Teaching With Humour – The Right Environment To Learn - IIM Trichy

A memorable classroom experience at IIM Trichy I have joined IIM Trichy only a few days back, 17 to be exact. The experiences at classroom have not only been eye opening but also lively and interesting. The professors at the institute are one the best faculty and they take utmost care in helping us understand each and every new jargon and its meaning.

Mix this with a bit of humor and the class become the right environment to learn in. We were in Financial Accounting class and the professor was making us solve problems from the text book about the basic financial accounting equation. A balance sheet is alien to most of us and it can be a bit confusing at the beginning. For each transaction, he would ask someone to read what the
transaction was and how it affected the balance sheet. One of my class mates answers and says “The assets will be zero since both the transactions will be cancelled out”, to which the professor goes a bit perplexed and asks “Is it the assets or the net effect on assets?”. My friend realizes the mistake, smiles and points out how he was speaking of net effect not the total assets. The professor replies by saying “I hope all of these people are your friends, because you confused them. Only I have the right to confuse
this class, not anyone else.” Everyone started to laugh.

Learning management is not about just learning the breadth of a subject but dwelling deep in and learning to read between the lines. We had a marketing case study about Burger King and we had to evaluate its marketing mix strategy. We were formed in groups to do the evaluation and come up with a new marketing mix. The case study had a brief history of Burger King and its rivals including McDonalds, Wendy. There was a line specified about Burger King acquiring Tim Hortons but no specific details were
mentioned.

Next day of the class, every one of us had come up with ideas to improve Burger King’s marketing strategy. All of us had evaluated and come up with ideas but we didn’t give more attention to the acquisition. Had we researched, we could have found how it would help to diminish Burger King’s product image as unhealthy, which is the general case for a fast food restaurant. The above two are just a glimpse of our experiences in classroom but shed light into the attention of detail we are asked to give for every work we do and the kind of environment we are learning in.  

Which ABG company would you want to work for and why?
I would like to work in Idea Cellular company of Aditya Birla Group. Idea has always been a pioneer in understanding the changing dynamics of Indian customers and adapting to deliver the best. Its advertisements with catchy jingles also are a big reason for the brand to get popularity among the people. Idea had the highest number of people porting in when mobile number portability was introduced, which speaks volumes about the services it offers. With the current market moving towards
4G and the Vodafone merger lining up, the future for the company looks exciting and I want to be a part of this adventure.

This article is written by Niranjan Sureddi- Class of 2020