization and students were engaged in  activities with representatives. Even students were given in charge of explaining to their friends so  that the communication transfer is more effective. Student involvement was highly appreciated by  the industry representatives and promised to look forward to coming often for recruitments and  other events.

