Published 10/01/2020
Below are five key points to help you embed the Innovation and Enterprise theme into a session.
Creativity, Problem Solving, and Opportunity Identification
- Encourage the generation of multiple ideas (rather than a single right answer)
- Focus on exploring and framing a problem rather than trying to solve it; dig out the complexities rather than rush to ‘solve’ things
- Use deliberate brainstorming techniques
- Enable processes for quieter students to participate in idea generation and discussion through digital or paper idea-submission
Collaboration, Communication and Leadership
- Set a team or group challenge, potentially appoint leaders, potentially make it competitive between teams
- Discuss what makes for good teamwork/communication or leadership – before and/or after the exercise
- Ask for individuals and/or groups to present their ideas or critiques to one-another before presenting to the whole class (pyramids)
‘Business’ Acumen
- Feature a case study of an organisation working in/on the academic subject in review – explore how ethical, sustainable, effective that organisation is or could be
- Ask the students to explore how some aspect of the subject matter could be exploited for some form of impact (economic, social, environmental etc) and what form that might take. Pick up themes of feasibility, viability, desirability, and credibility.
- Deliberately highlight the transferable skills being used in a session and engage students in what ‘good’ or ‘professional’ practice in that skill might look like and how it might be enhanced.
Thinking Critically about Innovation and Enterprise
- Can you feature some aspect of the ‘cutting edge’ of the subject being discussed – a case study, a speaker, an object, a film, that highlights a present-day or future impact of the subject.
- Linking to the above, can you engage students in discussion and debate about the impacts, legacy, ethics, and next steps for the subject matter.
Self-Awareness, Self-Efficacy, and Resourcefulness
- Can you create space for individual reflections after an important task or exercise – and a framework for self-assessing performance?
- Can you task groups with providing feedback to other groups based on observing some activity or performance that group is undertaking?
- Can you send the class out of the classroom to find something or someone? Could they be set a challenge in which there is no obvious right answer? It’s REALLY important to debrief these and highlight the purposes and learning gain to avoid frustrated students…