In order to broaden students' international horizons and expand their creative thinking, Phoenix Class Series “Creative Problem Solving,” which is also one of programs of the 2022 “Global Summer School of Beijing Normal University,” was successfully held from July 4th to the 12th. With 30 students enrolled, covering Macau and 15 international students from the Netherlands, Mongolia, Lithuania, Bangladesh, Ghana, Nepal and other countries and regions, the participation of foreign students in the class reached 50%. The participants of the course included students from Beijing and Zhuhai campuses of Beijing Normal University, UIC, University of Macau and other universities in China and abroad. The course was conducted by Goh Ai Yat, a former senior banker in Singapore and management consultant of SBF Group, who is currently working in a Singaporean university and also teaches Entrepreneurship and Strategic Finance for the Australian MBA program.
Integrating multiple disciplines of creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship and visual thinking, this course emphasized the application of academic theory and literature to real-world practices and processes, thus presenting a differentiated perspective on creative problem solving in the business world. Through course study and workshops, the class aims to help students use creative thinking to solve problems from new perspectives in the face of complex and changing environments.
At the beginning of the course, Ms. Goh Ai Yat made a lot of arrangements for students to build their innovative thinking through a lively and humorous lecture style, making them realize the fact that everything is changing rapidly in today's world and every change affects everyone. She further explained that only through continuous learning, understanding the factors of potential entrepreneurial opportunities, and exploring different types of innovation and their applications can they better gain initiative in their future choices. Guest lecturer Sherrie Low fully guided the students to use their creativity to enhance their visual thinking by drawing new patterns on irregular lines, thus using their natural visual thinking skills to discover a new way to solve problems. Students actively participated in the course and they were all very impressed by the high-caliber class.
As the lecture progressed, the two teachers used creative thinking patterns and teaching methods to guide the students to be imaginative and enhance their innovative abilities. Although it was an online classroom, students were enthusiastic, and they turned on the microphone one after another and talked freely in the chat box discussing new ideas for solving problems with the teachers. Then, the students were divided into five learning groups. They established the objectives of the topic first, and then by active discussion and collaboration among the group members, they generated an abundance of ideas, discovered problems, solved them with creative thinking, and prepared for the final presentation of the class.
The presentation of the first group.
The first group designed FreeMo (a self-created emoji function), which allows users to participate in video quality monitoring in response to the explosion of TikTok short videos in many countries, which has resulted in uneven video quality and vulgar video content. The highlight of the function is the use of interesting emoji ways to efficiently collect user feedback on videos in order to filter videos automatically.
The presentation of the second group.
With the rapid development of artificial intelligence and the falling stock price of SenseTime, the second group made two proposals of a marketing plan and AR glasses innovation design for SenseTime. It’s noticeable that it may help the company turn from the passive party to the active party and use AI technology to design a pair of new intelligent AR glasses with its own patent and affordable price.
The presentation of the third group.
The third group gave a series of suggestions to improve the quality of life of residents based on the relatively high housing price and cost of living in Zhuhai, taking Hengqin New Area as an example. The highlight laid in the analysis from a macro perspective from the actual life.
The presentation of the fourth group.
In the era of the epidemic, more and more people choose to exercise at home, but the existing shoes on the market are not specially designed for indoor exercises. If people wear ordinary shoes to do exercise on the yoga mat, it will cause some damage to the feet. To fill the gap in this market demand, the fourth group designed innovative indoor special yoga shoes, with the highlight of catering to the actual needs of the home fitness group.
The presentation of the fifth group.
The fifth group used two models, PEST and VUCA, to give methods to improve the problem from different perspectives for the situation of oil operating losses. Consequently, by decomposing the various parts of the oil, they got the solution that methanol can replace many fuels and can be used to make batteries as well as replacing the diesel fuel to a large extent.
The wonderful end-of-course debriefing demonstration impressed the teachers a lot, which also helped to achieve further improvements for the effectiveness of the online classroom. The course was successfully concluded with a group photo of teachers and students.
Translator: Xu Yifan
Proofreading: Martin Wittenberg
