I still remember the first day classes, hearing that there will be no midterms and no finals (only blogposts), unlike others, I got very worried. At first I thought that writing a blogpost was extremely difficult, but after writing the first few, I realized that these blogpost actually were one of the main aspects that helped my learning in this course. In my point of view, the blogposts were a way to remember and to study the concepts we took in class since they were the only reference we had. 

The activity or assignment that contributed most to my learning was developing the educational game, because it allowed me to carry out, nearly, all the topics I learned in the course. This activity taught me the importance of deferred judgment and design thinking; as a group we implemented the former by allowing all our suggestions to flow, taking them all into consideration, so that we could build on each other’s work and come up with great ideas. While the latter is the fact that innovation is powered by an accurate understanding of what people want and need, and what they like or dislike about the way particular products are made, and adjusting our game according to the feedback from our Doctors and our fellow classmates. This assignment also showed me the importance of prototyping, since the game we had in mind in the beginning was nothing like the final one. When we play-tested the game, my group and I felt very proud; we could see the way people were engaged and eager to reach the final stage of the game.

The most important thingI learned in this course is that creativity is not a characteristic you are born with, creative thinking does not require certain standards or abilities; it opens our minds to a number of new possibilities. I also believe that the short exercises we did, with Dr Sherif) at the beginning of class helped us practice letting our minds wander and come up with many new ideas, which is certainly a way of widening our minds’ capacity of thinking creatively. Because of this course, I feel that I can now implement the things I learned in this course, to each and every part of my life. For a while, I have realized, that I’ve become more creative; when I face a problem, I start looking at the problem from different viewpoints, and (not like what I would have usually done) I don’t head straight to the solution. The biggest obstacle to my learning was the limited time given to complete assignments and projects, I always felt that we needed a lot more time to come up with flawless solutions. Five years from now, I will remember the effect this course had on me because I always add in things that I have learned in this course to both my personal life and academic life.

If I have the opportunity to take a similar course I, sure, will.