The brainstorming day went well, I think.  I don't know what the students think though.  Should I start taking surveys at the end of every class?? Which reminds me that I need to do a pre-survey about self-directed learning.  I will need to get that done today.

Last week's brainstorming class used Leidtka's book.  The prior week, students did an out-of-class ethnographic study so they came to class having experienced at least one customer's journey for a problem.  We then formalized that journey by using Leidtka's journey map exercise of mapping out highs & lows.  We then used that map to brainstorm the idea further.  Students finalized their product idea and then walked around and looked at each others posters (flip chart paper).  They were then asked to do one more revision based on comments they had received.  Three teams had the exact same idea, so two merged together. Then the next exercise was Leidtka's mind mapping. Without talking, students were to leave a post-it-note on a poster about something they liked or disliked about the idea.  The take home assignment was that students were to put together 1 ppt of the idea to present in the next class (5 min max) and also complete Leidtka's napkin pitch exercise.  This is turned in as a homework assignment.

General observations:
1. Some of my international 'A' students struggle with the concept of self-directed learning.  They are the ones that continually do not follow directions.  Maybe there is a language barrier here.
2.  The ideas generated by the students are very similar to past classes, so perhaps the type of ideation exercise doesn't really matter.
3. Overall, I get positive feedback almost every class.
4.  Check points, such as quizzes, seem to be essential to make sure that the students actually learn the material that they are suppose to be learning.  Having a book (even if it is mine), certainly helps with the self-learning process.  I'm not sure I would do it without a book.

This weekend, I attended the InnovWeekend, which was a start-up weekend of the Entrepreneurship club. Students had 48 hours to put a product together.  Many of the students, particularly engineers, had an idea/product they had been already working on.  It seems as if these students did not win the competition.  I will have to verify that.  I think the reason is that the ideas are very different than the business school's ideas and the judges tend to be from the business school.  Also the engineers did not do a great job of presenting their ideas.  The idea presentation is extremely important for entrepreneurs.  I must remember to show shark tank to my students today.

Final thoughts:  The organic nature of this class keeps me interested.  I'm hoping its not too organic for the students!