Honors Seminar- Inquiry to Innovation
The honors seminar in which I am enrolled this semester is called "Inquiry to Innovation." The goal of the class is to open our minds to creative thought, and to come up with some interesting, and yes, innovative, solutions to real problems in the Cincinnati area.
Part I
We spent the first several weeks reading material on the process of creative thinking, the inventive thoughts of others, and methods of working effectively in a team. At the time, this reading didn't seem to have much relevance to my everyday life, though it was fascinating to think how un-creative I can be at times. We talked in class about how people can become stuck in their routine, and disengage their minds from the activity at hand. This prevents the emergence of creative, helpful, and sometimes truly brilliant ideas. So, I began to think more about being creative, questioning my daily actions and routines. And why not? Being creative is a very useful skill to have not only on a personal level, but also on a professional level. I'm in the engineering program. With engineering problems come the need for innovative thought; I figured creativity certainly could not hurt me.
Additionally, in the class, we would often be assigned reading, and then split up into groups of three or four to present on the information. We would have about ten minutes to prepare a ten minute presentation. This activity, at first, was very stressful and nerve-wracking; however, with time, I grew more comfortable presenting on the reading with a short amount of preparation time. Public speaking has never been one of my strengths, but through these activities I have gained a greater confidence in my abilities. These presentations were also great practice for working in small teams. These same skills would be applied later in the course.
With some practice on both creative thinking and presenting, the class finally found a substantial application of these new skills. Three teams were created, consisting of four people each, and each team was assigned a real problem in the Cincinnati area. Problems included: Litter, especially on moving days for students, communication with the student body, and parking in and around UC. My team and I are currently working on the parking problem, and it is harder than it sounded at first. I am finding that, as I would have expected, I have taken a leadership role in my team. This is good, I suppose, because it allows me to practice delegating tasks fairly and keeping my team on track. Hopefully my leadership here will help me in the future.
This attempt to solve the "parking problem" around UC has not gone without some bumps in the road, so to speak. We recently gave a presentation on our research to locals and experts on the subject, and we lost points for the presentation due to a lack of imagery in the Powerpoint presentation. This was an oversight of mine, because I prepared the Powerpoint. It was also an oversight of my team members, because I had asked them all to review the presentation to make sure it looked alright. I cannot blame them for my error, but I do think that their apathy is hurting us as a team. From this experience, I can learn a lot.
One: I can fail. To be honest, I think the last time I failed anything was in 8th grade. And that didn't even have much of an effect on my grade. So, I am not perfect. Even when I feel I am on top of everything, surprises can happen. But, the world has kept spinning, so I feel that this failure will not destroy me. I will go on. It has hurt my motivation to move on with the project, but at this point I have no choice, and will finish the semester strong.
Two: I was not thinking about the presentation and how it would be received by our audience. I was only thinking about getting all of the right information in. Therefore, I left out helpful visuals. I need to think not only about meeting project requirements, but also about the purpose of these projects.
That being said, hopefully things will go better from here on out. We have some tricky research that still needs performed, and we need to further develop real solutions to this parking problem, but we are on track.
Part II
The last weeks of the semester were demanding for this class. We were required to perform additional research, meet in our groups outside of class, and form genuine solutions to the parking problem. Our solutions came in pieces, with insights from each team member being taken into account. Our research, some of which seemed unnecessary at the time, proved useful in working out the details of our solution. In addition to all of the research and development of solutions, we were also required to make four full sized posters and a presentation to our stakeholders, those who presented the problem to us. One poster was general research, one case studies, and two displayed our solutions. The presentation covered all of these topics. The information for the posters was gathered by the team, and our team member in Industrial Design, Elliot Raderman, used Illustrator to make the posters, which was no easy task. I put together the Powerpoint for our presentation, and a large part of our final report, both of which are below. The posters are in the last pages of the final report.
The project was a success! Our professor, Frank Russell, and our stakeholders Jack Martin and Kay Weaks loved it. Our previous bad grade did not end up mattering, because of the work we put in during the final weeks of the semester. This was a great feeling, especially since I was uncertain of whether our project would be well received.
I learned a lot from this experience. Obviously, I know about the parking problem in the area more than I ever though I would. I did not go into details on the blog here, but if you take a look at the final report, you will see that my team and I became fairly involved. Secondly, I learned that you can't always choose your team. While some members of the team worked very hard to contribute, others were unmotivated. I ended up simply giving them easy jobs they did not want to do, and picking up their slack when they failed to do a decent job. I may sound bitter. I am, to a small degree. These unmotivated members knew that I would do the work for them, and they took advantage of that. I would say that I ended up doing 40% of the work for the whole project. Out of four people, this seems high. But, I am not complaining too much. I got to have excellent experience as a team leader in a difficult situation, and I got to see what it's like to have a lot of work to do, as well. It made me feel that much more accomplished when the project was over. It also made me appreciate the hard work that the motivated members of the group did. Without certain people, I certainly would have drowned in work. So, I guess I can't always make it alone, though I can come close. What else did I learn? I found that even though I never thought I would care about parking, I became involved in the whole project. This is probably good; it means I can care and contribute even when the topic is not something that peaks my interest too much. This will be an excellent skill to have, in any job situation. I learned presentation skills. That was really a great feature of this experience. I am more comfortable presenting to a group of people than I was at the beginning of the academic year. It will suffice to say that I learned more than I can fit into this paragraph. I do not take this experience for granted, and though it was tough and unpleasant for some weeks of the semester, the end result was well worth it. See below!
Part I
We spent the first several weeks reading material on the process of creative thinking, the inventive thoughts of others, and methods of working effectively in a team. At the time, this reading didn't seem to have much relevance to my everyday life, though it was fascinating to think how un-creative I can be at times. We talked in class about how people can become stuck in their routine, and disengage their minds from the activity at hand. This prevents the emergence of creative, helpful, and sometimes truly brilliant ideas. So, I began to think more about being creative, questioning my daily actions and routines. And why not? Being creative is a very useful skill to have not only on a personal level, but also on a professional level. I'm in the engineering program. With engineering problems come the need for innovative thought; I figured creativity certainly could not hurt me.
Additionally, in the class, we would often be assigned reading, and then split up into groups of three or four to present on the information. We would have about ten minutes to prepare a ten minute presentation. This activity, at first, was very stressful and nerve-wracking; however, with time, I grew more comfortable presenting on the reading with a short amount of preparation time. Public speaking has never been one of my strengths, but through these activities I have gained a greater confidence in my abilities. These presentations were also great practice for working in small teams. These same skills would be applied later in the course.
With some practice on both creative thinking and presenting, the class finally found a substantial application of these new skills. Three teams were created, consisting of four people each, and each team was assigned a real problem in the Cincinnati area. Problems included: Litter, especially on moving days for students, communication with the student body, and parking in and around UC. My team and I are currently working on the parking problem, and it is harder than it sounded at first. I am finding that, as I would have expected, I have taken a leadership role in my team. This is good, I suppose, because it allows me to practice delegating tasks fairly and keeping my team on track. Hopefully my leadership here will help me in the future.
This attempt to solve the "parking problem" around UC has not gone without some bumps in the road, so to speak. We recently gave a presentation on our research to locals and experts on the subject, and we lost points for the presentation due to a lack of imagery in the Powerpoint presentation. This was an oversight of mine, because I prepared the Powerpoint. It was also an oversight of my team members, because I had asked them all to review the presentation to make sure it looked alright. I cannot blame them for my error, but I do think that their apathy is hurting us as a team. From this experience, I can learn a lot.
One: I can fail. To be honest, I think the last time I failed anything was in 8th grade. And that didn't even have much of an effect on my grade. So, I am not perfect. Even when I feel I am on top of everything, surprises can happen. But, the world has kept spinning, so I feel that this failure will not destroy me. I will go on. It has hurt my motivation to move on with the project, but at this point I have no choice, and will finish the semester strong.
Two: I was not thinking about the presentation and how it would be received by our audience. I was only thinking about getting all of the right information in. Therefore, I left out helpful visuals. I need to think not only about meeting project requirements, but also about the purpose of these projects.
That being said, hopefully things will go better from here on out. We have some tricky research that still needs performed, and we need to further develop real solutions to this parking problem, but we are on track.
Part II
The last weeks of the semester were demanding for this class. We were required to perform additional research, meet in our groups outside of class, and form genuine solutions to the parking problem. Our solutions came in pieces, with insights from each team member being taken into account. Our research, some of which seemed unnecessary at the time, proved useful in working out the details of our solution. In addition to all of the research and development of solutions, we were also required to make four full sized posters and a presentation to our stakeholders, those who presented the problem to us. One poster was general research, one case studies, and two displayed our solutions. The presentation covered all of these topics. The information for the posters was gathered by the team, and our team member in Industrial Design, Elliot Raderman, used Illustrator to make the posters, which was no easy task. I put together the Powerpoint for our presentation, and a large part of our final report, both of which are below. The posters are in the last pages of the final report.
The project was a success! Our professor, Frank Russell, and our stakeholders Jack Martin and Kay Weaks loved it. Our previous bad grade did not end up mattering, because of the work we put in during the final weeks of the semester. This was a great feeling, especially since I was uncertain of whether our project would be well received.
I learned a lot from this experience. Obviously, I know about the parking problem in the area more than I ever though I would. I did not go into details on the blog here, but if you take a look at the final report, you will see that my team and I became fairly involved. Secondly, I learned that you can't always choose your team. While some members of the team worked very hard to contribute, others were unmotivated. I ended up simply giving them easy jobs they did not want to do, and picking up their slack when they failed to do a decent job. I may sound bitter. I am, to a small degree. These unmotivated members knew that I would do the work for them, and they took advantage of that. I would say that I ended up doing 40% of the work for the whole project. Out of four people, this seems high. But, I am not complaining too much. I got to have excellent experience as a team leader in a difficult situation, and I got to see what it's like to have a lot of work to do, as well. It made me feel that much more accomplished when the project was over. It also made me appreciate the hard work that the motivated members of the group did. Without certain people, I certainly would have drowned in work. So, I guess I can't always make it alone, though I can come close. What else did I learn? I found that even though I never thought I would care about parking, I became involved in the whole project. This is probably good; it means I can care and contribute even when the topic is not something that peaks my interest too much. This will be an excellent skill to have, in any job situation. I learned presentation skills. That was really a great feature of this experience. I am more comfortable presenting to a group of people than I was at the beginning of the academic year. It will suffice to say that I learned more than I can fit into this paragraph. I do not take this experience for granted, and though it was tough and unpleasant for some weeks of the semester, the end result was well worth it. See below!
final_presentation_6.0.pdf | |
File Size: | 528 kb |
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spot-u_assn3_report_1_f12.pdf | |
File Size: | 3219 kb |
File Type: |