EWB Designathon Proposal - Team code: D22-021 Educathlon Challenge Description: The project is presented as a proposal to universities to establish a challenge that involves students from different engineering fields. The challenge’s purpose is to design a solution to a problem which involves one or multiple of the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals. During the evaluation phase, an exhibition will be held to show the participating designs. At the end, the final designs are reviewed and evaluated by a jury, with winners being compensated with suitable prizes and honouring. Importance of the project: Engineering students are the next generation of engineers and they will play a major role shaping our world. Hence, it is extremely important to raise their awareness to the issues of sustainable development. We believe that our proposed challenge would largely motivate students to learn by practice and gain an important experience by working in a multidisciplinary team. This would also be an extra value for them when entering the market. Format: All engineering students from the university are pooled and split into random groups of around 6-8 people, so that each group has a mix of different engineering disciplines. All students will be briefed on the chosen task before breaking away into their respective groups to meet one another and begin initial brainstorming. The design diamond is a very useful tool for product/solution generation, and in order for students to learn this, they will follow a pre-made tasklist which follows the template of the double diamond. We propose the following four stages of work: Ideation: Brainstorm and record any and every idea which may occur to the student, with emphasis on not worrying whether a solution is feasible or not. This unlimited creativity will help inspire other students as they work. Overthinking will hinder them at this point. Refinement of ideas: Students should assess the scientific feasibility, practicality and appropriateness of each idea for the challenge. This will allow them to understand and then define some boundaries for their potential solution. Using these new constraints, the students can now generate their solutions with higher levels of detail than the previous ones. Feedback and evaluation: Each group can present their idea in front of 2-3 other groups in order to gain feedback from a wider range of people who have not been working on the same project. From this individual groups can go back to the drawing board to potentially explore new ways of solving their problem which may have been highlighted in their feedback, or further refine their solution. Final solution: Now teams should create a poster with visualisation and feasibility estimation ready for presentation. Teams present their idea together with all other groups at an event. Important learning outcomes: Avoiding tunnel-vision: in the early stages of a project, it is easy to latch onto an idea and make it work to the very last stage, forcing other components of the project to suit it. Learning from feedback: there is lots to learn from others’ opinions, and it will benefit each group to alter and adapt using what they have heard. Presentation skills: it is often the case that engineers have the perfect solution to a problem but not the means to communicate it. Presenting their ideas in front of others will show them how to get their point across.