Moalims

KARACHI: Students, when stepping into the organisational culture, can be more knowledgeable and innovative by just a small change — creative learning, said the executive director of the Institute of Design, commonly referred to as the ‘d.School’ at Stanford University, Sarah Stein Greenberg.

Greenberg explained to the students of Habib University (HU) how innovative and creative learning can be. She was delivering a lecture organised by the office for global engagement at HU. The topic of her talk was ‘Learning as a Designed Experience and Design Thinking at the Stanford University’s d.School’.

She talked about the process of learning while sharing some examples of her students at Stanford University. She helped students understand the multidisciplinary ways of learning, known as design thinking at Stanford’s d.School, and also shared interesting stories about how their students have worked on different projects from designing incubators to studying the behaviour of people who are opening bank accounts for the first time.

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The talk also pointed out the school’s idea of designing learning experiences and how the idea has changed lives of many students by providing them a different educational environment to be confident about what they are doing. Greenberg explained how getting good grades is not the only aim of her students, but to learn something innovative and creative is.

The executive director also shed some light on modern teaching methods, comparing such methods in Pakistan’s perspective. She appreciated the youth of Pakistan who can gain a lot from the changing patterns. She also shared some of the techniques used at her school to bring out the best and creative thinkers even in analytical subjects. “We, at Stanford, are just a part of the day for students,” she said, while answering a question on how the concept of learning will change as an innovative subject. “They do a lot [of] other things, too.”

Giving an example from the d.school, Greenberg informed that a faculty member from the earth energy and environment sciences experimented with teaching at the school and changed the range of activities for the students, engaging them in different happenings and making it a whole new experience for them. “She became the mentor and changed the learning experience,” she said, encouraging how everyone else can follow suit.

Global programme manager at the d.School, Erik Olesund, was of the view that learning can be fun when done as part of a team. According to him, they try to let students know the importance of team work. Answering one of the students on what are the challenges students have these days, he said, “Your biggest challenge is not to suppress your younger [ones] and not [to] overpower their creativity with yours.”

Published in The Express Tribune, December 20th, 2015.