Halfway mark! We've officially finished the first module of the course which is service design fundamentals. After this class, we will officially move on to service design practices where students will create a new service based on all the tools and knowledge they've acquired in the first half of the semester.
To help them get into the right mindset for the remainder of the semester, I made this class into 2 parts. One is to get into their final project group and go over a team charter. The other one is to use this opportunity to reflect on their learning journey so far.
Most students really enjoy having the team charter exercise. Many mentioned they've never had a chance to do this for their other classes and just got thrown into a group and start working. I intentionally designed the team to make sure each team is composed with students coming from different majors, interests, and personality traits which I have observed throughout the semester. It might be challenging at times to work with people from different backgrounds and working styles but this will only resemble how reality is in any group work setting. Hopefully the team charter will help them collaborate better on the project and recognize their differences in values and working styles.
For the midterm reflection, I gave students some pointers on questions they can think about as they reflect. They were to submit their reflections on our class blog on Medium. When I eventually read their reflections, I was very pleased to see many of them were able to apply what they learned in the class so far in their personal life as well as their other school projects. To my surprise (again), students really enjoy group work in this class. I hope it's my team-design's doing that makes them enjoy their group work but even if that's not the case, I'm happy they enjoy group collaboration because it's very key to succeed in any capacity. Students also enjoy the size of this class because they don't get overwhelmed seeing so many unfamiliar faces of people (on the tiny screen) that they don't get to interact with. I hope to keep up the energy and spirit for the remainder of the semester. After all, facilitation a good learning culture and environment is one of the most important jobs of a teacher :)
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