Welcome to the third article in the series - "Design thinking". You can read the previous articles on this series from this link.

Let's dive into an interesting case study in this article to understand design thinking better!

For those who don't know, Rajasthan is a north-western state in India. One of the government schools in Rajasthan named Alwar's Government Senior Secondary School has applied Design Thinking in the structure of its school building campus. In this school, the classrooms have been designed like an engine and the veranda is like the platform, where students hang out. The recently renovated school looks like,

This is an example to show how to change the learning experience of students with 'design thinking'.

The building modeled as a train, which is named "Education Express", has classrooms painted resembling passenger compartments as shown above. Mr Purushottam Gupta, the Principal, said that the main objective of incorporating this design is to motivate students to join government schools. More importantly, he wanted the world to know that government schools also focus on creativity. As the principal is responsible for the change, his cabin has been designed to resemble an engine and the veranda has been transformed into a platform where students can play or spend time with friends.

"The students are always fascinated with the idea of traveling in a train. Government school buildings are often considered boring, leading to a lack of interest in kids. That is why we thought of renovating our school into a colorful train-like exterior", Gupta told a news agency.

Rajesh Lawania, a junior engineer based in the district, is the man behind this innovative idea. According to him, students need motivation in all phases of their lives. This design is a basic step that turned out to be a unique factor in their school, which they could be proud of in front of others. In addition to this idea, they have decided to design more classrooms resembling the famous Jaipur-Delhi double-decker train and the Ajmer-Delhi Shatabdi Express. Due to these changes, the school itself has become a motivating factor for the other schools nearby.

Just to be clear, the school is not situated at a railway station, but it is nearly 50 meters away from the station. The rail theme inspiration came from design thinking, which has changed the students' learning experience. The classrooms are named 'Malyabanta Express' as shown,

The theme of "train school" sparked when a junior engineer of district Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) Rajesh Lawania saw a government school in Kerala painted like a rail coach. He thought the same for the Alwar School.

The school is set for the new session as well as the 'Pravesh Utsav', a 15-day annual drive undertaken by the Rajasthan Education Department. Very soon, teachers will go door to door to convince people to send their children to government schools, which are losing out bright kids to private schools that offer English as the medium of instruction and better facilities. The school principal Gupta mentioned that he is sure that the new look of the school will help them to increase the enrolment during the 'Pravesh Utsav'!

And that's a wrap-up. I hope you have learned something from this blog. If it's helpful to you then do like, follow me on Hashnode and Twitter and do subscribe to my Hashnode newsletter so that you don't miss any future posts. Thanks for reading and have a great day!