Design Brief: Mega Project

A. Problem Statement:

We can clearly see that there is a lack of fun, extra-curricular, and recreational activities in schools and colleges. Teachers use the conventional methods to teach students which include cramming and absorbing content without getting any immediate outcome or happiness. There are a very few institutions that conduct fun activities or events for their students. Still, those are organized on a larger scale and once or twice in a year.

B. Root Causes:

This problem exists because of the following reasons:

1. Most of the teachers are not concerned with all the above-mentioned facts. They are just concerned with the salary they get. So, they do not think of bringing any kind of change.
2. Institution’s officials (principals, vice principals) are busy with the maintenance of the balance between teachers and students, fee, and bills. They do not find enough time to think of all this and devise a proper way to sort out the matter.
3. Students do not have the courage and freedom to say all this to their school’s management though they really want some fun activities and competitions to be conducted in their institutes.
4. Parents do not bother asking the school management to incorporate a healthy competitive environment in the schools. Because they may think that schools will charge them much if such conducts happen and they insist on is grades/marks.

● Research Conducted:

We conducted our research in different ways. We discussed the problem and idea with one another and took an in-depth look into the scope and validity of the problem statement.

● Research Methods:

Research has been conducted in a diverse fashion through multiple resources as follows:

1. Group Meetings: Hours long group meetings have been done to first know the history of our own selves in order to check if we faced the same situation during our school/college life.
2. Interviews: We conducted short interviews of students around us. Those include our own siblings and cousins.
3. Online Survey Form: We collected the data via Google Forms too. The answers given by the fillers were clearly pointing towards our stance.
4. Focus Groups: On a lighter note, we did our research through some small focus groups too which included the students of matriculation and intermediate in an academy.

● Key Learnings from the research:

We concluded after the research that there are no appropriate steps being taken by most of the institutions to resolve the issue narrated above. We found out too that students are really interested in some fun and recreational activities. They are overwhelmed by the burden of assignments and tests. They want some sessions to recreate and lighten their mood.

Willingness of students to participate (Online Survey)

Games of interest of most students (Google Form)

C. People Affected by the Problem and how they are exactly affected:

Directly affected people are the students of matriculation and intermediate who study in some unprivileged schools/colleges and even some privileged academies too. This leads to demotivation and sometimes frustration in students. Also, their IQ level and sense of participation isn’t promoted as required. This makes them under confident and make them feel incompetent even if they have a potential within them. As it is said, “All work and no play make Jack a dull boy”. Lack of such activities even results in loss of interest of students in daily academic life as they get bored with the books and tests they give. There is no creative way of learning and competition among students. If we expand our vision, we’ll get to see that this effect on these students is indirectly affecting the whole country. Because, as mentioned earlier, the use of conventional methods remains a hindrance in the betterment of education system. The loss of students' interest in their studies, depression of confidence, and incompetency are all factors of low literacy rate of Pakistan.

● Research Conducted:

We found out the root cause of the problem. The main people being directly affected by the problem and how it spreads its vicinity to a larger scale. Also, identified how the problem can we nip the evil in the bud (how the problem can be solved at initial level).

● Research Methods:

1. First things first, we took a look in our own pasts and compared it with the present situation. The way we are today is on a whole other league as compared to how we were back in our school/college times. The confidence, communication skills, sense of participation/competition, and teamwork we’ve got after participating in different activities, sessions, and events made us realize the importance of these activities.
2. A direct communication with the students also helped us realize the significance of such activities.
3. Online survey form also helped us know the interest in such activities.
4. The excitement of students showed us the willingness of students to take a break from their daily study routine was a tool too.

● Key Take aways from the research:

A number of conclusions can be drawn from all the research work. Such as:

1. Recreational/fun activities are important.
2. Students learn fast through them.
3. The skills developed through these activities are not taught by the institutions.
4. The lack of such activities give rise to many other problems too as mentioned previously.

Reference: Extracurricular Activities in Schools and Colleges — Educational Portal of Pakistan (epop.pk)

D. Demographics of Targeted Population:

We plan to target the students of matriculation and colleges mainly for the time being.

● Age Group:

The age of our targeted population falls somewhere in between 14 -19 years.

● Gender:

We intend to entertain all kinds of genders because we are mainly concerned with maximum participation in the best and decent way possible.

● Race and Ethnicity:

We don’t have any discriminations based on race or ethnicity of our target audience. We welcome all kinds of students with any backgrounds.

● Marital Status:

About 95% of our targeted population is unmarried. However, the rest 5% may considered to be exceptions.

● Education Level:

As already mentioned, our audience are of matriculation and intermediate level.

● Income and Employment:

Most of the students (around 85%) are not employed at this stage. Their source is the monthly pocket money they get from their parents. The rest 15% include students who can be safely said to be home tutors and freelancers. On an average, we can consider a monthly average source of around Rs. 5000 per month.

● Research Conducted:

We did research the following:

1. Age
2. Race
3. Ethnicity
4. Gender
5. Marital Status
6. Income
7. Education
8. Employment

● Research Method:

All these demographic details were found easily through observations.

● Key learnings from the research:

We concluded that for the time being, our audience will be the students specifically that of matriculation and intermediate.

Demographic Details of Targeted Population

E. What is already being done to alleviate the problem?

There are some institutes (schools and colleges) that arrange functions and trips for their students. The purpose of those is also recreation and enjoyment. There are a lot of societies in universities that conduct many events that aim at providing the students with recreation, enjoyment, learning, and exciting prizes.

● Research Conducted:

We have researched to get the names of institutions that arrange such functions for their students. Some of them are Beaconhouse, LGS, Aitchison College, The Crescent School, PGC etc.

● Research Method:

We used Google to get these names.

● Key learnings from the research:

We’ve found that that there are only a small number of institutes that arrange some kind of recreational functions for the students. While majority of them don’t bother with them.

Reference: Extracurricular Activities in Schools and Colleges — Educational Portal of Pakistan (epop.pk)

F. Learning Persona:

Persona-1

Persona-2

Persona-3

G. Our Action Plan:

We intend to do the following to overcome this issue:

1. We will go to schools/colleges/academies and make them realize the importance of these activities for the academic and mental grooming of their students.
2. We will prepare competition quizzes related to the area of interest we find best for our target audience and conduct those in the classes.
3. We can even arrange some sort of short fun games for them if we have more space.
4. Other competitions like painting, sketching, Ludo, Chess writing, calligraphy, and mobile games can also be conducted depending on our target audience.
5. We can also conduct sports competition (cricket, badminton, football) if we have a proper play area and enough time.
6. We will take a small registration fee from students to manage the prize money for the competitions.
7. The estimate will be such that we get some profit out of the fee. For example, if we have a total of 150 students and 100 out of them participate. We can take 100 rupees from each participant, which is not a big deal nowadays (100x100=10000). We will announce the prize money of about Rs. 1000. Rest of the amount will be our profit after excluding the amount spent on arranging refreshments for the audience (if any).
8. We can announce different prizes for different sorts of competitions and will generate some profit from each.
9. We can even conduct quizzes from the very textbooks of the students. It will make it easy for us to convince the officials of the institutes to let us conduct.
10. We will publicize those events on our socials so the institutions will get some recognition as well. It will help us get more acceptance from other institutions as well and may charge them a bit for this. We can give them a package.
11. After getting a considerable number of followers on our socials and getting our idea popular among students, we’ll go to brands like CandyLand and Bisconi etc. for sponsorships.