By Haritha Chandran, KRUU
A big question that educators face today is how to impart real world skills to their students.
How does one really prepare them to face world challenges and how are they equipped to solve them?
An effective way that empowers students to solve problems on their own is the 4Cs of learning. These are Creativity, Communication, Collaboration and Critical Thinking. While each of these skills are important on their own, when combined together it enables a student to think creatively, work together and come up with solutions. The word Creativity usually means being an artist. However one can be creative in any field. If a student is able to think laterally and provide solutions that are out of the box then that is defined as a creative solution.
To be future ready in today’s world, being able to work in teams is an important skill. This allows students to actively listen and understand other perspectives. Therefore, Collaboration i.e. solving problems together, becomes an important skill that makes a student ready for a future work space. Critical Thinking is another important aspect where a student is encouraged to question, sift through information and analyze data that pertains to the problem at hand. The student needs to also figure out alternate ideas, what links them and finally arrive at a solution.
Finally, Communication the last C of the four is equally important as the student needs to not just put forth ideas effectively, but understand verbal and non-verbal cues of the team and navigate text or digital messages in a virtual context.
These are indeed new challenges that are faced by students in today’s context
At Kruu, through the project-based learning platform we not only provide avenues to explore each of the 4Cs but we also facilitate the opportunity to use them together. This definitely increases the learning power of a student and they are much better equipped for their future.
