Last year I wrote a draft of a book on how to market products to schools. I”m still trying to figure out how to sell it. It’s always toughest to sell your own self isn’t it?

Anyway, I’m not an engineer. So, I can only comment on teaching. But, it seems to me the heart of what’s happening in your classroom is that you are trying to figure out how to aim your class. Like every college class, there are some very bright students who catch on in 15 minutes of class time. But, many of the students need to do follow up exercises at home to figure it out. Some students want graduate school. Other students want to be prepared for the govt. job. Some students are visual learners, some hear it, some need to use their hands to learn it….The list goes on. Some students are ambitious. Others are not.

So, what to do the next time you teach your class in order to get all the students to bloom at least a little?

1) Mix it up. If students are only in groups, you can’t see their true progress. I’ve recently started completely doing away with group projects because my marketing students can’t communicate or write. In my intro class I required students to write a 3 page paper on a topic every week. I found that most loved the exercise. But a handful never turned anything in at all. Thus, my conclusion that they only way they could get to junior level classes was on the coat tails of group projects.

2) Mix up the mode of learning. Slow down. Day 1: have the students learn the content thru hands on. Day 2: Do a little repetition thru forced visual exercises. Maybe a week later. Go back and present the same content another way. It will seem s-l-o-w to the fast learners. Perhaps the fast learners can take on roles to coach / tutor the slower students.

3) As a teacher, you have to be willing to accept students as they arrive in your classroom. It may become easy to be distracted by a handful of students who want internships or even a very specific internship opportunity. However, your role as a teacher is more or less to be broader than that. A class can be highly successful if no one gets any sort of internship and most students master 2 or 3 main concepts. Or, a class may be successful if everyone moves on and no one is concerned about their only job prospsects being in the US Army. This semester I had many very successful students. One got into graduate school and starts in Jan. Another worked his way from a C- early in the semester to a B+ at the end (he earned an A- of the final once he caught on). One graduating senior got a job babysitting starting immediately. I consisdered her a success too because she is helping her sister with a new baby.

Good luck with teaching. It’s eye opening isn’t it?

Theresa

===

Thank-you very much for posing this question. It really made me think. Here are the condensed points that make up my suggestion:

Split the class into two teams.
Do not tell your students about this project beforehand.

Team 1 must design 1 greeting card.
Team 2 can design as many greeting cards as they want.

Class 1:
Team 1 must spend 100% of their class time planning their one perfect card.
Team 2 can only spend 10% of their class time planning their cards.
Both teams create and submit their card designs immediately after their alloted time is consumed.
Both teams must set a price for their card(s).

Before Class 2:
All cards are printed professionally but inexpensively. If the school can’t print them for you, check out Overnightprints.com. They do custom cards cheap.

Class 2:
Set up 2 tables in a large common area of the school.
Hang a large sign saying something like: Help Us Out, Greeting Cards -price-. ALL Proceeds go to charity.
Allow both teams to sell their cards.

Class 3:
Announce the winner and open review discussion.

Talk about the pro’s and con’s of each method.

A pessimistic student will mention that the sheer number of different card options resulted in the winning number of sales. Retort that these options can be looked at as “try’s”. Each card is a different attempt at reaching the right person at the right time with the right product. This is the underlying concept of the lesson. A successful entrepreneur has an increased chance of success if they try different options and strive to meet the true desires of the customer base.

Conclude the lesson by asking the students to discuss (or create a report on) what the next step is. What will further increase sales and how can the small greeting card business continue to evolve to meet the demands of their customers?

===

How this meets your goals:

Fail Fast, Fail Cheap:
The two groups are defined by the amount of planning time they have. The time constrained group can create multiple products and refine their ideas. The single product group is forced to develop one well conceived product.

Simultaneous Engineering:
While this is unscripted, I highly suspect that one team (likely the multiple product group) will find themselves circling around their ideas. The other group (likely the single product group) will need to carefully consider their product, message and price.

Borrow, Don’t Build or Buy:
This should become apparent in the reflection (review paper) assignment. The smart entrepreneur logon to the Internet, view the hundreds of e-cards, review which ones are the most popular and improve on the message and design to reach as many people as possible during the sales period. Hopefully, one of your students (maybe the A+ student) will discover this process and comment in his or her paper on it. You could then highlight this fact along with how it interconnects with the other two areas (Fail Cheap, Build Simultaneously) as a conclusion to this mini-unit.

===

I hope that this helps even a little, Doug. Sincerely, thank-you for posing this question. I really hope that you ask more of these questions in the future. I can’t attend your course in Maine, but love these types of breadcrumbs.

Rob

If I can be so bold – I’d love more thoughts on ideas for activities that can be executed within the class room in 10 to 15 minutes – so to help them “discover” the power of the principles. Followed by a class discussion – then homework that reinforce them again.

I’ve deconstructed the process of innovation – Create, Communicate and Commercialize into dozens of individual “unit operations” as we say in engineering. So I have A LOT of these kinds of things to get done – with so very few classes to do it in.

The PRESSURE ON ME has been increased – as the US Commerce Department is very excited about the program – and is looking to hire some of the Innovation Engineering students as interns next summer — to help grow USA Manufacturing. Bottom line – it’s no longer about grades – it’s about getting the students to REALLY LEARN how to Create, Communicate and Commercialize Meaningfully Unique Ideas.

For Fail Fast, Fail Cheap, and Learn from IT, maybe students could do a fun mission like taking a trip to the rec center and spending a class in the pool. Students could work in teams to make boats with standard supplies such as innertubes and noodles. Once they have a general structure (everyone has 10 minutes to complete) they can test their rafts across the pool once to see how it works. After each test run, teams can only tweak one feature and then they can take the raft for another spin. This will force them to fail fast, fail cheap, and learn from it rather than trying to perfect their structures the first time around. This could be done in the shallow end for safety or modified to be on land.
-Abby

It might be beneficial to have your students do something outside of their competencies. How about having them design a small, completely sustainable building or room for the benefit of a local non-profit organization? They would come up with several options in prototype form. The students would be required to source the needed expertise and materials for their project with no or with very little budget. The materials would need to be recycled rather than new. And the outside experts and donors would need to become “investors” and benefit from being part of the project.

It is great to see that you are sourcing on your teaching. I’m impressed. Here’s an idea that combines Fail Fast Fail Cheap with Borrow don’t Build or Buy. Let the students create a social media presence for the class. Have them broadcast that they are live learning from your class. Let follower’s build. Then source ideas for 1) a charity to help out or 2) an experiment to do in class (kind of like you’ve just done with your blog. Let them see that they will get a host of ideas from leveraging a community of followers. I have a whole lot more suggestions for this, but do not want to lead the ideas too much.

Even if it fails the first time, what have you lost? Not much. You’ve gained some insight on better ways to do it next time if nothing else.

Keep being creative.

Alex

My concept is so unique I have a hard time conveying what we do… I guess thats the downside of being Dramatically Different? Here’s my email:

Thank you for your interest in “Better Than Ever Window Preservation” by Jay Marco!

We offer a patented system that allows you to greatly enhance the energy efficiency
of your home without compromising it’s historical authenticity, beauty, and value.

Please visit our website at http://www.betterthaneverwindows.com   Here you will find
a great deal of information that will help you appreciate the unique benefits of 
“Better Than Ever” Windows… Benefits that will help you live more comfortably,
more economically, and even more safely.

We proudly present our website:  www.betterthaneverwindows.com
And our (printable) brochure:  http://www.moneyoutthewindow.com/brochure/081005btebrochure.pdf

Learn why we say, “When bad things happen to good windows… Don’t 86 them, Fix them!”

Wayne Miller 978 869 7432

If you want  children to be creative, you create space conducive to creation. A finger-painting station has paints, lots of paper and areas you don’t mind getting messy. The same holds true for managing creative types; they need space, …