A desire fulfilled
Teaching has always been a passion. It’s been something I’ve been aching to do for decades. Until June this year, the only unwitting targets were my teen kids and a few of their friends. Teaching was limited to sessions of an hour or two.
In early June this year, I got a call from the program coordinator of the MBA school of a private university here in Bangalore. This is the Christ University (deemed to be — don’t completely understand that part). I had met the gentleman when looking for interns for a start-up the previous year. He now wanted me to teach ‘Innovation Management and Design Thinking’. The students are specializing in Leadership & Entrepreneurship. Sessions would twice a week, two hours each day, twelve weeks total. I readily agreed despite a week’s notice.
A bit nervous, I show up at the sprawling Christ University the first day. My class had nineteen impressionable minds. These students attend classes from 7:30 a.m. to about noon after which they go for their internships. Pretty nifty.
What I like about the class make up — the students are already working, they are serious about acquiring design skill and it is a fun bunch of youngsters. They are all Indians save for one Korean gentleman who’s had ten years work experience.
I quickly figured out that it is not easy to do a two hour lecture. For one, you need a lot of material. Moreover, it is a drudgery for students to sit through the said time period listening to someone droning incessantly.
Day two, I changed things up. I came up with a few activities to break up the session. This got the class energized and also gave me some respite.
I had a week between classes so completely revamped the second week’s materials.The first week’s activities were focused on adding variety whereas the second week’s activities were context driven. There were key learnings and outcomes for each activity with direct correlation to the concepts being shared. Obviously, there was a lot of googling going on but for the most part, I customized the activities.
I’ve added short videos to the class now, each about 3–5 minutes. These are TED or other videos to strengthen and enhance the learning. Two weeks back, I distributed four identical Lego kits. Each set had the parts to make some sort of an automobile. The instructions were simple — make anything.
Give anyone a Lego, and the inner child comes out. Good natured ribaldry reigned during the construction along with heated debates and some yelling. A couple of outlandish designs came out. One team took a while to figure out the wheels came off the attached axles. Here I snuck in a lesson on imposing self-inflicted boundaries. In about twenty minutes, everyone had a four-wheeled vehicle. I introduced the next part of the activity. Teams of two would pit their vehicles against each in a race. The race demonstrated that the best (performing) design was not necessarily the most beautiful design. Engine parts and manifolds broke free when the vehicles were put through their paces. The all-girl team that finally won took time to finish their assembly but theirs was the fastest car and smoked the competition.
The winners got well deserved chocolates.
We discussed the activity. For any design, there are multitude conflicting priorities of aesthetics, function, utility, performance, cost, effort, reliability and suitability. These are the anchors around which stretches a thin rubber band. Move one anchor and you compromise something else. The trade-offs and knowing what and whom you are designing for are paramount in design thinking.
Midway through the semester, I arranged for the students to visit a few startups in small groups. I am not being prescriptive on what they should do during the visit; rather provided broad guidelines on what to learn and contribute.
Overall it continues to be a rewarding and invigorating experience. I learnt a lot about myself and what gets me excited. I look forward to the interactions Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I find immense satisfaction with the process of creating, revising and customizing the material each week. We have a Whatsapp group where we share articles, materials and sometimes my preaching (try to minimize that part though). Every group makes at least one presentation each session and the other groups score (sometimes unfairly) them. This helps them refine their pitch, presentation style and how to read an audience. I provide my own feedback, inputs and of course candies to the winners.
My raison d’être was at the end of the class yesterday. A student in the back yelled out “This is the best class sir!” I smiled. I’m sure it’s the chocolates.
