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PRANJUL RATHOUR
PRANJUL RATHOUR

Posted on Originally published at pranjulrathour.scult.in

A tech club session format that keeps 60 students engaged for 90 minutes

#workshops #techclubs #teaching #campus

The AI Mentorship Session at VSICS in April 2025 ran for a seminar hall of students and ended with people staying back to ask questions — not because the topic was new, but because the format never let attention drop. Here is the structure, minute by minute, for any tech club or coordinator planning a session.

The 90-minute shape

  1. 0–10: the problem, not the agenda. Open with a real situation the room recognises — a project that failed, a demo that broke — and the question the session will answer.
  2. 10–40: build it live. Code in front of the room, narrating decisions. Make a mistake on purpose and fix it; the recovery teaches more than the plan.
  3. 40–55: hands-on block. One small task everyone does on their own laptop or phone, with a visible target. Walk the room.
  4. 55–70: show-and-tell. Three volunteers show their result on the projector. Praise specifics; fix one thing each.
  5. 70–85: the map. Now, and only now, the slides: where this fits, what to learn next, one resource.
  6. 85–90: the ask. One concrete thing to do this week, and how to reach you.

Three rules

  • No slide before minute 70. If it can be shown, show it.
  • Every fifteen minutes the room does something: answers a question, votes, types.
  • Names. Learn six in the first ten minutes and use them.

Logistics that decide the session

Wi-Fi tested with sixty devices, not one. A hotspot as backup. The projector checked with the actual laptop. Font size at 20 or larger. A shared document with the code and links posted before the session, not after. These decide more sessions than the content does.

For coordinators

Book a room with tables, not an auditorium, for anything hands-on. Cap it at 60 to 80. Tell the speaker the students' year and what they already know. I have written the full checklist in how to invite a GenAI guest speaker to your college.

About Pranjul Rathour

Pranjul Rathour presenting KrishGyan — farming advice in your voice and language — in front of a projector screen
Presenting KrishGyan

Pranjul Rathour, GenAI engineer from Kanpur, in a white turtleneck and black jacket, looking to the side
Pranjul Rathour — GenAI engineer, Kanpur

Pranjul Rathour speaking into a microphone on stage at a MeetKats event
Speaking at a MeetKats event

Pranjul Rathour holding a microphone while answering a question during a session
Taking questions during a session

Pranjul Rathour in a grey suit at Dr. Virendra Swarup Institute of Computer Studies (VSICS), Kanpur
At VSICS, Kanpur

Pranjul Rathour is a GenAI engineer from Kanpur, India, and CTO at SCULT INDIA, currently shipping production RAG,
fine-tuning and agentic AI systems, mentoring 200+ students through TechVerse Enclave, and judging and speaking at
student hackathons across India. Updated 2026-09-06.

Reach out if you want to talk GenAI, book a campus session, or invite him to judge:

Pranjul Rathour · GenAI engineer, 3x hackathon winner, campus mentor. Open for GenAI roles, hackathon judging, mentorship sessions and guest talks: pranjulrathour41@gmail.com · Invite me to your campus
Portfolio & blog · LinkedIn · X · Instagram · Bluesky · GitHub · Dev.to

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