Changing Education as a Student: My Story
*Note: In the text that follows, I describe my experience, having studied in Belgium (Europe). Everything I mention might not be the same depending on where you studied, but based on my research, the main conclusions are commonly shared.*
School is boring. I mean seriously. We can all share this feeling at some point. From 6 years old until we get 18, we are put in a box 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. We are forced to sit on a chair and listen to someone teaching us about things we have no interest in and that sometimes seem to be so far from the real world.
When we are taught math, we are no taught that math can represent the whole universe, or that it allows websites like Google to work. When we are taught history, we are not taught that it can be used to understand how our current society behaves and predict the future. When we are taught physics and chemistry, we are not taught that one is just an implication of the other, and that they are the basic tools that allowed your smartphone to come to life.
The links between what we study and what surrounds us in the world are not made obvious. Even worse maybe, the links between the subjects themselves are not made obvious. We study subjects independently when they are in fact often part of whole. This is a major problem for students. It is something I see in my summer job as a teaching assistant. More than 90% of the people I help have a really hard time understanding the connections between the different courses or sometimes even between the different chapters of a course.
I used to be a mediocre student at school. Nothing really motivated me there. My opinion of school was that it was something that simply needed to be done.
To roll back my story: I was born in Ingushetia, Russia’s smallest and poorest republic. War caused me and my family to leave our home in the hope of a better future. I came to Belgium at the age of 3. It was more than 17 years ago. A long way has come since this little boy arrived. I am now 21 and I will soon start my master’s degree in Electrical Engineering at UCLA (in the US). This long way had many ups and downs. I was on the quest to find what my true passion is. Creativity is something that I always wanted to develop. I have been drawing since the moment I could hold a pen and as an artist, creativity is an obsession. Later, as I grew up, I loved to brainstorm on technical problems like finding new sources of energy or imaging ways to get clean water everywhere. I was curious about why some people were more creative than others and I was wondering if innovative thinking could actually be taught. This gave me an idea.
A year ago, I created Outside the Box LLN, an innovators club that aims to foster innovation among students to create the next wave of changemakers.
We are 11 members. Each week, we meet trying to find innovative solutions to problems affecting society, e.g. traffic jams, air pollution or education. We also collaborate with startups and help them answer open questions they have about product development. Our dream is to become a movement that will spread on every campus throughout the world to have a global impact. Imagine if all over the world, groups of people brainstorm every week, how could they not find an innovative idea with huge impact?
I am still a student and a lot of the things I said at the beginning kept bothering me. At university, an important problem I saw, that was less present at school, is the lack of understanding between teachers and students. Teachers simply do not get enough feedback. They seem to be disconnected from the reality of the student.
This is why, at Outside the Box LLN, we are currently establishing a special unit focused entirely on education. Its aim will be to improve the student experience by bridging the gap between students and teacher. The idea is that this unit supports the professors by helping them understand the true student needs and implement new ways of teaching to meet them, such as: inverted classes, feedback platform, podcasts, give lectures in a game or story format. Moreover, as we plan to expand Outside the Box worldwide, this project could adapt locally to each university and this way, be more efficient than a general solution.
Next week, I fly to Denmark for the very first UNLEASH Innovation Lab. 1000 people from all over the world will come to brainstorm on the SDGs. I hope this opportunity will help me bring Outside the Box to another level, expand it to new places, find ways to make more impact and help more people.
See you soon,
Take care!
Zaurbek
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p.s. 1: If you want any more details about some parts, please mention it in the comments. I will try to write another article where I explain more deeply the concrete actions we plan to take with this new unit :)
p.s. 2: Btw, we are always looking for people to expand Outside the Box to other cities. If you are interested or know someone who will be, please do not hesitate to contact me. :)
