How weekly exercises help the process of learning.

Never in a million years did I imagine myself get into educator mode. Much of it all culminated when I was in graduate school making teaching tools and loving it. As a freelancer, I had in the past researched and written for a children's video game. The idea of creating options along the path of the user came from there. I perfected my skills when I worked as lead designer for a global web redesign project in my past life.

Learning is cumulative. We all learn on the basis of something. As infants, we hear our parents speak and pick up from there. Mannerisms, habits and so are formed the same way. We base it on something. I find analogies to be a very useful tool in the classroom during lectures for the same reason.

A new concept can be communicated effectively if it is based on the reality of that particular student group. The reality of each batch of students changes because the environment they consume changes constantly. I needed to find a constant that can be changed yet maintained across classes, course levels and expertise. Being relevant is ever so important.

Weekly exercises first appeared in my classes when I wrote a graduate web design course for SCAD's Elearning program. I needed students to check in each week with peripheral concepts besides the main content being discussed. The success of these weekly exercises confirmed my belief — "a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down". Small doses of kind-of-relevant exploration brought students closer to their creative solutions.

In many of my classes, students are given a task each week. The tasks vary from watching a particular video and writing a summary of 500 words to going to a restaurant pretending to be your target audience and placing an order and writing about the experience. The weekly exercises change based on the project the class is working on or the concepts they need to have clarified before the end of the quarter. They then come into the classroom and share their weekly exercise with their peers.

Besides the learning that takes place while researching the exercise, there are other benefits. The journey they take together brings them closer in the classroom.Team dynamics improve. Ability to read a variety of sources increases. Open mindedness might occur in some. Sometimes, if the weekly isn't particularly exciting, the collective dissatisfaction of the exercise does wonders too. The teacher as a common enemy is a wondrous unifying force.

All in all, weekly exercises work. Most times, students don't realize it, but the light bulbs turn on during one of those moments when you think you cannot take on any more homework. And some of those light bulbs shine all the way through many successful careers.

Games in the classroom

The game was "Dumb charades" or at least that's what I grew up knowing it as since you weren't allowed to speak. Just act out your clues.

This was in the Creative Concepting class for juniors in the Advertising major program (BFA)

Objective:

1. Team building
2. Awareness of different cognition and learning styles amongst possible teammates
3. Definition of leadership qualities
4. Definition of boundary pushers
5. Figuring out the pop culture knowledge of the class. And hence the age/generation of the students
6. Agile thinking capability of various students.

Process: The class was "Creative Concepting". The premise of the class was exposing students to various (mostly visual) means of arriving at a concept for a given problem. The tactics across the course include storyboards, image only, text only, combinational campaign. The class also taught methods for research, content gathering, editing and filtering. It touched briefly on demographic study as well. Good habits need to be formed early on in the program.

The students were given the rules on how to play. Movies they could select. There needed to be a consensus of staying with national or international movies. The outspoken ones spoke and were heard. Teams were split with a random note picking exercise.

They forgot their inhibitions and began discussion, agreeing and disagreeing on movies they would give their opponents. They figured out the weak links in the opposite teams and changed movies based on who would act out next. They were frustrated when their team members were unaware of certain movies which according to them were cult movies. Their enthusiastically shared this and more knowledge. Some of the students picked movies that were very difficult to act out. Some students who were fantastic in their production of work were completely stumped at the “impromptu take it by the horns attitude” that the game requires you to have. If someone doesn’t get your clues, switching to quite an opposite technique to make it work doesn’t come very easily to all. And yet, these are all things that they needed to be fluid in to make the most of the creative concepting class.

This proved to be a successful game in many ways. The class functioned much more positively from then on. Presentations were a lot more interactive. Constructive criticism was very constructive. Who knew that playing a game in class would lead to gold!

Self obsession — the curse of insulated environments By Gauri Misra-Deshpande

Growing up in a society gives you little sense of its true quality — good or bad, until you experience another. And if you are fortunate or not, you stay long enough to compare the two worlds. Much of the evil in one is replaced by much of some other evil in the other. "It's all relative" becomes the truth to every single aspect of your daily routine. If you are lucky, there might be some similarities.

Books are an amazing tool for time travel and learning. Films across genres allow you to dive into unknown parts of the world and people around us as well. Other than that, it is digital/ social content that is your entryway to current happenings.

When I am connected today to anything I want to be connected to, I find myself overwhelmed at times. I can pull up information online about anything I want- from the next object of desire to the harsh reality of life in a remote region of the planet. From celebrity update to an article on socio-cultural shifts in markets with weather and political conditions  in turmoil. Sometimes, being eternally connected with my set of chosen friends and their social group can be exhaustive until I hit the "I don't care" icon in my head and switch paths. In this mishmash of opinion pieces, podcasts, updated blog posts, online groups, tweeted info graphics and buzzfed top 10 lists or youtube channels, I find myself losing control of my own thoughts sometimes.

Finally, that which is true is what I inhale, touch and see.

But this is me, an adult, a parent, an educator.

As an adult, I can drive myself around, über myself anywhere and pretty much consume whatever media I want if I don't want to travel physically. This is something that can be taken for granted by those in my category very easily. We assume life is what we choose outside of the surprise alternator repair on your dependable car or the termite damage from the past recently discovered at the foundation of your home. We get surprised but we are equipped to handle them in any way we choose.

It is a different story for young adults. The ones that cannot yet drive. Or those that stay in the control of parents/ caretakers most waking hours. This world must be a different experience altogether for them. If everyday life is insulated and restricted to the limited circles such as school/ neighborhood friends/ extra curricular activity friends - their only connection to anything else in the world is mostly digital. If you aren't accustomed to dealing with unexpected people or situations, how do you figure life out? How do you feel in control? If stranger anxiety is developed to be very very prominent (which is unfortunately necessary to an extent) they aren’t given an opportunity to figure out the creepy from the normal. If there is no safe avenue to make mistakes, how do they develop their own personal personality radars? Much of their environment isn’t in their control.

When most things around you aren’t a construct of your imagination, you begin to feel the need to control something–anything.

So then you do what it takes to control the things that you can. Does food become one of those? Do your personal hygiene and decoration be one of those? Would your relationships be one of those elements that you can control? If much time is spent insulated, does it make a young adult more self-focused?

A window that allows them to look at  people their age in their everyday would help open their eyes to the differences in their world and the one outside the window. One that would allow them a different perspective and possibly an appreciation of what they do have or an inspiration to acquire what they don't.