Junction Leadership Experience
The course is aimed to all Junction Hackathon team and group leads to support their preparation for the 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 Junction team. The course is integrated and embedded into the preparation process of the Junction 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 personal leadership philosophy and practice.
The course consists of workshops, practical and scientific articles on team building and leadership, and personal essays. The workshops serve as learning and sharing forums in which practical experiences and relevant conceptual aspects of team building and team leadership will be discussed. The workshops enable team/group leaders 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 five credits from the course. The one credit will require registration, participation to the workshops, collecting feedback, and a descriptive and reflective summary of the leadership and team building experiences after the Junction event. Three credits will require beside the workshops writing of two personal essays and review of three articles. The five credit -version will require the workshops, three personal essays, six article reviews, and a group assignment. Furthermore, there will be one additional workshop for three-credit students and two additional workshops for five 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.