week 11

This week in innovation lab marked our final project! Personally, this was the one I was most excited about as I was looking forward to working on an issue of sharing innovation to my home university as I believed it could have lots of potential there as this was something completely new and never been introduced in our University before.

Having met up as a group the previous week outside of class we had a good understanding of what we needed to do during our open lab day as we had decided on a basic framework for our ideas and had an organised list of things we needed to do on the open lab day. This organisation stood us in good stead for the open lab as we knew exactly what we had to do and how we were going to do it.

On the day of open lab we divided into two separate working groups. Hannah and Hollie were in charge of typing up and formatting the booklet which we had composed collectively as a group prior to this and were also in charge of composing a promotional poster which would be placed around our universities displaying information regarding the times and what the "introduction to innovation" day which we had organised was about. Whilst making our booklet we realised the importance of making it flexible and adaptable for its use both in Spain and Northern Ireland but also for its potential use in other universities across Europe. We decided to compose a basic outline so that the day would have a framework to follow but we also wanted to leave it open enough so that the people running the day would be able to adapt and chose what they felt would best work in their environment. We structured it using the 4 step model that focuses on Feel, Imagine, Do, Share as well as including a variety of ice-breaker games, brain breaks, and practical activities that could be used.

Poster we composed

Booklet we composed

However before we split into our groups we decided to come up with a list of goals to ensure that our work would match the outcomes that we wanted for the day. And as teachers goals are very important as they allow you to measure the amount of success and see if you accomplish what you set out to do. Likewise because I am always eager to get stuck in I often miss out this step which is vital to ensure that the activities and events you plan have purpose and relevance to your goals. Our goals included for our program day therefore included:

• Students and Lecturers are motivated to learn about innovation and their views are challenged
• Students and Lecturers form an opinion/idea of what innovation is 
• Student and Lecturers are actively involved in the planning of an event 
• Students voluntarily sign up for degree enhancement  course on teaching innovation 
• Students and Lecturers realise the importance of innovation in teaching 

As we waned to use a range of promotional resources such as videos, a stand in the corridor of our university and posters to promote our event we decided it was also necessary to set out goals for our promotion too. These goals were to:

• encourage people to sign up
• inform with details and outline of the day
• draw attention and make the event appealing

Andrea, Emily and I worked on making and editing the promo video and video for the introduction to our "introduction to innovation" day. Together we got people from our class to help us make the video which we filmed on an iPad and edited on iMovie. This first film we made consisted of asking people their views on what innovation is, their favourite part of the innovation process and getting them to be innovative in their response to the question 'This is not a spoon, what is it?'. We wanted to get real life responses to innovation and their favourite part as we thought this would be a useful way to introduce the concept of innovation at the start of our program. The alternative uses for a spoon idea was also a way of getting them to be innovative and creative. You can check out our video below!

Secondly, we made a short, promotional video which we wanted to be emailed to students and lecturers the week before to encourage them to come to our innovation taster day. Within the video we included  practical information such as dates and times as well as what the day would involve. We wanted to use humour as a selling technique as we realised that this would be a good way of showing students how fun and interesting the day would be and how it wouldn't be like normal lessons. Likewise we wanted to use a a video as a promotional tool as we realised that students will respond better to technology than a paper copy of flyer or leaflet. Here is our promotional video you can have a look at:

Prezi Presentation

After our whole class was finished we got to share our projects and feedback from the day. As a group we decided to make a Prezi to visually highlight what our project was about and our ideas this included a run down of our case, goals, things to consider when planning for the day, a lay out of the day itself, promotion and support/ resistance we may come across. It was here that we showed our videos and let the rest of the class have an opportunity to look at our posters and booklets which we made. We also shared with them the feedback we had received from lecturers from our university who had commented: "wonderful idea and the concept of learning about, then teaching innovation is just the ind f more active and hands on approach that we need at Stranmillis". This was very encouraging to see that there was a few lecturers interested in this concept and trying to introduce innovation in our home university and the potential for change that could happen in our university when we return home! Likewise our Student's Union President commented that "A Students experience must be shrouded in vibrancy and opportunity, schemes and plans which seek to introduce innovation to Stranmillis can only benefit this process."
We also received feedback from the Spanish University which stated that "the project on innovation would be highly interesting for our university". This was also very encouraging as although Mondragon University was already very invovled with innovation it was still very keen to see the implementation of a new project and saw the potential of it in their university. Thus, we had created a project which would have potential for both universities. Support from Universities is key in order to successfully implement such projects.

Overall, I really enjoyed this project and I feel that as a team we worked very effectively and efficently coming up with innovative ideas for sharing and promoting the concept of innovation in our home university of Stranmillis!

Nicolai's brother then came to give a talk on social innovation. I found this very interesting as it broadened my perspective on how innovation can be used not only in education and business world but also how it can be used in social contexts too.

The final thing we did was an evaluation on the whole course using the delphi method. This actively involved everyone in the class as we all had to write 3 things we liked about the course and 3 things we didn't like about the course. We then rotated our sheets and everyone was able to grade each others s statements on a scale of 1-3, 1 being agree, 3 being disagree. I liked this method of evaluating as I had never used it before, I liked how it was anonymous but required you to give fair and honest responses. I definitely see the potential for using an adaptation of this the method in schools as a form of peer assessment for each others work or feedback on work or project they did in class.