What a start to the new week! We
gave students thirty minutes to finish off last weeks’ projects (identifying a
problem with the IMC Center and proposing ways to solve it) before they had to
present it to us. As is evident in the picture above, our students took time to
think outside the box and create practical solutions that bettered the IMC Center.
The cup holder pictured above, that says “water” in Arabic, was constructed
completely by one of the student groups[DV1] [AAM2] —they identified that there were water cups
scattered everywhere and made a product to fix it.
Once each project was finished, the
groups presented their products, highlighting the resources they used, the
value of their product, and who the “customer” was. We also introduced two key
terms to encourage peers to help students modify their products, “devil’s
advocate” and “constructive criticism”. To our surprise we didn’t need to probe
the students to offer advice to the groups presenting- a nice improvement from
last week. Everybody was engaged from the start and displayed genuine interest
in helping each other improve their respective ideas. This was quite impressive
and encouraging to see—however there were times when students were slightly too
harsh on each other. We are going to cover these concepts again tomorrow in
order to stress that “constructive” is the key word in “constructive
criticism”.
We felt that starting off our week like
we ended last week, with an engaging activity, was a great way to get our students
active and thinking ahead for what will be our final few classes. This week
students are going to focus heavily on their communities and how they can
become leaders and motivate change. Similarly to the “Foundations of Management
and Entrepreneurship” course at Babson, students will now pitch an idea for a
product or service that can be implemented into their immediate communities.
Each student will focus on identifying the SWOT analysis (strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) as well as our own version of a
business model canvas. Students will pitch their initial ideas in groups of two
and then take a blind vote on their favorite three ideas. At this point we’ll
start to introduce concepts that each team will be able to apply to their
projects, like how to market the product/service as well as how to generate
revenue streams.
To top it off, our major partner
Fikra Al Mashi was recently recognized for their service to the Jordanian
community. As a result, Al-Tareeq was also mentioned in the Jordanian media! We
are not only honored but also motivated to continue working hard.
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