Today’s session (16 October 2017)

Hi everyone

Today we met Laurie Wilson from LearnFast (www.learnfast.co.nz).

Laurie is a business trainer and coach, with a background in the advertising industry. He has worked with many big advertising agencies over the years and he talked about how important it is to have a clear brief from the client in order to do the work (aka ‘solve their problem’).

Laurie talked about ways to get ideas flowing and he challenged us with an exercise in which we had to think of as many circular / round things as we could. He then narrowed things down by asking us to think of circular things in the classroom or in a car. Focusing on something specific helped us to find more things!

After this we did a case study in which a manufacturing company suddenly (and unexpectedly) had a production problem. We worked our way through the case study to find solutions to the problem, by asking questions (which is an interrogative or Socratic approach) and evaluating the evidence.

Finally, Laurie gave us a lifeboat exercise in which we imagined that we were survivors of a shipwreck, cast adrift in a lifeboat. We had to rank the resources that we had in the lifeboat, from least useful to most useful. We then compared our results in groups and finally we looked at the ‘correct’ answers supplied by the US Navy.

During today’s session we also chose our presentation times for Assignment 2 (part 2). Those students who weren’t in class today need to see me about choosing a time from the remaining slots on the roster. See Moodle for the instruction sheet which goes with this part of the assignment.

Looking ahead to next Monday, please remember that 23 October is a holiday and that the campus will be closed. Our next session is on 30 October, at the usual time and place.

Remember also that Assignment 3 can be submitted any time up to and including 4:00pm on Friday 20 October 2017. Email your softcopy to me before the due date please, and hand in a hardcopy at the admin office the following week.

See you all in a fortnight’s time!

Cheers

Phil