Toys, Teachers, and Truths

Leading the Design team at the Centre for Creative Learning, IIT Gandhinagar, was packed with creativity, chaos, and a few reality checks about valuing my work while navigating complex systems.

The last time you heard from me, we were still emerging from the shadow of the pandemic. From 2022 to 2024, I wasn't 'Jump!' ing very much. I wanted to get away from my remote work desk to meet people, play with children & create objects. On a fast-paced & ambitious road that was not without its speedbreakers, from 2022 to 2024, I managed to do that. So, if you'd like to hear the adventurous tale, stick with me while we take this journey back in time. It's a dramatic story, full of twists and turns, but hopefully with a happy restart in 2024. :) Shall we start?

Late in 2022, I connected with the Centre for Creative Learning (CCL) lab at IIT Gandhinagar. CCL was working on educational toys, a TV show pitch, books, research publications, in-person & online workshops & exhibiting their toys and services at national events. CCL had already:

• Created 500+ scientific toys and demonstrations.

• Connected online with 5 lakh teachers through a weekly science webinar called Eklavya 3030 and engaged over 50,000 students, primarily from government schools.

• Built an education brand in India’s CBSE and government school landscape.

Yet, between 2017 and 2022, their team had no professional designers or trained educators, but it included passionate engineers, scientists, makers, and mathematicians. I could see a struggle: should they keep working on creating depth in research so their STEM topics are technically fascinating, or design better ways of dissemination, through well-designed objects, activities & curriculum?

Balancing well designed learning experiences with equal attention to the accuracy and depth of a subject is a challenge I see many STEM products, exhibits, toys & videos struggle with. Either the toy is really engaging and fun, or it's really "educational". Very few manage to strike the balance between keeping the learner and the educator happy.

The Hook

I believed that bringing in strong design and learning science approaches could add real value to this space. The lab’s ability to reach children and teachers on such a large scale was exciting. Initially, I tried to pitch Jump as an external design studio that could support CCL’s learning activities. But with the strict rules of a government institution, it was easier for them to hire me directly, rather than to hire my new studio. So, I joined on-site and started building an internal design team. Looking back, if I had known just how intense the work would become, I might have thought twice before taking this jump away from Jump, but not knowing the challenges ahead definitely makes you braver!

CCL's exhibit at Delhi Siksha Samagam 2023, designed by the team

When I started, I was the first hire with either a Design degree or an Education degree. I wasn't alone for too long, though. Over the next 1.5 years, I was allowed to hire a team of five with various capabilities for toy & game design, graphic design, web design, learning design, etc. These stars were Amrita Pandey, Jayashree Kulkarni, Akshay Chawla, Bhavya Aggrawal and Anil Kumar. Together, we were able to achieve quite a long list of accomplishments.

1. Toys and Games:

FLN Wonder Box is launched in UP

We designed 20 toys for Foundational Literacy and Numeracy, all included in the FLN Wonderbox, to be distributed to more than 1 lakh Anganwadis in Uttar Pradesh. The design phase for the toys took just 2 months, while public tendering, manufacturing, and training Master Trainers for teacher instruction consumed the rest of the year. It was fascinating & challenging to navigate the complexities of working with large governmental agencies. High points like meeting IAS officer Mr. Vijay Kiran Anand from the Education Department were inspiring, given the impact of his decisions on countless children. Low points were mismanagement and managing scale, leading to a frantic pace one day and months of waiting for approvals the next. Nevertheless, it's surreal to think that every child in a UP Anganwadi will eventually play with these toys.

FLN box feedback, Chaynika Varshney, PM Shri Composite School, Atta, Sambhal, UP

Training the Master Trainers at SIEMAT, Prayagraj, on using the FLN Wonderbox in classrooms

We also supported many other product and toy design requirements in the lab, of which a few standout projects were:

• Improved several 'signature' toys at CCL and created an improved primary school education kit, which was distributed to 30,000 primary schools in Gujarat.

• Assisted the Science, Math, and Making teams with new models, like one about earthquakes that was featured on a Discovery Channel video, created worksheets and models for in-person & online workshops with teachers.
  

1. Curriculum:

Testing one Activity a Week with children on the IITGN campus

The other major project I managed was designing a curriculum for primary schools in UP to implement project-based learning in their weekly schedules. The 'Activity a Week' program was developed as an asynchronous, interdisciplinary set of activity ideas for primary schools in Uttar Pradesh. We aimed to integrate science, math, and language learning, as encouraged by the NEP 2023. Research indicates that this holistic approach leads to strong foundations in primary education. We identified themes like Clothes, Animals, Music, etc., that were rich areas for these integrative activities.

Children build a Rube Goldberg machine at the IITGN library & learn about Simple Machines

The outcome of this curriculum design is embedding QR codes of a series of videos in the teachers' weekly planners called "Sandarshikas," printed by the state's education department.

A major highlight was writing a research paper on this work, which was accepted at the LDT symposium at the ACM IDC conference in Delft in 2024. The link to the paper is here: An Activity a Week: Teachers and Students Speak. This paper provided a great opportunity to mentor some junior colleagues on writing and presenting research internationally, and we were thrilled when it was selected.

3. Digital Solutions:

The third pillar of work at CCL was revamping its digital presence to send out a clear and professional message to external stakeholders.

Content Management App for teachers attending CCL workshops

• Developing the CCL website, from information organisation to UX to UI & for easy maintenance. https://ccl.iitgn.ac.in/

• Designing a teacher workshop app in collaboration with Bibox Labs to track teacher feedback & the effectiveness of CCL's training once teachers were back in their classrooms.

• Co-creating a content management system for videos, worksheets, and assessments in collaboration with ThinkTac for public access.

Exposure & Opportunities

Working on all these projects in just 18 months kept me super busy. What I appreciated the most was re-learning a lot about Science & Maths from very interesting people in a very interesting way. I loved Science in school, but sort of hated Maths; here I fell in love with both again. I also had some incredible opportunities to create impact:

• Trained over 300 school teachers at SIEMAT Allahabad on FLN toys, conducted online sessions with DIET Chandigarh on creating paper toys, and educated KV in-service teachers nationwide on Play, Toys & Games in Education.

• Travelling to science museums in London and Paris was a privilege. I visited Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie in Paris & also got a personal tour of Faraday’s lab at the Royal Institution in London. I looked at the design of larger models & helped pitch a science show on Doordarshan. I also got to exhibit CCL’s toys at the BETT EdTech Fair in London in January 2024.

• Taught several groups of college-level students, in person at IITGn & online at IIT Kanpur, about Toy Design & Prototyping. I also conducted short courses for B.Ed students from DIET Chandigarh on paper toys & Ganpat Parsekar College of Education, Goa, about implementing Constructivism and Design Thinking in their lesson plans.

• At the T4E conference in IIT Bombay, Nov 2023, I ran into my favourite Stanford professor, Paulo Blikstein. It was amazing to get his feedback on the toys we'd designed & learn about his latest work.

B.Ed students from Goa make prototypes

Presenting CCL's work at BETT

Our stall at BETT Uk 2024

Paulo and the FLN WonderBox

Many of the people working at CCL were passionate, creative and amazing in their field. I also got to play tons of board games thanks to the lovely mathematician, Jyothi Krishnan. I was lucky to make friends from diverse backgrounds from all over the country. It was one of the best groups of people, working in the worst amount of chaos, that I have ever been a part of. There are many side projects of a politically motivated nature that I will not recount in this blog.

Outro

All these positive experiences and unforgettable memories came with a flip side. I was completely drained by the time I decided to leave. The pressure of overworking on unrealistic deadlines and problems with management could not be avoided. The lab also had pretty major gender imbalances that are, sadly, common in Indian STEM fields. This meant working doubly hard to get my voice heard & poor boundaries from male colleagues. Also, my pay did not match my experience or the work I was doing. In fact, it was about the same as my first job after my Bachelor’s degree 10 years earlier & some male colleagues with similar qualifications were paid more, a fact I learnt after being told my role did not have the budget I was asking for.

I also spent a lot of time trying to prove the value of design and learning sciences in a place that focused mainly on STEM. I respected STEM and the important role it played, but that respect wasn’t always returned towards my field. Still, the results spoke clearly; the toys and research we worked on brought in major government contracts and recognition at respected international conferences. Even so, my team’s work and mine were not fairly acknowledged or rewarded. Promises about better pay and lighter workloads for me and my teammates didn’t come through. By mid-2024, I knew it was time to leave.

Learnings

When I joined CCL, my goal was to create a healthy balance between STEM and good learning design. I do think that over time, people could see the difference that good design made.

But, I learned something important: I shouldn’t have to keep proving my field’s worth for it to be respected. These years taught me to never undervalue my own work, and showed me that no matter how exciting a job seems, a healthy workplace needs mutual respect for the different kinds of skills and knowledge people bring.

It took me a while to reflect on my journey with CCL because it was complicated to reconcile all the amazing work we did with the bitter aftertaste of some of the more difficult parts of the job. Still, I’m proud of what we achieved and grateful for the chance to work at a scale that few other organisations can offer. Coming out of the pandemic, I especially valued the privilege of collaborating with so many wonderful people; to make, teach, and grow together. I believe the lab is now moving towards stronger management practices, and with their deep passion for engaging STEM learning in India, they have the potential to make a truly national impact. I’ll always wish them the very best, so that every teacher and child they reach can stay endlessly curious and catch that same spark of passion that makes learning feel like play.