A lecture session of three hours is not easy, once in a week is when you see your students and teaching them for all of three hours means to get them to listen to all of what you are gonna lecture. This could sometimes turn out to be monotonous, starting the third week, fourth week and so on, until when you realize that it is important to make the class interactive. Like the montessori, even college students should have to be involved in your lecture to keep the class from getting bored.
So how do you do it? Here comes the biggest question, and I am blinking, because, it is not the same set of students I handle and the subjects are varied. So for every class I have to think of some different way to get them involved in my lecture.
To begin with I would want to share one particular lecture experience, where out of the three hours class, I decided to get my students to conduct a mock focus group. The subject was Product Development Strategies and the Topic for the day was "Identifying Customer Needs". The students were given the liberty to choose the product, for which the focus group ( where a few of my students took up the role of customers and one of them was the interviewer, and I took up the role of the moderator to sum up the needs matrix and to keep the focus group focused) was going to discuss the needs.
Having chosen Apple iPhone 6(if there is gonna be one) as the product, students as customers came out with good ideas. The list below is a summary of the discussion
1. The New product to be developed should be able to play flash files, currently not being supported by present iPhones.
2. Battery power should last longer
3. Alternative option provided to use solar cell for power, in order to reduce the usage of electricity and use natural energy for power of phone( aiming to lower the impact of global warming).
4. Compatibility of Apple applications with other software providers' apps(sure not gonna happen, nevertheless customer can mention them).
5. Two different industrial designs-one meant for female customers and the other meant for male customers(but well how Apple is gonna acheive economies of scale is not the customer's problem).
6. 3D screen.
7. Lesser radiation of heat when the phone is used for calling or while receiving calls.
8. In built LCD projector.
There were many more suggestions, but I have only listed a few and they are not in prioritized order.
More experiences will be updated in my blog.Keep reading.
So how do you do it? Here comes the biggest question, and I am blinking, because, it is not the same set of students I handle and the subjects are varied. So for every class I have to think of some different way to get them involved in my lecture.
To begin with I would want to share one particular lecture experience, where out of the three hours class, I decided to get my students to conduct a mock focus group. The subject was Product Development Strategies and the Topic for the day was "Identifying Customer Needs". The students were given the liberty to choose the product, for which the focus group ( where a few of my students took up the role of customers and one of them was the interviewer, and I took up the role of the moderator to sum up the needs matrix and to keep the focus group focused) was going to discuss the needs.
Having chosen Apple iPhone 6(if there is gonna be one) as the product, students as customers came out with good ideas. The list below is a summary of the discussion
1. The New product to be developed should be able to play flash files, currently not being supported by present iPhones.
2. Battery power should last longer
3. Alternative option provided to use solar cell for power, in order to reduce the usage of electricity and use natural energy for power of phone( aiming to lower the impact of global warming).
4. Compatibility of Apple applications with other software providers' apps(sure not gonna happen, nevertheless customer can mention them).
5. Two different industrial designs-one meant for female customers and the other meant for male customers(but well how Apple is gonna acheive economies of scale is not the customer's problem).
6. 3D screen.
7. Lesser radiation of heat when the phone is used for calling or while receiving calls.
8. In built LCD projector.
There were many more suggestions, but I have only listed a few and they are not in prioritized order.
More experiences will be updated in my blog.Keep reading.
Thanks Venu, for ur encouragement.
ReplyDeleteVery well written. Its a constant source of amazement what young fresh minds come up with. and when you know you are causing it in some way that should make you proud. Way to go sherin ! but the fresh ideas do make us realise that we ARE getting a bit old now :))
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