BUSCBIN Impact @KUSOM

What is an innovation? Is it a creative destruction as opined by Joseph Schumpeter or is it an animal spirit within us that could put man on to the moon? The answers to these questions are nebulous and intractable. Or else, it may be our innate necessity as a human being to be always on the move, reach new places, and scale new heights.

If you ever happened to read Lewis Carol’s “Through the Looking Glass and What Alice found there” there is one interesting anecdote where Alice tries to meet Red queen who is running but reaching nowhere to her. To keep pace with and catch up Red Queen, Alice also runs but still remains under the same tree. And the following line is spoken…

Alice: “Well, in our country, you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”

Red Queen: “A slow sort of country!”. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to remain in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

Eureka! Well there is a classic answer for all of us. We all are Alice and we all are running but to reach new heights we must speed up at warp speed! And innovation is the multiplier that speeds us and slingshots up. Without the propelling force of innovation, we all will remain at the same place and soon would be outliving our own utility much before we get superannuated. And this does not necessarily apply only for ordinary mortals like us as individuals but for living institutions as well.

Keeping abreast of this constant growth, Kathmandu University considers innovation as the cornerstone. And Kathmandu University School of Management — KU SOM — as an institution of higher learning, adheres to this belief of “Quality education through Innovation”. Building University Capacity for Supporting Business Incubation in Nepal (BUCSBIN) Project has indeed made good progress in terms of capacity building of faculty members at KU SOM over a period of the last three years starting 2017.

As Universities are centers of knowledge creation and dissemination, the biggest achievement in an institutional level is the capacity enhancement of the faculty members — “the knowledge producers”. As many as fourteen (14) faculty members got first hand opportunity to visit Finland and experience the “Lab-based Teaching-cum-Learning” and three of its MBA student got to travel to OAMK as per student exchange program and took a semester long lab based course.

According to one of the participants Ms. Aarjoo Joshi, from MBA –“BUCSBIN experience for me was road towards self-discovery, self-knowledge, self-enrichment and self-fulfillment”.

No wonder BUCSBIN has been able to put indelible mark on both faculties, students and institution itself for better good.

Some tangible impacts that are visible today are:

Curriculum Impact

KU SOM Developed a three (3) credit curriculum named “Experiential Lab-Based Learning” to be offered as an Elective in MBA Fourth Semester for fall MBA 2019 starting 2021. It has been accepted well and is being executed currently. The course has been aligned with other experiential learning offered in KU SOM such as RES (Rural Enterprise Service) and Internship in order to maximize their efficacy. The students will complete there Experiential Lab classes and will take that learning when they travel to remote part of Nepal. Over there they will use their learning to guide the rural entrepreneurs in enhancing their business. Later after completion of RES they will be involved in internship and again use their lab based learning in corporate setting.

New Teaching Methods Facilitated

• We are able to incorporate components of Lab-based Method of teaching-learning such as feedback, peer based evaluation, human centered design, goal setting, and reflection in respective classes by individual faculty members. This approach has been found to be innovative as it puts the learners at the center of all learning processes, which is in contrast to the teacher-centric teaching-learning that is traditionally and largely being practiced in Universities and colleges in Nepal.
• We provided FDP (Faculty Development Program) to faculty members of School of Engineering, Arts, Education, Medicine, Science, and Management about LAB-Based Teaching Learning Process. Through this, we were able to garner support of the faculty from different schools and also induct five (5) faculty members as coaches who were further trained to work independently as Lab Masters.
• An MOU was signed with Sri Ram College, affiliated to Delhi University, whereby students of DU will be allowed to participate in short-term Summer Workshop conducted by KU SOM following the LAB-based Pedagogy.
• Two faculty members, Asst. Professor Roshee Lamichhane and Asst. Professor Dipesh Karki presented a paper on “Efficacy of Lab Based Pedagogy in Improving the Critical Thinking and Creativity Among Learners” in a COHERE Conference, Spain, 2019.
• Conducted a number of workshops for students and industry participants.

Apart from these, in other capacity building projects such as Data Literacy Training, BUCSBIN’s Lab-based pedagogy has been used. The training was given to Members of Faculties and Teachers hailing from five different provinces (Province 1, Province 2, Bagmati Province, Gandaki Province, and Karnali). As per the feedback received, the faculty members are going to use the learning and takeaways they received from the training later in their respective classrooms. Hence, as a University, we have been able to help other colleges outside Kathmandu to follow and implement the Lab-based philosophy in their teaching-learning process as well.

These developments can be directly attributed to and emanating from the faculty development program conducted in April 2019 at the Hotel Greenwich Village. Conducting this workshop actually helped institutionalize the lab-based pedagogy in the school. Also it helped the leadership in the school to understand and appreciate the project.

Future Plans

We are incorporating the learning of BUCSBIN both in the ongoing and future projects so that a spillover effect occurs that further creates a more equitable entrepreneurial ecosystem in future. For instance, in collaboration with the School of Engineering, KU SOM is going to conduct workshop for teachers in design thinking based on BUCSBIN learning. This would be supported by financial assistance to be received from University Grant Commission (UGC) in the immediate future.

Impact Summary

To conclude, the overall institutional impact can be summarized as:

1. Change in classroom delivery (a deliberate and purposeful shift from Teacher-centered to Learner-centered Philosophy)

2. Change in the perceptual mindset whereby “Feedback” is considered as constructive in nature rather than one of criticism in character.

3. Making the participants believe in the process of learning that exists beyond classroom teaching.

4. Real life applications of the solutions generated by the participants.

5. Helping participants work on real issues to help them connect with the issues/problems of the society better. This helps them become well-rounded individuals with greater self-awareness.

6. Development of credited curriculum has a long-term sustainable impact in the process of learning whereby teachers act only as facilitators and put students in the center stage

7. Conducting Workshops using the concepts of user-centered design, human-centric design thinking, and collaborative mindset.

8. Facilitating in creating 21stCentury professionals by inculcating skills of creativity, collaboration, communication, and communication among learners.

Conclusion

Understandably, unlike transfer of capital and technology, Knowledge Transfer is an arduous process. It undoubtedly mandates the alignment of openness as well as involved thought processes. Given these imperatives at the backdrop, it is highly commendable that the entire BUCSBIN process could successfully bring about a sea change in not only the thinking but also the pedagogy adopted by the members of faculties at KU SOM. This is something analogous to the oft quoted (famous) dialog between Alice and Red Queen indeed as we all are moving swiftly and we are making waves fast enough to take the teaching and learning processes to the next level and keep it at a higher orbit!!