OLDS — Olds College business diploma students built bridges – literally and figuratively – in their operations management class.
The purpose of the project was to enhance “critical thinking and problem-solving skills to effectively implement efficiency and effectiveness in the workplace,” instructor Jennifer Hainsworth said in an email.
The goal of the operations management class is to prepare students for work in middle to upper business management.
Hainsworth said the project, undertaken in late October, was one of several activities undertaken via the MasterMind method.
“Every activity is different; from interactive games, mind-bending puzzles, seemingly strange random tasks, and collaborative challenges,” she wrote.
Those tasks included a silent interview in which one student could ask questions, but their respondent wasn’t allowed to speak. They had to figure out how to handle that situation.
Another week, they dealt with a tabletop escape room.
“The focus is on trying to assess a situation, solve a problem, build efficiency, and transfer information to solve problems in the future within operations management,” Hainsworth wrote.
In the bridge building project, students were required to build little tiny bridges out of materials like paper, popsicle sticks, even marshmallows if they wished
They had 40 minutes to design their bridges and construct them and were given a budget of $350 in play money with which to purchase materials.
In another class, Hainsworth tested the durability and functionality of the bridges by running little tiny toy cars across and under them.
Prizes were awarded for bridges that passed that test as well as a weight test and for cost-effectiveness.
“So we passed this one, this one. So far, all of these ones are passing in this direction,” Hainsworth said as she pushed the cars along.
Suddenly she said, “uh oh. We have not passed. Op, no.”
“Push hard,” a student said to laughter.
Another student said their bridge was a “summer-time” one, not meant to be used in the winter. That too provoked some laughs.
During an interview with the Albertan, Hainsworth said while traditional teaching methods like lectures can be useful, the goal of the MasterMind method is to spur students to think creatively.
That’s because in their careers, they’ll have to tackle a variety of problems which may be wildly different from each other and thus require different solutions.
“You can go on the internet and look things up, and so it’s less about that sort of memorization and more about how can they have those thinking skills to critically analyze things that are happening and be able to apply it later on and, again, be engaged,” Hainsworth said.
She also believes COVID hurt some students’ ability to engage, because during those years, they had little, if any, social interaction.
“Even in the classroom I’ve noticed that there’s been a change there as well, so I’m trying to think of different ways to get them interested and the ability to apply those concepts as well, so trying myself to think outside the box.
“Maybe I need to do some of my own activities,” she said with a laugh.
Two students, Matheus Franca and Brooklyn Demers-Gunn were interviewed about how their projects went and what they learned in the process.
They were each asked their reaction when they first learned about the bridge building assignment.
Franca worked with teammates Jackson Hawksell and Pedro Noschang. Demers-Gunn’s teammates were Mosopefoluwa Olaitan and Juliana Sanden.
“I was pretty excited, because spending, like fake money on those materials was a really fun thing to do, especially with my teammates,” Franca said.
“At the end of the day, everyone ended up learning a lot about how to manage your money, manage your supply chain and stuff, so it was pretty fun.”
“My reaction was ‘oh, I feel like I’ve done this before in grade school and I was kind of excited to bring in those ideas from then and turn them into ideas of now and see what’s different from then and now,” Demers-Gunn said.
She found that this project was different than those in grade school because there was “a lot more communication amongst your group.
"It’s a lot easier I find when you get older to communicate in your team and just a lot more actual logical approaches to constructing a bridge.”
Franca said when he learned what the assignment was, he was confident.
“First of all, I was like, ‘oh, that’s easy, we’re just going to buy this, this and that.’ But when time came on and we had to do hands-on stuff, it was way harder than I thought,” he said.
“I didn’t think it was going to be very easy, but I didn’t think it was going to be challenging like the other ones, like the other things we’ve had, the other activities,” Demers-Gunn said.
“But I knew it was going to take 40 minutes to prepare a plan, execute it and hope it stays together.”
Both Franca and Demers-Gunn had one idea about how their team’s bridge should be built, but their teammates had other ideas.
“My opinion was putting rolled-up paper to make it more steady and my teammate Jackson said we should put marshmallows in it,” Franca said.
“And then at the end of the day, we put both on the bridge – my idea and his idea – so I think at the end of the day it worked out well.
“We came up, just said, ‘hey, guess what? Just use both our ideas in it and it’s going to work.’
“But it doesn’t work now because we put too much glue on it, but I think our bridge is still hanging, so it’s good,” he added with a laugh.
Franca said through the assignment he learned that “teamwork was pretty key, because you cannot do that by yourself, so you had to learn how to work as a team.”
Demers-Gunn’s idea was to put popsicle sticks into triangles to make supports for their bridge at either end and in the middle.
However, about halfway through, she could tell a that her teammates weren’t “really fond” of that idea.
“They didn’t express that, but I could just tell, so I was like, ‘OK, if nobody else is voicing, we’ve got to figure out a way to work around this and come up with a solution that we all want to be a part of and all represent,’” she said.
“We did find out that that was going to take forever to secure with the wood glue, those little triangles. So instead, we stacked the popsicle sticks.
“Then we took rubber bands and compacted it all together and secured it that way and then put two popsicle sticks across.”
Demers-Gunn was pleased with the end product.
“I like the way it turned out,” she said, adding she was relieved that her team’s bridge withstood the car test.
