Waterloo 1.0 - Day 1 + 2 - Idea Generation/Value Creation
Day one at Waterloo consisted of group challenges, coffee cup design, cognitive biases, and value creation. The group challenges were typical of what one might usually experience at a camp which I found rather boring. The challenge was meant to stimulate group collaboration as they usually are however I still fail to see much value in them. Coffee cup design consisted of examining different cups and weighing their pros and cons. Following that critique we made desirable hypothetical cups which were basically the most radical things we thought of but nobody would actually buy. The cognitive biases speech reiterated much of what I had learned this past year in psychology at school. Finally the value creation challenge was presented and my partner and I began brainstorming that.
Day two:
The experience today was much the same as yesterday. We had activities which I found somewhat boring and catered more to a elementary or high-school audience as opposed to a university or post-graduate atmosphere. One notable activity we did participate in today was visiting an embedded systems lab where we saw real post-graduate projects very much so applicable to reality. Another activity we did today that I did not enjoy however was a PowerPoint on how to find the root cause of a problem and using that to redefine our personal project statements. A final activity I have mixed feelings about was a visit to a chemical engineering lab. The lab itself was interesting however the lab activity we conducted was too rudimentary. We made simple measurements and hypotheses on how water height/pressure and orifice size would affect flow rate. The results seemed fairly obvious and predictable. It would have been more interesting had we gone over the physics although I also understand some may not have understood them in the short time we had.
I am perhaps unfairly comparing these activities to my experiences dropping in on lectures at my sister's post-graduate institute or that it is my fault for not seeing the value in these activities. I asked a friend of mine, Matthew, whether he saw value in the group challenge we did today which relied upon communication to replicate a drawing and he said he did see the value in the activity. For that reason I believe perhaps we are being treated as engineering undergraduates and I am learning something here, that perhaps my realistic and algorithmic rather than trial-and-error oriented personality means I am not suited to a life in engineering.
Day two:
The experience today was much the same as yesterday. We had activities which I found somewhat boring and catered more to a elementary or high-school audience as opposed to a university or post-graduate atmosphere. One notable activity we did participate in today was visiting an embedded systems lab where we saw real post-graduate projects very much so applicable to reality. Another activity we did today that I did not enjoy however was a PowerPoint on how to find the root cause of a problem and using that to redefine our personal project statements. A final activity I have mixed feelings about was a visit to a chemical engineering lab. The lab itself was interesting however the lab activity we conducted was too rudimentary. We made simple measurements and hypotheses on how water height/pressure and orifice size would affect flow rate. The results seemed fairly obvious and predictable. It would have been more interesting had we gone over the physics although I also understand some may not have understood them in the short time we had.
I am perhaps unfairly comparing these activities to my experiences dropping in on lectures at my sister's post-graduate institute or that it is my fault for not seeing the value in these activities. I asked a friend of mine, Matthew, whether he saw value in the group challenge we did today which relied upon communication to replicate a drawing and he said he did see the value in the activity. For that reason I believe perhaps we are being treated as engineering undergraduates and I am learning something here, that perhaps my realistic and algorithmic rather than trial-and-error oriented personality means I am not suited to a life in engineering.
I like your reflections here, Jason. You are going through an interesting thought process in identifying the audience for the activities that you are participating in. Take a second to think about the people that are designing the activities for you. They have never dealt with you or a group of grade 10s from St George's school. They have some context in who to plan for based on other experiences with other schools, but they don't know us, what curriculum you've done, how you are used to learning, etc. Even within our group, I think that you would agree that each person brings different things to an equation. I think of the lab that you did on Tuesday. What lab might you design for a group of grade 10 boys who you'd never met? You could simply tour them through the lab and tell them what each device does and what kinds of experiments go on in the lab, but that would be boring for most. You could design an activity that you think that they should be able to do (because it is fairly straight ahead). Or you could design an activity that will push the group, challenging some and leaving others lost and frustrated. I wouldn't read too much into the choosing of the audience into whether you should choose a life in engineering or not. I would be more focused on the topics that are being discussed, especially as we tour various areas of the campus and look at what people are doing and how they work. Think of the places that we've already visited and the work those folks are doing. Think of the bays in Engineering 5 and the kinds of work that those folks are doing for the competitions that they are entering. I would think that your "realistic and algorithmic" personality would actually be very good in engineering...
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