Slush Leadership Experience
The course is aimed to all Slush team and group leads to support their preparation for the Slush event and to enable more profound learning from a unique experience of leading a temporary team of volunteers. The Aalto Venture Programs (AVP) arranges the course in cooperation with the Master Programme of Industrial Engineering and Management and the Slush team. The course is integrated and embedded into the preparation process of the Slush event. The workshops and course events are planned to support both collective and individual preparation.
The course will familiarize the participants with the essentials of the team dynamics and leadership especially in temporary team context, and deepen their learning from their own experiences as team leaders. The course follows constructive learning philosophy in which it is essential to learn to discuss and listen to others, reflect on own experiences, and to construct further one's own thinking. Both theoretical and practical aspects of team leadership, participants' personal experiences, and collective reflection on the experiences will be reviewed. The process enables students to construct and strengthen their (preliminary) personal leadership principles and thinking.
The course consists of workshops, practical and scientific articles on team building and leadership, and personal assignments. The workshops serve as learning and sharing forums in which practical experiences and relevant conceptual aspects of team building and leadership will be discussed. The workshops enable team/group leads to plan their personal and team specific preparation process further. Beside the workshops articles and other readings will enhance the understanding of team leadership and own experiences.
The participants can choose weather they want to take a one, three of six credits from the course. The one credit will require registration, participation to the workshops, and a short written summary of the leadership and team building experiences after the Slush event. Three credits will require three personal essays and review of two articles further. The six credit -version will require three essays, five article reviews, and a group assignment. Two additional workshops will be arranged for the three and six credit students to enable even more intensive discussion on the relevant leadership and team building issues. The grading is pass/fail in all course versions. The requirements are presented in detail in Course Requirements section.