When we were researching creative thinking for both our Introduction to Applied Creative Thinking (2012) and our Teaching Applied Creative Thinking (2013), we ran across an interesting detail. How many courses focused on developing applied creative thinking in universities across the world—in Asia, the Americas, and Europe—do you think actually exist? (Tweet this quote.)

According to Xu et al (2005), only 39 such courses are on the books, and the bulk of them are isolated in departments and not tied to any specific program, major, or minor. Similarly, our research into universities offering minors in creativity back in those dark ages only showed one university even offering a masters’ degree in creative thinking.

Given the popularity of insightful books such as Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class (2002), McWilliam’s The Creative Workforce (2008), and Pink’s A Whole New Mind (2005) as well as the IBM report (2010) that creative thinking was the number-one skill American CEOs wanted from college graduates, we expected more. (Tweet this quote.) More courses, more programs, more colleges and universities responding to a need and a desire.

6 Tips for Weaving Applied Creative Thinking into Your Institution’s Curricula

For the past four years our institution’s catalog has contained our Minor in Applied Creating Thinking, and we’re pretty certain in the nine years since Xu et al report that other schools have likewise responded with courses, minors, and programs. If that isn’t the case, however, and you are interested in weaving applied creative thinking into your institution’s curricula, how might you go about that task?

1. Consider responding to your accrediting agency. Our mode of attack early in the twenty-first century came to us when we discovered that our university’s accrediting agency, SACS, was insisting institutions implement a new accreditation piece, the Quality Enhancement Program (QEP), a sort of value-added academic piece. We insinuated our way onto the University’s QEP committee and helped steer the discussion toward creative thinking. As a result, in 2007 the institution declared as its QEP theme that it would “develop [later graduate] informed critical and creative thinkers who communicate effectively.”
2. Since every QEP needs a home, consider what type of organization will be needed to support the QEP. Here, EKU launched the Noel Studio for Academic Creativity, the centerpiece of the university community and hub of communication and creative activity. It houses the Minor in Applied Creative Thinking and annually hosts programs for members of the university community.
3. Utilize professional learning communities. As soon as our QEP was instituted, the University created QEP Coaches, who helped train the faculty in critical thinking. As creative thinking was being neglected, we started a campus-wide professional learning community (PLC) with twelve faculty members. This PLC was tasked with researching creative initiatives and suggesting ways to encourage creative thinking across our campus. Because of the unique structure of the PLC, we were able to permeate the campus community (both academic and social) with creative endeavors.
4. Create a course. When we taught creative writing, we developed all sorts of courses on the subject, from Teaching Creative Writing, to Becoming a Professional Writer.  Invention is such an important concept in writing that it would have been a natural, but alas, we never worked on it. For our creative thinking initiative, we decided to lead off with a course introducing the concept and treating the basics of implementation.  We named the course Introduction to Applied creative Thinking and even wrote its textbook built on our years of research and application in the field. The success of this initial class has led to the creation of several additional courses designed specifically for the minor, including its capstone course.
5. Develop extant courses on creativity into a minor. When we facilitated our PLC, we found various faculty were teaching courses related creativity. One member was teaching a course in business that we tried to appropriate. Another member had a friend teaching a Creative Collaboration course in Psychology, and still another taught the College of Education’s Gifted and Talented course.
6. Tie to extant or developing programs. Last year the University found that a significant number of students were not finishing up their degree when they were less than 30 hours from graduation. At the same time another task force zeroed in on our extended campuses (we have ten regional appendices) that were unable to offer outlying populations enough majors. As a result of these two problems, a Bachelor of General Studies degree was created, but it needed some core courses. Of course we suggested that Introduction to Applied Creative Thinking provided skills desired by employers in all fields. We have also tied our introductory course, CRE 101, to a capstone program in the University’s College of Justice and Safety.

Where do we go from here? If the minor does well, maybe we need to transform it into a major. Perhaps the creativity initiatives developed on campus should extend to the community or local schools? Or maybe creativity programs will find a home online.

Author

Dr. Russell Carpenter is director of the Noel Studio for Academic Creativity and Program Director of the Minor in Applied Creative Thinking at Eastern Kentucky University. He is also Assistant Professor of English. Dr. Carpenter has published on the topic of creative thinking, among other areas, including two texts by New Forums Press. In addition, he has taught courses in creative thinking in EKU’s Minor in Applied Creative Thinking, which was featured in the New York Times in February 2014. Meet Russell.

Share It!

Is there one exercise that acts as a super-food for the applied creative thinking regimen?  (Tweet this quote.) Perhaps the power of blueberries and such dietary supplements acting as a super-food has been blown out of proportion, but when it comes to training creative thinkers, one exercise we know demands using the so-called “Nifty Nine” strategies.

For over fifty years I have travelled to a July 4^th family reunion with my brothers. Years ago our mom hooked us on crossword puzzles, especially its Holy Grail, The New York Times Sunday puzzle. Up until the online version of the Times appeared, that puzzle posed a problem. Caesar may have been able to divide Gaul into three parts, but the three Solomonic Sweet siblings had a major difficulty with tri-partitioning the Times. Buying three NYTs was out of the question, both because of expense and its limited availability in the foothills of the Berkshires. Casting rugged individualism to the side, we came up with a solution–attack puzzledom’s top prize as a three-headed monster.

In Teaching Applied Creative Thinking (Stillwater, OK:  New Forums, 2013), we [Rusty Carpenter, Hal Blythe, Shawn Apostel, and I]  wrote a chapter on “Crossword Puzzles: A Universal Tool for Teaching Creative Thinking,” calling it “an amazing tool” (132). Now we’d like to amend that singular process to discuss a concept we have come to call collaborative cruciverbalism, the solving of a crossword puzzle by two or more people working together simultaneously.

Adaptable to the classroom, this process involves locating a puzzle that is a suitable challenge (not impossible, not too easy, but like Goldilocks said, just right) and setting groups to work without the aid of a computer (the Internet provides a legion of sites where any clue followed by the word “crossword” can be deciphered). Participants are encouraged to verbalize as they progress, assessing each potential answer with a degree of certainty (e.g., I’m 75% certain John Belushi once played The Incredible Hulk in a Saturday Night Live sketch).

How to Use Nifty Nine Strategies for Applied Creative Thinking

How does such an approach promote applied creative thinking? In short, it can make use of all of the nifty nine strategies, and how many exercises can make that claim?

1. Collaborating.  While the term “collaborative cruciverbalism” is partially self-explanatory, what we mean is that instead of solving crossword puzzles, do it with a friend … or two … or three. And since collaborating works only when others know your contribution, try to verbalize.
2. Perception Shifting.  One of the major problems in creative thinking is the difficulty in shifting one’s point of view from the first solution one selects—the so-called primacy of the first problem—to another possibility. Two people bring two different viewpoints to the same goal of solving the puzzle. Because participants are encouraged to verbalize their thoughts, each hears another perspective.
3. Piggybacking.  Hearing another person thinking aloud also allows instant piggybacking upon verbalized attempts to solve a puzzle.
4. Brainstorming.  Here piggybacking and brainstorming can work concurrently, but in terms of  best practices, if each participant solves as much of the puzzle as s/he is able, then brainstorming—thinking aloud—can work.
5. Glimmer-catching.  Sometimes when a participant verbalizes, s/he is on the verge of providing a solution but can’t quite get it out. Having others pay attention to this glimmer adds to the odds of solving the puzzle.
6. Playing.  Solving a crossword puzzle falls outside the usual bounds of academic exercises and is generally something people do for fun (or senior citizens to fight against the onslaught of time on their brain). This initiates deep and creative learning.
7. Recognizing Patterns.  Almost all complex puzzles have a theme.  Check out the Sunday New York Times or the Friday Wall Street Journal for examples.  Figuring out the pattern—e.g., all the theme clues involve 50’s rock groups or brands of soap—is excellent creative practice.
8. Using Metaphor.  One of the idiosyncrasies of crossword puzzles is the clue followed by a question mark, which indicates a pun is involved.  While some puns appear mere plays on words (e.g., eye=I), some use the qualities of metaphor (e.g., stress manager?=poet).  Metaphors are essentially comparisons, usually between a known thing and an unknown thing, but while puns exist mainly to reveal cleverness (so both sides of a pun must be known), metaphors exist to express things that might not be understood.
9. Flowing.  Once a group gets going on a puzzle, they can achieve this state—if the puzzle is in the Goldilocks Zone.

Of course, many creative thinkers equate the act of thinking with solving a problem, and so the process of cruciverbalism provides an excellent model for future thinking—i.e., transferring the process is easier. (Tweet this quote.)

And if the instructors using this exercise want even more effective results, they should constantly strive to make the participants metacognitive.  One easy way to do so is to ask each participant after the process is over to describe (orally or on paper) using one example of the nifty nine to solve the puzzle.

I’d love to stay and chat, but this current puzzle’s clue—a six-letter word for “He comes from the land down under”—is giving me fits.

Author

Charlie Sweet is currently Co-Director of the Teaching & Learning Center (2007+) at Eastern Kentucky University. Before going over to the dark side of administration, for 37 years he taught American Lit and Creative Writing in EKU’s Department of English & Theatre, where he also served as chair (2003-2006). Collabo-writing with Hal Blythe, he has published well over 1000 items, including 15 books; of his 11 books with New Forums. Meet Charlie.

Share It!

The current The Chronicle of Higher Education (22 August 2014), the so-called annual almanac issue, contains in interesting item under “A Profile of Freshmen at 4-Year Colleges, Fall 2013” (36). In a self-assessment survey, three-quarters of these students rated their own academic ability in the highest 10% or above average, but what struck us was a specific category in which 54% evaluated themselves as in the highest 10% or above average, creativity (we’re also struck by the breadth of a survey that lumps together “highest 10%” with “above average”).

Really? We’ve always gotten a good chuckle out of the stat we saw that 90% of all faculty consider themselves in the top 10% of all instructors, but the Lake Wobegon Effect seems to be more pervasive than we once thought. Are we really to believe that over half of the current crop of first-year students is that good?

Why are we so skeptical about these self-evaluators? In our Introduction to Applied Creative Thinking (2012) we cite Sir Ken Robinson and his report that “at age 5 a child’s potential for creativity is 98%, but by adulthood that potential had gone like a runaway elevator to 2%” (14). If Robinson is right, how are the Chronicle’s self-evaluators defying the odds?

Second, the research on self-evaluation suggests that students have an over-inflated view of their abilities. In Academically Adrift (2011), Arum and Rotska make two relevant points: “If students cannot identify or define learning and critical thinking skills, how will they know whether they have obtained them? Self-reported assessments are also well known to be susceptible to inflated perceptions of one’s own performance” (27). Previous studies, for instance, have found exaggerated self-assessment in everything from one’s driving ability to actual work production. (Tweet this quote.)

On the other hand, we wouldn’t have developed a minor in Applied Creative Thinking if we didn’t believe that today’s students have the potential to become creative. We just argue that the students have a lot further to go than they think. Their positive attitude toward their ability to think creatively is beneficial to developing their creativity, but just as important is a realistic assessment of one’s skills.

Perhaps we should take a cue from HGTV’s popular Property Brothers, wherein the host siblings always begin their dealings with prospective house-buyers by first showing these novices a house that meets all of their wishes except one, the price. By initially providing a reality check, the Brothers can then convince the house-buyers of the need to rehab a fixer-upper.

The first step in solving a problem is to admit you have one. Perhaps these self-assessors need such a reality check before the next survey.

Author

Share It!