What would you do if you were Tom Hanks in Castaway? That’s the question you’ll find yourself answering as you and your fellow students, albeit without Wilson, get cast onto Innovation Island.

Wait, what island?

Just as Castaway, in the end, was fiction, Innovation Island is, in fact, a simulation. It’s at the heart of the learning-by-doing experience that is a hallmark of all the High Impact Online Programs on offer through IE Exponential Learning. You and your fellow students will get thrown onto Innovation Island, created with the magic of video and multimedia techniques that the team from IE has pioneered throughout its legacy of online education platforms.

So, how exactly does this experience work?

You and your fellow students will be put together in different groups, and during every module of the online program, you will receive video prompts from….

…this guy. Meet your fellow castaway. In real life, his name is Ryan, but you can just call him Castaway.

He’ll be by you and your group’s side throughout your time on Innovation Island. He’ll be the key to the objective of your tasks. He’ll be your cheerleader as he pushes you to use and apply the skills from the framework you’ll get from the faculty throughout the Innovation for Growth program. While we’re not going to show you all our cards, here’s how it works: If you get introduced to a specific concept one week, your island-related tasks that week will serve as an opportunity for mastering the concept.

Week by week, you’ll get a video message from your fellow castaway.

One week he could look like this…

…And another like this, after a few weeks on the island

Every time you get a visit from your fellow castaway, he’ll present you and your group you with a new task, each one pushing you to use fundamental concepts from the course syllabus and apply them to the dire situation you and your fellow survivors find yourselves in. Each challenge, from choosing to focus on a set of specific uncertainties, to creating a prototype that will help your team overcome these difficulties, serves as a stepping stone to your ultimate goal, surviving Innovation Island. It also helps to master the course’s learning objectives in the process.

Why should I even want to get stuck on Innovation Island?

One of the hallmarks of every HiOP is the use of practical exercises to bring home the theory you’ll see throughout the rest of the HiOP model. Innovation Island brings situational analysis to a whole other level using one of the leading secrets for successful learning, according to one of our favorite scholars, Barbara Oakley: the use of metaphors while learning. Innovation Island serves as a metaphor for today’s VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) environment full of risks that could make or break your company’s future, and to ensure success, the tasks you’ll see every week will let you capitalize on the positive benefits coming from these dangers.

How does the Innovation Island metaphor up the ante, you ask? Its richness, using the immersive video and multimedia materials and aids, along with ample chances for collaborating with your group, will put you in the mindset of making these crucial decisions. By the time you’ve acquired all your survival skills and find yourself with a similar problem at work that you could have solved on Innovation Island, you’ll be the steady hand to navigate those uncharted waters because you’ve already charted them on Innovation Island.

Ready to test your survival skills on Innovation Island?

via GIPHY

Our castaway sure is!

Join us for our next Innovation for Growth intake by getting started on your application here.