Educational Media Reviews Online

EXTREME is the name of a unique 6-month experiential course available to Stanford University students. It is a shared offering and team-taught by professors from three of Stanford University’s schools: Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, the Graduate School of Business, and the School of Mechanical Engineering. Each 6-month course accepts 40 students and divides them into interdisciplinary teams. These teams are given current problems experienced by some of the world’s poorest citizens. Each team’s goal is to design, create, and implement sustainable solutions created with input from the people experiencing the problem.

This documentary follows one class and in particular three teams through their 6-month course. Two teams go to Bangladesh and work on health care problems. One team creates a low cost infusion pump for IV medication and the other a low cost breathing device for infants with pneumonia. The third team goes to Indonesia to work on the problem of storing enough fresh water to get through the dry season.

For each project, the viewer experiences the unique aspects of the assigned problem, meets the affected people in each country, observes the steps in the creation process, and watches the team dynamics among people with differing skill sets. Finally, the viewer follows the breathing device team back to Bangladesh to get approval from doctors there to move forward with testing and production of the prototype.

Although not thoroughly explained in the documentary, a quick look at Stanford’s EXTREME website illuminates the progress and tracks the current status of the sustainable solutions created in the 10+ year history of the EXTREME course. The documentary is inspiring and uplifting. The cinematography is excellent, the pace and multiple stories maintain interest, and the narrator is especially adept at highlighting important elements of each team’s progress. The documentary would serve well as an introduction to experiential or service learning. In addition, it could foster excellent discussions in engineering, design, or business courses.