<![CDATA[BrainSTEM - Engage | Inspire | Innovate - Blog]]>Tue, 09 Feb 2021 10:41:04 +1100Weebly<![CDATA[Giving another real life opportunity to another 6 university students, this time in Melbourne]]>Wed, 30 Dec 2020 02:10:12 GMThttp://brainstem.org.au/blog/giving-another-real-life-opportunity-to-another-6-university-students-this-time-in-melbournePictureStudent team presenting to BrainSTEM and their mentor at the end of the program.
Written by Kimberley Creek 
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After the success of the University of Sydney Business School Nano Business Opportunities Accelerator program with Practera, we also took part in November’s Study Melbourne Live Projects Program, this time for students in Victoria. For those who haven’t heard, the Live Projects program connects international and domestic students with Victoria’s industries and priority sectors through work-based projects. 

Given we have already been running programs for a few years in Victoria and that the students were all from Melbourne, we tasked the team to look at ways for us to improve our messaging through social media to help build better brand awareness and engagement with our audiences. 

With the guidance of a mentor, Jacob Mathew from Hardchrome Engineering, the team of 6 students from University of Melbourne and Monash University, who came up with a number of recommendations for the BrainSTEM team to improve how we use social media to connect with our stakeholders in 3 weeks. 

Unlike the previous program which I co-mentored with another BrainSTEM team member, I was the main project lead and client contact this time, meaning I had to manage the scope of the project and timelines fairly independently. However, I felt a lot more confident this time round having already gone through the program previously. 
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Being a client contact and mentor for two student teams have taught me so many skills which I can take into any further projects or jobs in the future, so I am grateful that I had the opportunity to push myself out of my comfort zone. It has also given the whole BrainSTEM team loads to think about as we prepare for the new year.

​We are so proud that we were able to work with such capable students to create an impact through their skills while they were at university, especially during the pandemic. Thank you to Practera, Jacob and students: Reuben D'souza, Grusha Undwar, Dimitri Laksamana Sadikin, Annu Yadav, Ziqi Zhang and Vatsal Desai for your contributions!
]]><![CDATA[Expanding into NSW with the help of 5 University of Sydney Business School students.]]>Wed, 30 Dec 2020 00:52:32 GMThttp://brainstem.org.au/blog/expanding-into-nsw-with-the-help-of-5-university-of-sydney-business-school-students
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Client briefing with student team after just meeting for the first time.
Written by Kimberley Creek 
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When it comes to BrainSTEM, mentoring plays a major role in how we roll out our Innovation Challenge. In fact, it was a large reason why Kimberley joined us a year ago as a marketing intern.
Read on to find out her experiences mentoring a team of University of Sydney students through Practera's University of Sydney Business School Nano Business Opportunities Accelerator program. This program gives students the chance to undertake a two week micro-intership in a team setting, which is 25 hours per a student. They receive client feedback throughout the process as they complete a brief which will assist their client organisation. Click the link to read more about Practera and their various programs.  https://practera.com/what-are-programs/ 

I’m Kimberley and I’m a Digital Marketing Coordinator here at BrainSTEM. While studying at university, it’s important to seek out opportunities to apply the theories and content you learn in your degree to real-life situations. As a huge supporter of practical learning opportunities (that’s what we do after all!), BrainSTEM participated in a program run by Practera  and the University of Sydney to work with a team of five international students. Over a few weeks, these students worked together to recommend a strategy to expand our innovation challenge and design thinking programs to students in Sydney. 
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Today’s blog post is a little different as we wanted to show you some of my personal reflections as a BrainSTEM team member leading projects like these for the first time. I felt well out of my comfort zone but the team was incredibly supportive in helping me narrow the scope of the project for the students to work on, especially Ali, our Program & Communications ​Coordinator who co-mentored the team with me.

Over two weeks, Ali and I guided the team to research and pull together insights and recommendations which they presented to the rest of the BrainSTEM team at the end of the program. I learnt a lot from the experience, such as clearly communicating what we do at BrainSTEM to others who had not heard of BrainSTEM before, and explaining some of our internal processes and our journey so far.

Overall, the students did an amazing job and the team are excited to embed some of these findings in 2021. We’re also pleased to report that we had our very first ever New South Wales team, Bethlehem College, participate remotely in our most recent innovation challenge to kickstart our expansion into the rest of Australia (hopefully soon!).
 
We’d like to thank Practera, the University of Sydney, and students: Jennifer Pak, Yiyang Chen, Yuan Yao, Yibing Chen and Haixian Liao for doing a great job in their research and final presentation with us - we really enjoyed the process and are so proud of what you achieved during the short period of time!
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University of Sydney student team presenting to the BrainSTEM team at the end of the program.
]]><![CDATA[Starting Strong in our 11th BrainSTEM Innovation Challenge (11BIC): Weeks 1 and 2]]>Thu, 24 Sep 2020 06:25:04 GMThttp://brainstem.org.au/blog/starting-strong-in-our-11th-brainstem-innovation-challenge-11bic-weeks-1-and-2
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By Michelle Ho and Kimberley Creek

Twenty four mentoring sessions, two surveys, countless innovative ideas… and this is just the first two weeks. Welcome to the 11th BrainSTEM Innovation Challenge (or 11BIC in short)!

Every fortnight, we aim to bring you updates with how our 12 teams are travelling during the 11BIC. Although our mentoring sessions have transitioned online due to the current global pandemic, it has not stopped the future generation of Australian STEM minds working on real-life challenges with their STEM industry or academic mentor.

Interested in joining our next BrainSTEM Innovation Challenge as a student participant or STEM industry/academic mentor?

In the 11BIC, we have 7 schools participating across Victoria and New South Wales with 46 students and twelve mentors. Highlights from this cohort include our first New South Wales school (Bethlehem College), five new schools and the returning of our long-standing mentors Charlie Ranscombe and Michelle Hall for their 9th and 7th BICs as BrainSTEM mentors respectively.

In this issue, we look at what the Trinity Grammar, Ruyton Girls' School and Korowa Anglican Girls' School teams have gotten up to.

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According to Jamie from Trinity Grammar (Team 02), the inquisitive minds over in their team brainstormed a variety of ideas, which led to the dilemma of decision paralysis over which idea to proceed with (a good dilemma to have!). The students then created a survey which was circulated among their friends and their wider school community to gauge interest on their ideas. We applaud the Trinity Grammar (Team 02) team for their methodical way of deciding which idea to pursue, and we are looking forward to finding out the results!
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Snippet of Trinity Grammar 2's online survey.

Our Ruyton teams are also off to a strong start with overflowing ideas! Cindy from Ruyton (Team 01) recalled how they used Mentimeter to explore how they were feeling about the BIC and learnt from their mentor Kim O’Sullivan about Design Thinking, which is a five-stage approach to solving problems. The three ideas they are considering at the moment are: waste in the medical industry, waste in homes and reducing screen time. Poppy from Ruyton (Team 02) shared that they have fifteen ideas currently on the table - lots of ideas to debate and analyse. Tune in to our next BrainSTEM Beats Blog to find out which idea they decide on!

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Source: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/5-stages-in-the-design-thinking-process

A topic that came up a lot in Korowa (Team 01) team's discussion was the importance of social equity. As a result, they are keen to ensure that their idea either addresses a challenge that vulnerable people in our community face (poverty, homelessness or starvation) or creates something that is accessible for all (not only those who are 'well off'). Their first potential idea is developing a bra that can test its wearers for breast cancer, with each student researching a different area during the first few weeks.

However, mentor Alexandra Nance reminds her team of the 'fail fast' mentality: fail fast so you can learn quickly and continue to reiterate and progress.

This 'fail fast' mentality is encouraged by BrainSTEM's founder Sid Verma: "We encourage our students to 'fail fast': get comfortable with the idea of exploring new ideas but not being afraid if those ideas 'fail'. Failing and learning from your failures is integral to the Innovation Challenge. It is how we improve as learners. We want our student participants to get comfortable with failing, but we definitely don't want them to get too used to failing, as this is how innovation halts.”

Incredible advice for our students and mentors in our 11BIC! We look forward to how our talented teams progress over the next few weeks, and will keep you updated on the successes and 'failures' of their innovation journeys.

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The BrainSTEM Innovation Challenge is a twelve week program, where high school students across Australia work on a real-life challenge with their STEM industry or academic mentor. With this 11th iteration of the challenge, we are encouraging our teams to link their projects to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as a way to demonstrate their real-world relevance.
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Find out more about our BrainSTEM Innovation Challenges and how you can get involved in our next one here!

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