Encouraging Creativity in Student Online Work
Brent Muirhead
When I read an article like this I'm always stuck by the fact the examples of creative thinking are always from business or science, but at the same time it a reminder that the 'creative industries' are not the only source of creative and not the only place where creative is important. This article is interesting and is nice summary of some of the issues around creative and teaching. What I growing to understand is a lot of what I call "studio based" learning has these types of approaches embed into the practice.
It seems odd to make linear notes about some but is here is a bit of try. (maybe I should mindmap it on my and then scan in the notes)
What is Creative ?
Harris (1998)
- An ability to invent or imagine something new
- An attitude to change, to play, to explore what is new, a flexible outlook
- A process, creative work hard to improve what they do, making small constant changes.
One major point the author makes is that hard work and creative often good together.
Teaching Philosophy and Strategies
Major point made is that creative is promoted by building reflective (and metacognition) skills into the course design. Which is an interesting point for me because one of the turning points in my PhD was when I started to think in a more reflective way instead of a more critical way. Later in the article there is a summary of highly level questioning skills that remind my of questioning during crit sessions.
These are six great myths about creative.
1. Creativity comes from creative types: Creativity depends upon a number of things; experience, including knowledge and technical skills; talent; an ability to think in ways; and the capacity to push through uncreative dry spells.
2. Money is a creativity motivator: People are most creative when they care about their work and they’re stretching their skills.
3. Time pressure fuels creativity: Time pressure stifles creativity because people can’t deeply engage with the problem.
4. Fear forces breakthroughs: We found that creativity is positively associated with joy and love and negatively with anger, fear, and anxiety.
5. Competition beats collaboration: In our surveys we found that creativity takes a hit when people in a group compete instead of collaborate.
6. A streamlined organization is a creative organization: Creativity suffers greatly during downsizing. Every single one of the stimulants to creativity in the work environment went down significantly.
I can really see how these translate into my own creative practice and how I've seen creative not work in large organisations.
Teaching critical and refective thinking should be part of the course design !!! Suggests part of this should be a modelling approach where teachers "communication a picture of a creative thinker"
The woolfolk reflective thinking chart has loaded. It could be good to follow up on this.
Posted by robin at December 22, 2004 10:14 AM