What I learned in the Challenge Based Learning Framework
On May 10th, I successfully completed my internship at Spark Lab by inDrive, which lasted seven months. During this time, Spark Lab students worked on four areas: Sustainable Cities, Ecology, Responsible Consumption, and a Healthy Generation.
Throughout the project, we used the Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) methodology, developed by Apple in 2008 and still in use today. I have always enjoyed this methodology because it allows me to work on a project that matters to me and has special meaning. That’s why I chose the Sustainable Cities track, as I wanted to contribute to solving the problems of my home city, Almaty.
CBL is a three-step process: Engage, Investigate, Act.
In the Engage phase, we researched the problem and selected a challenge that we wanted to tackle. We identified more than 34 challenges related to our area of focus. As a result, we decided on optimizing public transportation as our challenge.
At the beginning of my internship, I was assigned to investigate the problems of public transportation and possible solutions. I saw the benefits of this approach, as it allowed us to conduct research on the issue, market, supply, and demand before making a decision. This process helped us to gain a better understanding of the problem and see it from various angles.
With this knowledge, it became easier to develop a solution that would be relevant to society. During the second half of my internship, all the teams began implementing their projects and entered the final stage of the project.
We focused on creating a service that could help track public transportation congestion and provide optimal and comfortable routes. This solution was chosen because we had conducted extensive research and customer development (CustDev) interviews, which showed that such a service could be beneficial for people.
However, after long attempts to create this product, we realized that we had not taken into account one important thing: our own ability and feasibility to implement this software. We realized that creating such a product required more time, technology, and skills that we did not have at that time.
The beauty of Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) is that if we fail to implement our product during the ACT stage, we can always return to the ENGAGE & INVESTIGATE stages and continue our research. CBL is a framework that allows you to endlessly cycle through all three stages and constantly improve your product. Even after creating a product, you can still return to ENGAGE & INVESTIGATE and ask questions, collect feedback, and try to do better.
After brainstorming and several studies, we identified a potential opportunity to create a useful product for students living in dormitories. The idea was to rent a minivan and pick up students from the dorm and drive them to the university. Usually, students use buses to get around, but if we could transport them in a minivan, it would significantly reduce the load on public transport and make it more convenient.
We conducted customer development (CustDev) and in-depth interviews quickly and efficiently, as we had already done this earlier. We created a Telegram bot to automate processes such as booking, scheduling, payment, and reviews. After interviewing 170 students, we realized that they would find this product useful.
To test our hypothesis, we took two trips using a one-time minivan ride. Based on the feedback, we saw that this was a great service, and students were willing to pay a little extra to travel in comfort and safety.
After that, we conducted a 5-day pilot, in which we hired a driver with a minivan and began transporting students. During these 5 days, we identified the optimal departure times, schedules, and many other operational details. All actions were carried out through the Telegram bot that we had created. During these 5 days, we were able to identify its advantages and disadvantages, as well as its limitations.
The feedback from students was very positive. 97% of them said they were happy to use our service, due to its affordable price and comfortable ride. As a result of our observations, we also found that our UniShuttle was able to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 6 times per trip. This was because some students would agree to share a ride with others, instead of calling a taxi for each person. Furthermore, one UniShuttle could replace 5–6 individual cars, significantly reducing traffic on the roads.
The implementation of the 5-day pilot program took place at the end of the academic year, so the number of students attending university decreased due to the beginning of the exam period. The internship came to an end, so we conducted an analysis, calculated economic units, and communicated with universities about further cooperation for the next academic year.
As a result, we created a passenger transportation service for UniShuttle students. We interviewed more than 500 students and conducted 14 in-depth interviews. We also worked with R&D InDrive experts to create quality questions for customer development. During the 5-day pilot, 162 students from KBTU became our beneficiaries. Based on our calculations, we were able to reduce the total transport load by 26% in each hour interval on Tole Bi Street. We also managed to reduce CO2 emissions by 6 times per trip.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all the team leaders of this program, who have taught us valuable skills in today’s world. I truly enjoyed the CBL framework, and my team and I learned a great deal from it.
At CBL, we learned that it is essential to conduct research before creating a product in order to ensure that the product we create is relevant and solves people’s problems.
here you can see our reels about the service
https://www.instagram.com/p/C6k8zJjNF0M/
