MIT students spent their summer sharing ideas with students in workshops run across Asia. Compared to their other workshops, the MIT students noted that IVE programmes offered more time for interaction with individual students—making the Hong Kong leg of their journey an even more enriching experience.

The workshops were far from traditional with students taken on a journey which got them thinking way out of the box. Kevin Tian, who recently graduated from MIT with a double major in Computer Science and Mathematics, explained, “We usually began the workshops with puzzles and brain-teasers. A great example was using the fastest logic possible to determine the highest floor from which a falling chicken egg would not break when it hit the ground.”

IVE students were asked to write questions, make a paper airplane out of them and throw them to the front of the class. This fun method of soliciting questions was very well received by participants. Kevin noted, “The IVE students were very engaged—even when we were about to move on to the answers, they insisted on having a bit more time to find the solution.”

The MIT students prepared their teaching materials well, with topics varying wildly from day to day with some going far beyond engineering. Leslie Su—who recently graduated from MIT’s MBA programme—said, “Aside from engineering-related topics we also taught resume writing skills and job interview skills.” Leslie’s sharings were inspirational to Wong Sing-ka, an IVE Electrical Engineering student, who has entrepreneurial aspirations. Sing-ka commented, “I used to think that getting a bachelor degree would be enough, but soon I realised that competition is never far behind—so continually acquiring new knowledge is critical to remain competitive.” Ng Chi-wah, an IVE student in Electrical Engineering, also learnt a valuable lesson from the job-hunting skills session. Chi-wah added, “I realised that simply staying in my comfort zone was not the best option—as this would limit the motivation to keep on learning and developing myself.”

For many, coding was the most challenging topic covered during the workshops. Ng Wing-ka, an IVE Building Service Engineering student explained, “Although intimidating at first, we just took things step by step—starting with basic concepts and asking lots of questions. We were then able to write a simple programme that actually worked. It’s never easy to keep all the variables in mind, let alone learning it in a matter of hours. But, practice helped make us perfect.”

Science is part of everything in life. The workshops were incredibly rewarding and allowed IVE students to further enhance their understanding of core engineering topics in both abstract and many applied perspectives.  Ray Asare, a student on MIT’s Chemical Engineering programme commented, “It’s important for students not just to learn for learning’s sake, but to be inspired to learn for themselves and investigate science through their own interests.” This sentiment was echoed by the IVE students, and Luk Hin-shing, an IVE Building Service Engineering student agreed, “Really understanding how something works is the only way to properly retain the knowledge. The MIT learning style is much more geared towards guiding students to find an answer for themselves; the MIT students never gave us answers directly.” Ray explained, “We always try to nudge the students to discover a solution for themselves. The joy of discovering an answer yourself, without having it spoon fed to you is pure gold in terms of learning.” This is arguably one of the most profound lessons that the IVE students learnt during the two-week workshops—and one that will not just be useful in their future studies, but also throughout their lives.