2.4.1 Learning to be creative

When working on finding solutions to different kinds of challenges, the students will need to use their creativity. As stated by Robinson, creativity is something we need to learn:

“It is often said that education and training are the keys to the future. They are, but a key can be turned in two directions. Turn it one way and you lock resources away, even from those they belong to. Turn it the other way and you release resources and give people back to themselves. To realize our true creative potential—in our organizations, in our schools and in our communities—we need to think differently about ourselves and to act differently towards each other. We must learn to be creative.

There are a number of different exercises designed to improve creativity, also known as Idea Generating Methods (IG), and examples are Brainstorming, Collective Notebook, Fishbone Technique, Metaphorical Thinking. Below, two methods are described in detail, the Rapid Prototype Exercise and an exercise inspired by Systems Engineering including Brainstorming.

An Example from Open Lab of a learning activity on creativity: The students in the course are introduced to the creative design process through an exercise called Rapid Prototyping. The exercise contains three steps and it is repeated to allow for all teams’ problems to be discussed and processed. The steps include: 1. The first team gives a very brief introduction to their problem/task, i.e. the task that the team is going to work on during the course (e.g. health care needs of older people). 2. All the teams then spend about five minutes to elaborate on a solution to the problem/task just presented. Each team presents one idea/solution, preferably not in text but by using other kinds of materials, e.g. paper, sticky tape, fabric, wire.3. After five minutes, all groups reassemble and then present, pitch, their ”quick and dirty” prototype in maximum three minutes per team. After the first pitch, the groups move on to the next teams’ problem/task and the process starts from scratch again. In total, with three student teams, and thereby three process iterations, about an hour was spent on the creativity process exercise.

Bild 8:

bildtext: One of the groups pitching their solution, OpenLab. Photo: Marie Magnell.

For additional information on design thinking, see Stanford methods to improve design thinking practice: http://dschool.stanford.edu/use-our-methods/