Shad Valley – Catching the Spirit

Through a variety of means, MECH410E helped me gain a deepened understanding of the inter-connected nature of global challenges and leadership through service.  The chance to teach the high school students of the 2011 Shad Valley UBC Program by facilitating a workshop was an opportunity for me to share these understandings in a meaningful and applicable way. 

The decision to speak about design thinking and integrated project management sprung from the idea that “the Shads” are assigned a design problem to work on during their one month stay at the university.  Through lectures and activities they are able to come up with a design solution and business model. 

Through a variety of small group activities the group discussed a few approaches to the design cycle as well as how the issue of multi-disciplinary teams plays into projects and design.  One question I asked them to answer was: What are the benefits of working in multi-disciplinary teams?  The drawbacks?  Their answers covered anything from response like how “having different views can help provide insight to all areas of the project, resulting in well defined and fully achieved goals” and “having easily definable roles for members due to their different disciplinary backgrounds” for benefits.  Drawbacks included things like “communication” and “certain members having to do more work than others due to their disciplinary backgrounds”. 

Using the activity of the 5 Whys? and the Silly Cow, the group learned a few approaches for how to deal with issues that might arise within a project group, possibly due to inadequate multi-disciplinary teamwork.  Overall I think “the Shads” learned a few things about design thinking and project management that can be applied to their projects this summer and into the future (while having fun of course!)