presentation 20 google slides/ 14 hours/problem solving&critical thinking

Project Outline

Course: Program Solving and Critical Thinking

Program: BBA

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

· Project Title: Investigating and improving a problem currently present in students ́ lives, inspired by the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

· Project Aim and Purpose: Put into practice the use of Critical Thinking and Problem Solving tools and mindset, develop ideas to improve current problems faced by students.

· Project Learning Outcomes: Use the appropriate steps to conduct a problem solving project, from definition, asking questions, cause and effect evaluations, data collection, brainstorming and decision making.

· Project Structure: The project will be developed throughout the semester with in class activities and homework. Students need to deliver a presentation at the end of the semester (must include the problem definition and discoveries from the investigation phase, the tools and techniques used during the process, results from data collection and details of the proposed solution)

Structure of the project: students will work on a current problem inspired by the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Some suggestions are: food waste among students, quality of food at the campus, recycling in the campus, sustainable transportation, student ́s responsible consumption, mental health, etc.

The project will be conducted throughout the semester with in class activities and homework.

The process of developing the project will follow the logic of the course, and students will apply

the knowledge gathered from each class to solve the problem.

Stage 1: Select one SDG, understand what it represents and choose one problem from

their own environment that relates to it. Create a Center Question (due date: class 4).

Stage 2: Develop a Thought Map by asking good questions (due date: class 6)

Stage 3: Build an Ishikawa Diagram and apply the 5 Whys technique to identify root

cause analysis (due date: class 7).

Stage 4: Identify from the Ishikawa Diagram factors to be measured that could help

understanding the problem (due date: class 8).

Stage 5: Collect and evaluate the data (due date: class 11)

Stage 6: Propose solutions (due date: final project presentation day)

------

After gathering this information

Present all the work you have developed throughout the semester.

Create a presentation using Google Slides with the following parts:

1. The Central Question with a short background of the problem and the group´s main interest in working with this problem;

2. Your thought map explaining your main initial questions and how it drove the investigation (ideally you should have updated adding new questions and answers from when you first developed the thought map);

3. Ishikawa Diagram

4. The data collection plan;

5. Data analysis - share the main findings from your data;

6. Solutions proposed (and why you think they would be good solutions based on the whole investigation)

7. Next steps (what would you recommend as the next steps)

Problem Solving (90%)	Excellent
Problem well defined and researched (20%)	Excellent problem definition, following all the guidelines of a good research question. Developed insightful and deep questions, being able to explore creative parallel paths of discovery. Presented and used a good amount of resources from literature review, all being relevant and trustworthy.
Effective use of cause and effect analysis(15%)	Excellent use of cause and effect diagram and/or 5 Whys, showing many relevant factors that influence the problem. Able to correctly use the techniques to plan data collection.
Effective use of Research methods for data collection (20%)	Able to choose correctly the research methods. Showed excellent skills on collecting all meaningful data. Correctly followed the ethical recommendations of data collection.
Interpretation of findings (20%)	Conducted an excellent analysis of the data, showing excellent analytical skills but challenging own ideas and bias. Able to identify very well based limitations of the work and provide great recommendations for future studies.
Solutions proposed (15%)	Identified wisely excellent changes and improvements, showing excellent understanding of the problem applying an “outside of the box” thinking.

Faculty’s recommendations for a successful project: A successful project will be able to demonstrate the use of the different tools and techniques learned throughout the course. The group must be able to show how their investigation led to the proposed solutions, sharing the logic behind the discovery process, making it clear that their final ideas came through their research. Both the investigation and the solutions developed should be out of the “basics”, bringing the creativity and taking it to a different level of thinking, but still valid and feasible.