“This has been a very realistic session. We had never worked on numbers like this before. We were exposed to business statements like balance sheet, income statement, cash statement, and stock ledgers. Indeed, a very different learning experience,” exclaimed Rashi Jain, student from Chandigarh.
After entering the IIM Nagpur campus, the students of 2022-24 batch of MBA are in the process of unlearning and learning. Thanks to the special orientation session ‘Funda’ organized by Mantis at IIM Nagpur, the experiential learning turned out to be an eye opener for the new batch.
Soham Janve, resident of Dhule, was all elated about the way IIM Nagpur conducted the induction for the freshers. “The experiential learning session was way too better than the theoretical classes we have undergone all these years. We were made to take functional decisions in terms of procurement, production, marketing, sales, and financial accounting. This session pushed us to come up with out of the box ideas,” he said.
As its methodology promotes, during experiential learning, educators purposefully engage with students in direct experience and focused reflection in order to increase knowledge, develop skills and clarify values. Dr Vinod Dumblekar, Founder & CEO of Mantis, conducted Funda, India’s oldest and finest one-day business simulation game for post-graduate students in their first year at management school, for the IIM Nagpur students.
Elaborating on the benefits of experiential learning, Dr Dumblekar said, “Such sessions are fun as they give you the chance to learn things not in the traditional fashion but by actually putting you in the situation, facing the challenges, solving them as a team.” Business simulation games are powerful interactive exercises with scenarios that help participants understand complex, abstract and multidisciplinary issues, easily and quickly. Such sessions build team spirit among students who unknowingly educate each other, help solve problems together, he explained.
“It was a great hands on experience session,” exclaimed Shweta Rana of Navi Mumbai. We had never got to do such case studies earlier. Hoping for more such fun-filled learning experiences, she added. Such simulation games help management students understand the foundation of business schools and prepare them for the entire year’s teachings. These games are focused on management practices and create memorable understanding experiences of management and its issues. Games build positive attitudes toward learning such as curiosity and reduce students’ fear and embarrassment during learning, Dr Dumblekar added.
