Open 2013: The Challenges of Simplifying and Packaging Creative Engineering ...
Open 2013: Milking the Rhino
1. Milking the Rhino
Innovative Solutions Showcase
Amanda Perez + Khanjan Mehta
Humanitarian Engineering & Social Entrepreneurship
(HESE) Program
The Pennsylvania State University
2. HESE: Convergence for Impact
Affordable Greenhouses Solar Food Dehydrator
Mashavu Telemedicine Business Networking
3. Milking the Rhino: The Documentary
• Jeannie Magill, Originator
and Co-Producer
• Kartemquin Films and
Bullfrog Productions
• How the Maasai and Himba
Milked the Rhino: Leveraged
natural resources (wildlife)
to empower own
community by tourism and
conservation
www.milking therhino.org/film.php
4. Indigenous Knowledge
…is the accumulated experience, wisdom and know-how
of a local environment that has been developed over
many generations through careful observation, listening,
experimentation and adaptation
6. The Challenge
• Empower indigenous
communities to
sustainably utilize their
cultural and natural
resources
• Engage students to
identify pressing issues
and design sustainable
and creative solutions
7. Competition Guidelines
• Video pitch of indigenous problem and
innovative solutions
• 3 minute video uploaded to Youtube.com
• 1-4 students per video, external advisor
permitted if acknowledged in video
• Videos are public and must abide by all
copyright regulations
http://mtrsolutions.weebly.com/solution-guidelines.html
8. Judging Criteria:
5 member interdisciplinary panel
• Specific problem is articulated
• Appropriate for context and population
Problem • Addresses African problem
• Innovative, practical, feasible
• Economically sustainable
Solution • Potential for Scale Up?
• Pitch has logical Flow
• Audio and visual are professional, entertain
Video and intrigue
9. MTR-ISS Sponsors
Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship
10. Sample Solutions
• Simple and
inexpensive method
of extracting Avocado
seed oil for sale to
cosmetic industry.
• Making jewelry from
indigenous resources
14. Assessment Results
• Focus groups:
• Global awareness, teamwork, communication
and collaboration skills
– constraints and challenges of the competition
– impact of student learning relative to the
competition
• All students agreed that this competition
helped them better understand the challenges
and opportunities facing indigenous people
15. Assessment Results
• “I learned that designing low cost engineering
solutions can be successful for people with
economic hardship”
• “The idea of learning about your users is
important [in order] to know your users”
• Time management and collaboration created
challenges for the teams. They wanted clearly
defined objectives and expectations!
Milking the Rhino is an award-winning documentary that examines environmental conservationfrom the perspective of people who live in the midst of wildlife, and offers a complex, intimateportrait of two community-based conservation efforts in Kenya and Namibia.It explores the relationship between people and wildlife in Africa by following the Maasai people in Kenya and Himba people in Namibia.Milking the Rhino refers to leveraging local natural resources for self-determined development
The rationale for hosting this competition has five different perspectives.The MTR Innovative Solutions Showcase strived to engage students in 1. an experiential ethics education experience that engaged them emotionally, 2. helped develop entrepreneurial mindsets,3. provided a non-travel based global experience, 4. developed their appreciation for indigenous knowledge5. ultimately fostered user-centered design.>> I think it is important to talk about some of these aspects. Its hard to summarize the concepts/themes.I suggest that you read the rationale sections in the paper a couple of times and decide what you want to delve into. If I were you, I would spend 2 mins talking about the eng ethics aspects and then spend a few sentences on the other themes
1. The preliminary means of understanding the context and challenge was viewing and reflectingon the “Milking the Rhino” documentary. The other resources included Milking the Rhino studyguide, scholarly literature, and a discussion forum focused on the challenges illustrated in thefilm. 2. Students were provided a series of ten prompts which they were supposed to review before the screening. They were expected to discuss thedocumentary (with instructor) and the prompts (amongst themselves) and formulate their responses. 3. Students were challenged to understand and articulate the way the world looks from the Maasaior Himba people’s point of view. Their thoughts about the world or the people, places andproblems in the two case-studies in the documentary were secondary. 4. The ultimate goal was to empathize with the stakeholders, understand their context of use,unravel the sticky information and derive innovative product ideas from the lives of the usersthemselves, and to design innovative and sustainable solutions that empower the stakeholders.5. Students were challenged to make three-minute video clips of their solution to “milk the rhino”,i.e. leverage local natural resources to address a specific constraint to local livelihoods. Thevideo pitch could address any general or specific problem related to the indigenous peoples'livelihoods, including wildlife and natural resource management, access to income, famine,gender inequity, human rights, inter-generational conflict, child and maternal health, etc.6. Students had to identify the problem themselves and convince the referees that the problem was critical to the community.
Complementary and important points:An objective of the competition was to educate students on how to convey their ideas in a precise and concise manner. Articulatingcomplex ideas to a general audience is a crucial skill for entrepreneurs and social media likeYouTube provides an excellent medium to reach more people and garner more support. All video pitches were uploaded on YouTube - no other websites orvideo files were accepted. There were no project reports or presentations.
The student pitches were rated by a multi-disciplinary panel of five faculty members. These fivereferees represented the fields of engineering design, entrepreneurship, tourism anddevelopment, social structures in Africa, video production and human rights. The referees ratedevery team on a scale of 1-10 on ten rating criteria.
Sample solutions…there are videos on YouTube
Two student quotesTime management and collaboration created challenges for the teams. They wanted clearly defined objectives and expectations!>>> the point is that this is exactly what we want them to learn…most things in the real world do not have specific objectives and expectations defined…we want students to thrive in a chaotic environment and create value with minimal resources!!!
The 2011 Milking the Rhino Innovative Solutions Showcase will be a global competition open to students from across the United States and beyond. The current prize money is about $2,500. Stay updated on mtrsolutions.weebly.com>> get the people excited!The faculty team is also interested in exploring the notion of emotional engagement with suchchallenges as an effective pedagogy for deeper engineering ethics education.