Creativity is a “PROCESS”
DEFINITION OF CREATIVITY & INNOVATION
Creativity is quite an abstract word and it
takes some effort to understand what it means. So what is creativity? Someone
thought it could be visualized like these:
Likewise, theoretically, Chris Stevens
refers creativity to “the ability to generate and use insight”, While in a
summary of scientific research into creativity Michael Mumford suggested:
"…. that creativity involves the production of novel, useful
products" (Mumford, 2003).[1] Creativity
can also be defined "as the process of producing something that is both
original and worthwhile".[2]
To sum up, creativity has been defined as a product or process that shows a
balance of originality and value, an ability to make unexpected connections and
generate new and valuable ideas (Literature Review on Innovation and Creativity
in E&T in EU Member States, abbreviated as LRICETEU).
Innovation is defined as the creation of
new values to something that already exists. To be innovative, one is required
to “pull unrelated things together” and have a wide range of interests.
When it comes to the area of education, the
“process” nature of the creativity is largely emphasized as learning—the main
objective of education—is a process rather than a product. Creativity does not
have to mean construction of new ideas or products. Any level of Bloom’s Taxonomy
(Please refers to Figure 1) except the bottom level “remembering” entails a
component of creativity.
Bloom’s
Taxonomy
Therefore, our curriculum for teaching
English as a Second Language focuses on helping Students to understand the English
language, to apply the language in their lives and as additional bonus to
analyze, evaluate or create new ideas if possible.
In order to achieve the above-mentioned
objectives, teachers are required to be innovative in terms of pedagogy. They
are encouraged to be open-minded so that they can “put unrelated things
together”, to take advantage of new technologies, new social and cultural
trends, and to assess students’ academic performance by valuing creativity and
seeing it as an asset in the classroom
CURRICULUM
The following curriculum that we designed
shall take into consideration of above pedagogical philosophy.
Teaching & Learning Activities (Learning by understanding and recreating)
In the universities in Hong Kong, a course
usually spans at least one semester, requiring 12 to 13 sessions of lectures or
alternative activities, one for each week. Assume that we have 13 weeks to
teach this English course and the teaching and learning activities in our
designed curriculum will include but are not limited to following and will be
arranged in chorological order.
I.
Before the start of the first
lecture, teachers will ask students to think about what they want to learn in
the upcoming English classes and provide them with information on sources and methods
to find a subject or topic, for example, from websites, newspapers, books or
magazines, and some sample topics they may choose, such as literature, music,
business, politics, or even cooking and travelling.
II.
In the first lecture, students
are required to fill in a paper their suggestions on topics and the method of voting
will be used to decide which three to four topics to be covered in the
semester. The teacher will also introduce some technologies nowadays utilized
in classroom to facilitate learning, such as online blackboard, mass-media
websites, social networks, mobile communication applications.
For the following 12 weeks, teachers will allocate 3 to 4
sessions to each topic, and divide students into small groups of 3 to 4 people
randomly for project-based assignments.
III.
For each topic, teachers should
decide what basic grammar, functional vocabularies, phrases and sentences to be
covered, and prepare and hand out a document containing such information to
students. Explanation on the handouts and additional materials will also be
provided to students for familiarization and understanding in the first
session.
Later sessions will be used by students to communicate and
discuss what they think with their peers and to deliver what they have learnt
in any thinkable form through any channel.
Rules
& Activities adoptable ad hoc
1. Students are required to speak English only in the
classroom.
2. Students are required to prepare one story from daily
life before each class, and are randomly chosen by using the method of lucky
draw at the beginning of each session to tell the stories in front of the whole
class. In order to put them at ease, music can be played before class begins.
3. Students are encouraged to show off their projects
publicly, for example, to upload to their own web blogs if the project outcomes
are in writing or video recorded, to invite their friends and parents to watch
if they present in terms of role plays.
4. Outside professionals can be invited to give talks or
show case. For example, if it is cooking topic, a chef can be invited to show
case some dish making.
5. In the process of doing the project students could imitate, but copy is
forbited.
Assessment Tasks/Activities
Assess their attendance
and participation in class (40% percent of points in final grade), the projects
(60%, graded on application of contents taught, originality and value)
An
Example on Topic Implementation
Take the topics of literature for example. Teachers should consider what functional grammar and vocabularies to be taught first and then disseminate materials containing such as information to students. Traditional story books and famous movies, dramas and songs, which are worldwide known, can be provided to student as well for study and research. In the following session, students are given several reorganizational works, such as short films, dramas, screenplays, animations based on classic compositions or traditional stories, to enlighten students to start thinking completely different, and are required to engage in critical thinking and brainstorming afterward.
EAST
WEST
FAIRY TALE
Girl seated in the pumpkin coach could not
be Cinderella
Then students will have opportunity
to counter-argue, not only asking questions but also responding to the
other classmates’ thinking or teacher’s view.
After this kind of critical thinking,
discussion and debate, it is time for students to create their product. Students can choose one method to present
their learning outcomes. For example, they can make short films, draft cartoons,
write or perform drama, tell stories, compose songs or animations. They
can use the classic compositions or famous story as background to REPRODUCE a new composition, and the mode could be recreating, continued writing, adapt, etc.
This man above must be known by everyone, but who know the guy below?
For instance, this is a classic windows xp
advertisement:
Students can imitate this idea and create a
new ad like this video.
This is a typical creating process with
learning, understanding and producing new.
EVALUATION
Increase
Potential for Creativity by Providing Knowledge
Creativity has strong links with knowledge.
(3) Although intelligence is not seemingly related to creativity,
researches show that previous knowledge of one’s domain increases the potential
of creative process and outcomes.(4) To facilitate understanding, we
can say that knowledge of domains is like the pool of tools where you can pull
your tool kits out when you need to solve a problem. Therefore, it is necessary
to provide students with some pre-topic documents containing basic grammars,
vocabularies and relevant backgrounds, just like a baby has to gain enough vocabularies, phrases and sentences before he/she can express his/her thoughts. In addition,
acquisition of know-how of creativity, i.e. knowing how to think and how to
perceive things in a different way, or how to make connections, also helps the
learning process. That is why in the example of topic implementation reorganization
works are provided to students to show how works are reorganized in such a way
that a different perspective is evident.
Increase
Potential for Creativity by Spending Efforts
Creativity requires hard work as well.
Working consistently with creative absorption and intrinsic motivation will
increase the chance of creative learning. That’s why the students groups are formed to complete one project for each topic, and 3 to 4 projects in
total. As we all know, it takes time and effort to identify the project theme,
conduct research and finish the projects. Students will have to be diligent during the project period and
thus raise the opportunity of creative learning.
Practice is Important
Since
we have defined creativity as mainly understanding and applying what students
have learnt, the story-telling at the beginning of the class will achieve this
objective. In order to tell a daily life story, students need to think about
what they actually want to talk and how to articulate in English. This process allows
the students to go beyond notional acquisition, to use the functional words and
sentences, and to exercise their thinking skills as well.
Empowerment
as an enabler
The process of design a curriculum for
teaching college students English is like developing a product for the
consumers and the consumers now are the students, whose need is to gain ability
of communication in a foreign language either in writing or speaking. To
satisfy this need, we have to let students decide what they may be interested
in and how they can learn the subjects actively. This relates to the topic of empowerment. Although empowering
students to decide the contents and formats of teaching may involve risk
against the traditional school value of standardization, empowerment will motivate
students to actively participate in the teaching activities thereby are more
likely to engage in creative thinking and understanding.
Technology
as an enabler for change
A little research on our consumers’
characteristics reveals that a curriculum using more technologies will be more attractive
to this millennial generation who grow up with internet and mobile phones, mass-media
and social networks. It is also the reason why in the designed curriculum
teachers encourage students to go online for information search like Google and
Yahoo, to communicate with classmates with
instant message software like Skype and Wechat, to showcase project outcomes in
terms of videos and writings in YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
Assessment
as enabler
Teaching
and learning are often shaped around what is required from examinations
(Scoping workshop, Wyse, 2003, NACCCE, 1999). Therefore, assessment can be used
in a way to value understanding and application of what have been learnt, that
is, the creativity we define. In the designed curriculum, we give 60% of the
grade to the group projects, assessed on application of basic contents taught, originality
and value—the main traits of a creative process or product. In addition, an
active attitude toward class attendance and participation in class is also
rewarded for 40% of grade since the more students who come and actively join
class discussion, the more likely they would understand the contents and come
up with different ideas.
The situations, statements, individual behaviors, and team dynamics that
WERE helpful in developing your product pitch
Jane
Jane took the initiative and acted as a leader in
our team. During the Chinese New Year, she went through the readings and
assignment requirement, summarized the main points for us. With her helped, the
information within our team was become perfect. Furthermore, she has an
important role on writing definition of creativity and innovation and
curriculum as well.
Sophia
Sophia has very good drawing skills and can draw
pictures within several minutes. She
helped our team to draw a lot of cartoons during the preparation of
presentations. These cartoons are very crucial for us. As human recognize
images easily than word, Cartoon helped the proposed curriculum more visualize
and more easily to understand. Cartoons become our symbol which helps our audiences
to distinguish our team and others easily.
Chung
Chung
participated in the discussion for curriculum. He brought out with the idea of
making YouTube (or other online video hosting company) to let students broadcast
their ideas. Also he refined the idea by letting students to records a several
videos clips. For each of the video clips, students can provide difference
choice for audiences to select. After Audiences made one of choice, the video
clip will redirect the video clip that was selected. So that Audiences get very
difference experience if they pick up different choice between different endings.
This inspiration helped our team to think of more ideas and further changed to
boarder approaches, such as blogs.
The situations, statements, individual behaviors, and team dynamics that
were NOT helpful in developing your product pitch.
Discussion of curriculum
During the discussion of curriculum, there was some
conflict within our group. The conflict happened when we were discussing the
curriculum detail. Sophia brought out the idea of defining the definition of
creative first rather than writing on the detail of curriculum first. Jane and
Chung both agreed that it could be writing on the detail of curriculum first.
The argument lasted for almost 1 hour. This made our team relationship more badly
and we all felt tried in the
argument. Finally, Jane came out of an idea to let Sophia think of the detail
of curriculum first and settled the problem.
Explain and analyze how
your collaboration, exchanges, and interactions with your concerned
stakeholders have shaped your circular innovation.
Our stakeholders (Group 8) acted as parents. After
they listened to our presentation, they thought that our idea was not enough
coverage on delivering English Grammar to students and they thought that curriculum
should able to provide English grammar, English usage to students, not just let
student to do what they want to do.
In
order to satisfy parents’ demand, we modified our curriculum with more teaching
materials from teachers before the beginning of the course. Also, teacher will decide
what basic grammar, functional vocabularies, phrases and sentences to be
covered. With the above solution, we can guarantee students can gain useful
English Grammar and lead them to explore more on their interested ideas in
English.
If
there was no stakeholder involved our circular innovation, our curriculum may
focus on student side rather than practical use. With their help, our team can
understand more about the aspect from parents and improve our curriculum
design.
Reference
1.
Mumford, M. D. (2003). Where have we been, where are we going?
Taking stock in creativity research. Creativity Research Journal, 15, 107–120.
2.
(Csikszentmihalyi, 1999, 2000; Lubart & Mouchiroud, 2003; Runco, 1997,
2000; Sternberg & Lubart, 1996)
3. Literature Review on Innovation and Creativity in E&T in EU Member States
4. Literature Review on Innovation and Creativity in E&T in EU Member States
3. Literature Review on Innovation and Creativity in E&T in EU Member States
4. Literature Review on Innovation and Creativity in E&T in EU Member States
