Client
IIT Gandhinagar
Service
Science Communication Workshop
Deliverables
In-person Workshop | Offline & Online Resources | Guides | Checklists
About the Client
IIT Gandhinagar (IITGN) is a premier Indian Institute of Technology focused on nurturing critical thinking, interdisciplinary learning, and leadership among India’s next generation of engineers and innovators. As part of its Leadership Development Initiative (LDI), IITGN organizes orientation workshops that go beyond technical instruction to focus on soft skills, collaboration, and communication — essential for success in modern engineering careers.
Challenge
As part of its 2025 orientation program, IITGN sought to equip over 350 first-year B.Tech students — from diverse engineering backgrounds — with foundational skills in visual communication, storytelling, and presentation-making. The goal was to encourage students to move beyond text-heavy slides and understand the strategic role of visual design, structure, and audience engagement.
Key challenges included:
Introducing communication skills in a short (2.5-hour) session to a large cohort
Ensuring active participation from all 350+ students in a non-lecture format
Demonstrating the value of storytelling and design in engineering contexts
Aligning with students’ real-world presentation needs during academic and project-based work
IITGN partnered with SciRio, a specialist science communication agency, to design and deliver a hands-on, high-impact session that went beyond conventional presentation skills training.
Approach
The session was co-facilitated by two SciRio instructors and designed as a compact but immersive workshop, blending theory, live critique, collaborative creation, and peer reflection. The flow was structured as follows:
Icebreaker Activity: A live Mentimeter session helped establish common frustrations with bad slides and gather the audience’s existing perceptions of presentations.
Mini-Talk on Slide Design: A high-energy talk introduced core storytelling principles, anatomy of effective slides, data visualization dos/don’ts, and accessibility considerations.
Canva Demo: A live walkthrough of Canva introduced students to modern presentation tools, showing how to balance text, visuals, and structure even with no design background.
Group Activity: Students were divided into small groups and asked to create 1–2 slides using Canva on one of the 20+ curated topics provided.
Submission & Showcase: Nearly 100 group submissions were received via Google Form. Select slides were showcased live, with real-time feedback on clarity, design, and storytelling impact.
Interactive Reflection: The session closed with a collective feedback moment — students scored the usefulness of the session on a 1 to 5 scale, verbally and simultaneously.
Topics Provided to Participants
To ensure inclusivity across engineering streams and encourage diverse presentation styles, students were given a curated list of 20+ interdisciplinary and visual topics:
Science & Technology Concepts
How Wi-Fi Works
What is a Semiconductor?
How GPS Locates You
Why Electric Vehicles Matter
How Face Recognition Works
What Happens When You Charge a Battery?
Engineering and Society
How Cities Manage Water
Where Does Our Electricity Come From?
Can AI Be Biased?
How India Moves 1 Billion People
Engineering Behind Everyday Packaging
Smartphones: What’s Inside?
Data-Driven & Visual
Internet Usage Trends in India
Air Quality in Indian Cities
How a Rocket Launch Works
Water Usage by Sector
Food Waste in India: By the Numbers
How a Bridge Handles Load
Creative & Conceptual
Why Do We Sleep?
Engineering a Cup of Tea
From Data to Decision: How Netflix Recommends
The Science of Soundproofing a Room
Results
Even without a formal feedback form, the session achieved exceptional engagement across the board. Every student team actively participated in the slide-making activity, with over 100 presentations submitted, demonstrating strong interest, creativity, and ability to internalize visual communication principles.
The peer review showcase proved to be a highlight — as students critiqued randomly selected submissions on-screen, they not only learned from each other’s successes and mistakes but also self-reflected on how to improve their own communication. This exercise provided immediate feedback loops and turned the large auditorium into an interactive classroom.
When asked to rate the session on a scale of 1 to 5, the overwhelming majority of students responded with 4s and 5s, indicating strong resonance with the session’s format and value.
Conclusion
The SciRio-led visual storytelling and slide-making workshop at IIT Gandhinagar successfully met its objectives of:
Introducing visual design and storytelling to a technically oriented audience
Encouraging practical application through hands-on slide creation
Fostering collaboration and reflection via group activity and peer feedback
The high volume of submissions, spontaneous scoring exercise, and active participation from all corners of the auditorium demonstrated that even large, diverse undergraduate groups can deeply engage with communication skills — when the format is right. The workshop lays the foundation for future modules at IITGN and similar institutions where communication is treated not just as an add-on, but as a core capability for engineers.
HAPPY CLIENTS
