My personal progress
Define
Define is one of the skills I experienced very intensively in my first term. I learned how to define Define is one of the skills I experienced very intensively in my first term. I learned how to define problems, define a development or an upcoming opportunity but I also experienced how to define myself!
Let’s start with finding and defining problems. In our Information Skill class we had an exercise how to define issues even though we don’t clearly see them yet. What problems and issues could come up when planning a whole project? I quickly found out how useful this lesson should be for me. Another example of the usage of the skill define, was during the class what is in my backpack. We had to define ourselves during this class. This really taught me how to use this skill very effectively, because I know off course almost everything about myself so I can make a clear distinction on how I would define myself.
Design
During this period I had to design a massive amount of things. With this I do not mean that I actually executed the designed matters, but I planned and thought of a lot of scenarios to create something. Not only did I build scenarios, as an activity of the skill design, I did a massive amount of brainstorming. For instance, for the project of International world of Business, I had to do a lot of research to actually get the appropriate information to get the appropriate content of the project. With this project I also used a lot of prototyping, by making a lot of test poster to make a successful finalized version. The Meta Skill design can be executed in a variety of methods. Some of them are modelling, experimenting, planning or imaging but the method we IBIS students probably use the most is brainstorming. Brainstorming in form of brain showers, mind maps or group discussions.
Another long term project is the passport website we had to develop in our HTML class. The interesting part of this subject is not just the brainstorming of how I want my website to look like but more the actual modeling of the website. Of course I shaped objects of different kinds before but I never designed a complete layout. I believe that the HTML website was a perfect test subject to explore design. Designing through all its methods resulted to make me feel satisfied with the website. Taking a look to our Fundamentals of Business class we had an assessment called the Ed & Tom bakery. It was a nice exercise, different to those we had previously but a great exercise to learn how to design. By creating a new canvas built on my own ideas I took a great opportunity to put all my creative business strategies into one new plan. I brainstormed about opportunities the bakers could take, modeled the old and new strategies into a fitting one.
Execute
For the International World of Business I used the EXECUTE skill. How? Well first of all we had to make a timeline poster for our presentation. To do the poster with all the details and with the content alignment first you need to execute your work on a sheet of paper then you will make the final project. Another class that had the Skill EXECUTE written all over it was the HTML/CSS class. Of course you learn the basic code, but step by step after hours of work, I can say that I executed my code for my website. Of course it’s not a professional website with hundreds of code lines, but nevertheless for a beginner is actually pretty interesting.
Another class that was perfect to experience the Skill EXECUTE was Fundamentals of Business. Here we dealt the whole term with the business model Canvas. This model helps to view a business from several touch points. Analyzing businesses with the help of the Canvas made me think about real life facts. In our main assignment about the company Frog Design I had to define business strategies and prove them onto their execution.
Learn
For the Information Skill class we analyzed and evaluated data to test its credibility. This helped me to combine my skills from ‘Thinking & Reasoning’ with my ‘Information skills’ to get to a good result for ‘The international world of business’. The whole first term was a learning process for me. During this term I have taken part in a massive amount of activities to collect data and to learn from it. During class, I made a lot of use of questioning and observing so that I gain a lot of knowledge about the unknown and therefore learn from it.
I want to start with my Thinking and Reasoning class in which we learn how to think and reason consciously by being aware of human thinking mechanism people constantly use. In class we talked about different mechanism that built a big interest towards me. Anyhow this alone is not where I learned from. The learning process for me happened when I started to reflect what we did in the class. Our weekly assignment to wright a reflecting blog entry made me convert all what I experienced during class onwards to myself. Looking back on the first term I have learned the most from all the reflections I had to write. This really made me define what I have learned and whether I need to improve on certain things. It has learned me a lot about myself, which actions I need to take, which actions I take and whether I did it properly.
Lead
After my first term I am not completely sure to which side I should count myself. The only leading I have done this term was to motivate myself and other students to finish their assessments.