A group of about 100 graduate and post graduate students tried their critical thinking and problem solving skills in a ‘Samadhan‘ workshop held at St. Francis College for Women in Begumpet, Hyderabad on February 21.
The one-day workshop, organized by LearnEd, offered students and professionals a platform to understand problems faced in a real-time work environment and ways to find solutions. The company focuses on student human resource development.
Prominent educator and trainer from Hyderabad, Adi Babu tickled minds of students in the workshop to think about attitude required to solve problems whether personal, academic, professional, or social.
He thought them how not get influenced by various affiliations like caste, community, region, religion, gender etc while attempting to solve a problem.
Citing an internal research, LearnEd CEO Luvieen Alva said that a majority of students lack problem solving skills, which is normally not thought in schools and colleges.
“We started off with a project called Inspiration Infinity, in which we conduct simulation for different careers. Though many organizations do career guidance, we let students understand the career through simulation,” pointed out Luvieen.
According to an OECD survey of Adult Skills 2013: “Only an average of 6% of adults demonstrated the highest level of proficiency in “problem-solving in technology-rich environments.”
In a study on Skills Needed in 21st Century, World Economic Forum (WEF) stated that skilled jobs are more and more centered on solving unstructured problems and effectively analyzing information.
Therefore it becomes important to teach critical thinking and problem solving skills at school level itself, says Sriram Kakarla. Another study of the WEF shows that human need to foster skills around critical thinking and creativity in order to outperform robots in future.
Among speakers who interacted with participants and shared their experiences were: Birad Rajaram Yajnik, Publisher and MD of Visual Quest India; Anu Acharya, CEO of Mapmygenome; and Madhavi Tanikella, Learning and Organization Head (India) at Qualcomm.
Yajnik spoke about corruption of conscience, Anu on innovative solutions in healthcare, and Madhavi on solution oriented mindset in recruitment.