Centre for Creative Learning (CCL)’s paper on hands-on, experiential education was awarded the first prize at the recently-concluded Vibrant Gujarat STEM Conference. Union HRD Minister Shri Prakash Javadekar presented the prize and citation to CCL, IITGN team on January 17.

The paper titled Making and Maker-Spaces: The Secret Sauce of Future-Proof Learning was co-authored by Prof Manish Jain, Prof Neeldhara Misra, Gaurav Kumar, Neeraj Kumar and Pankaj Godara. It emphasised on the idea of hands-on, experiential education as the most important ingredient for innovation which is required to be started from very early years. The paper presented several examples of future-proof and timeless approaches to teaching which are simple and inexpensive.

Referring to the 482-piece Geodesic Ball designed by the CCL lab, Shri Javadekar said, “This is the STEM education. It gives basic essence of Mathematics for the students of classes 10th, 11th and 12th. This is how it should reach our students.”

The paper was written based on CCL’s experiences from several workshops conducted with students and teachers. The experiential methods of teaching and learning lead to greater engagement in real-time and to higher retention rates. CCL promotes a greater need to foster creativity and innovation in young minds. It firmly believes that experiential STEM education is the key to driving innovation in India. CCL welcomes visitors and students who can come and spend time working at the lab designing interesting STEM activities.