Experiences Piloting Design, Technology and Innovation as a Subject in TSWREIS School with a Student-Led Model

Abhishek Dey¹, Shramanth Rajarathnam² & Eshwar Bandi³

Inqui-Lab Foundation

abhishek@inqui-lab.org ¹, shramanth@inqui-lab.org ² & eshwar@inqui-lab.org ³

The poster was presented on 27th May 2020

Part1_Poster_ExperiencesWithTSWREIS_V3

Inqui-Lab Foundation has been in the space of creativity, design, prototyping and innovation for the past 3 years. Inqui-Lab’s vision is to “Nurture problem solving capacity in the next generation”, where, problem solving capacity as building the following skills in students:
Design Thinking, Prototyping, Risk Taking, Team work Inqui-Lab designed a year-long program called “Innovation Program” which was based on design, technology and prototyping but with the idea that students can solve problems with their own creativity and innovative spirit.

For the academic year 2019-20, Inqui-Lab partnered with 15 TSWREIS schools (which come under the Telangana Social Welfare Department) to pilot a student-led program. This essentially meant that selected students (2 from each class) were trained to teach other students in their classrooms. An assigned teacher from each school also accompanied the training, but with the view of only being aware of the Innovation Program, the logistical and material demands, but not to teach the program.
As the pilot progressed, we documented our learnings and some critical data points in the implementation of the Program. These include the role of the teacher, the need for Inqui-Lab’s direct support in the initial stages of the program, key check-ins, need for incentives for competitive spirit, success of the execution of the program in classrooms, and, experiences of the student-leaders.

This poster will discuss some of the above critical data-points, our learnings, scope of scaling of student-led model for design and technology education and changes for expanding to more classrooms next year.