AI Students Learn Teamwork Through Improv

New students to Northwestern Engineering's MSAI program participated in a variety of improvisational games and activities led by Second City Works.

The Second City is an improvisational comedy company that helped launch the careers of countless entertainers, from Bill Murray and Steve Carell to Tina Fey and Northwestern graduate Stephen Colbert. In September, Second City was at Northwestern, where representatives taught the core tenets of improv to a perhaps unlikely audience: new students in Northwestern Engineering's Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence (MSAI) program.

The workshop was organized by Second City Works, the corporate education and entertainment arm of the theater company. The facilitators used the same methods actors use on stage to help drive individual growth, build connections among students, and show students how to perform at their best.

New students participate in a Second City workshop

"We want students to be able to work with teams of different skills and backgrounds," said MSAI director Kristian Hammond. "The Second City approach teaches students powerful tools for collaboration — how to listen, how to learn, how to amplify, and how to communicate with people who come to problems with different skills."

Students went through a number of different improvisational games that forced them to suspend judgment and build on the actions or decisions made by their classmates. Some activities symbolized how information flows — or stalls — through a team or organization, while others relied on the students' creative impulses.

Students also learned to embrace the concept of "Yes, and," — a core tenet of improvisation that requires actors to build off ideas shared by their counterparts. It's a lesson that transfers to a business setting and encourages free-flowing ideation and communication among colleagues.

Gianna Rasmussen is a new student who participated in the workshop. She said she was not expecting to interact with anyone from Second City as part of her time in MSAI, but she was glad the program chose to include the workshop within orientation.

"It was a lot of fun, and the games were entertaining and kept me engaged," she said. "It helped me get to know the other people in the program."

The activity may have been unexpected, but Rasmussen saw the correlation between improv and AI.

"AI is a really creative field and it requires a lot of ideas and thinking outside the box," she said. It's not something that is so straightforward or logical. There is a lot of adapting in AI and improv. Sometimes you have to go with the flow and things won't work out as you've planned."

Beyond the mental preparation, Rasmussen said the Second City experience should help her and her classmates make presentations, either in class or professionally after they graduate.

The key, she said, is recognizing the purpose of presentations.

"I believe all presentations are performances," Rasmussen said. "You want to keep people entertained. Improv is the middle ground between acting and real life, and learning improv helps you present things, maybe add a zest of humor, and go with the flow."

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