The Study Group Management

Challenge

I am currently an intern in an organization where students enroll to crack a high-level competitive  exam to enter into a reputed b-school. Last year we didn’t see much good results among our  students. Another imminent problem we had to address was leakage of student participation. The  Covid pandemic has taken a toll on all of us, including the education sector, where everything went  online. At these times it is very difficult to keep the students involved and motivated. So we came up  with the idea of the study group, a peer-learning healthy community of aspiring indiviuals to ace  their examination. The challenge here was we did not have a valid past record or data for the  formation and validation of a study group.

Selection

So, in order to address the above issue, we set up a team where I was granted the opportunity to  lead. We viewed the problem that lied ahead of us as a challenge and thought of adapting to a  creative approach of design thinking and the tool which we focused predominantly was mind  mapping. Actually, the whole process involved a lot of other tools like storytelling and ethnographic  approach too. But for now, I’ll focus and elaborate on the broader application of mind mapping  technique. The reason why we chose mind mapping as the design tool is that, the problem we  addressed was solely involving our students’ participation, who are our clients. To boost their  participation in the course and to instill their activity in the study group, we largely required their  insights to arrive at an enriching learning experience. For that purpose, mind mapping their ideas  with that of our team’s was the healthy pro-active way to go.

Application

As we dived deep into the challenge, we understood that the students were at different levels of  exposure. We took the ethnographic approach to interact with them, to understand where they  stand in the preparation of the competitive exam and what sort of help they needed. This gave us a  lot of data on where to start. We understood that some were ahead in preparation as they took the  exam already last year or they started their preparation earlier. Another bunch of students have just  started their preparation recently and the third category were the students yet to start their  preparation. So, we couldn’t set a common plan to all. That’s where mind mapping came in handy.  We explained the idea of the study group and communicated the importance of peer learning to  them. There was a spark when we invoked and encouraged their inputs to the plan. The whole  environment turned out to be synergistic. We asked them to identify themselves in one of the three  stages and align their ideas of how they could contribute to their peers and what sort of inclusive  activities could be hosted in the study group. All these were mapped to the outcome of enriching  peer-learning experience.

Insight and approach

We came up with a whole new set of creative ideas. Those who were already ahead in preparation  volunteered themselves to share their learnings to the second category of students who have and  these second category of students could help the third, the students who are yet to start their  preparation creating a self-sustaining healthy study environment. Additionally, many recreational  productive activities like community reading, book review sessions, movie discussions and even  group discussion on current affairs were included in the study group activity. This significantly  increased the student participation because these were the ideas generated from their contribution

to building a study group. As a result of this, students were much more involved and responsible.  Each of them manifested themselves as leaders and helped their fellow mates with full involvement.  This simple activity build inclusivity among the students and created a holistic learning experience  for them and for us as well.

