Teaching Design Thinking Differently

'Design Thinking- such a drab subject!'

'We know the five phases - EDIPT!' 

'We have seen enough examples on YouTube.'

When your MBA class is so forthright in expressing their views, you have to think differently. Taking a cue from Dr Abdul Kalam's famous quote 'Creativity is seeing the same thing as everybody else, but thinking differently', we converted the remaining sessions of the course 'Innovation In Business' into a Design Thinking Workshop. In a workshop you are supposed to use some 'tools' and 'do'  and 'make' something like in a carpentry workshop. 

We asked the class if they would recommend the college to others? The answer was a chorus 'No'! Do they regret the decision when they joined the college? This time another chorus 'Yes'! When asked why, many reasons came up. That ignited Ghumakkad's mind to do a 'live' workshop on issues plaguing the students' minds. For a class of 70 students, we identified 24 'live' issues being faced by the students. Teams of three each were free to choose any one issue. The process was repeated for both the sections of 70 students each. The die was cast. Few of the issues selected by the students are listed below. Am sure students at other colleges would not feel much differently.

• Improving student quality
• Developing college pride & sense of belonging
• Branding of the College
• Entrepreneurial Support
• Attendance through biometrics

Each team was given 48 hours to complete the first step of Design Thinking 'Empathise'. It involved interacting with the people concerned for the issue at hand. It could be other students, faculty, staff or management of the college. It could also be other colleges in the same geography. By actually empathising with the people concerned, the students learnt the nuances of Step-1 of design thinking. Whether it was mere observations or an interview or a focussed group discussion or collection of facts and figures, the students gained 'insights' of the issue at hand. These insights were then utilised for further steps of Design Thinking.

Remaining steps namely Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test were completed by each team after two days in the class itself. Breakout areas gave freedom for brainstorming. The teams had two hours to deliberate the issue and apply the design thinking to come up with suggested solution. The teams were also given a chart paper and coloured markers to summarise their design thinking effort and present it to the class for greater learning. The posters were thereafter displayed in the college foyer for wider viewership by other students, faculty, staff and management of the college. The whole event thus generated lot of enthusiasm and energy by the students in experiential learning mode. Sharing few pictures of the event below.

Through the workshop, the students could address many real-life issues like how to select the internship company? Big vs small? Branded company vs a startup? And so on.

The whole design thinking workshop was conceived on the go. The idea came because of students' disenchantment with the college (a normal reaction towards the end of the two-year-PGDM-program). Germinated in the class, a 'drab' subject was successfully transformed into an invigorating and participative workshop. It led to experiential learning. See the video clip below of the poster designing in progress.

For teachers like Ghumakkad, there is never a dull moment. With 140 inquisitive and restive minds around, it is a pleasant challenge to devise and conduct such 'live' learning events. Special thanks to all the students who participated, both the class reps and Dr V Jayashree for the wholehearted support.

Sharing below the links to some of our other 'live' teaching and learning events which had also ensured experiential learning at PG level:

Uri the Movie- Management Lessons

Shershaah Beyond The Movie

Real Life to Real Time Cases

Hope you enjoyed the teaching and learning of Design Thinking with Ghumakkad. Do share your experiences of other modes of experiential learning.

Thanks for browsing.

   - Harsh-the-Ghumakkad with the PGDM Class of 2024@VVISM Hyderabad/ 30th March 2024

#learning #experiential #PGDM #MBA #highereducation #nep2020 #designthinking #workshopmode #reallifeissues #insights #innovationinbusiness #creativity #learningbydoing #ghumakkadhb #ghumakkadharsh

Chail Military School

Chail is a remote hill station in Himachal Pradesh.
Apart from The Palace, what else is there to see?
Well, in the hills you don't need places to see. You have to feel the forest, walk in the woods, smell the scent of the pines and relax by the river side! You do all that and you get rejuvenated.
However, Chail also has the highest cricket ground in the world. It is now used as cricket stadium-cum-playground for the students of Rashtriya Military School, Chail. In this story, we take you to the school, the cricket stadium and Sadhupul- a small village downhill. We the Navy Veterans sure felt great getting back to school!

Those not familiar with the geography of Himachal Pradesh, may see the map below. 

 Let the pictures do the talking.

These words 'heaven on earth' for Chail Military School were written by Commander Sudhir Tuli (Retd) who is an alumnus of the school. Thanks much Sudhir for your inputs.

Being a Navy Veteran, it was heartening to see a Naval Officer's name too! See the green arrow in the picture below.

Fallen but not forgotten! The school has proudly displayed the bust of one of its alumni who was conferred with the highest gallantry award the Param Vir Chakra. Capt GS Salaria made the supreme sacrifice and laid down his life in 1961.

We the veterans couldn't resist ourselves on athletics track! Pictures with a PQ- picturesque quote.

Get a feel of the world's highest cricket ground in this short video clip.

Before we left the school, we were reminded of Washington Irving's quotation "Age is a matter of feelings not years"! PQ below for you.

Sadhupul

Here is the link to our previous story on Chail Palace just in case you missed it:

Chail Palace- Built by Hurt Ego

Coming up next...





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Do share your comments.

    -   Harsh-the-Ghumakkad with Neeta Bhargava/ 8th Dec 2019

#navyveterans #himachalpradesh #himalayas #chail #chailmilitaryschool #chailcricketstadium #himachaltourism #friendsforever #navybuddies #oldage #navyreunion #indiannavy #livinglife #ageisnobar #ghumakkadharsh #ghumakkadhb #natgeoindia #planetmindia #wandertrails #photowalks #history #machanforthequeen #heavenonearth #backtoschool #PQ #picturesquequotes