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Instructor |
Teaching Creative Problem-Solving Skills
To ensure a future that can't be outsourced, we all need to develop
our ability to innovate. The best way to learn to be creative is to grapple with
authentic problems while using tools that support divergent thinking.
This course covers the design of problems and cases that require creativity and cognitive tools to embed within them. Meets 2/7 & 2/21 Schedule # 01028.
Overview
This course is designed to be practical, current, interesting, empowering and thought-provoking. It is built around active learning and collaborative thinking. When we're done, you'll have practiced numerous techniques for enhancing creativity and learned how to embed it in the teaching of just about anything.
Audience
This course is targeted at teachers at the K-12 and college levels as well as others involved in the training of adults.
Learning Outcomes
In this course you will learn how to
- Use creativity-enhancing techniques within the context of teaching about something else;
- Explain what the research shows about creativity;
- Choose problem that require creative solutions;
- Establish an environment in which playfulness and productive thinking flourish;
- Design a complete lesson using at least two of the techniques described.
Resources
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The book to the right is required reading and should be purchased through Amazon in time for the first class meeting. A growing list of course-related links is also available and will be maintained after the course is over. |
Course Outline
Session 1: February 7, 2009
- Overview - How are you creative?
- Technique 1: True Brainstorming
- Technique 2: Morphological Analysis
- Technique 3: Brute Think
- Signing up for QuestGarden
- Lesson possibilities
Weeks-In-Between
- Post a project idea in the discussion forum
- Choose a technique from the book to present in Session 2
- Read these two articles, available in the Course Documents section of Blackboard.
- Passig, D. & Cohen, L. (2006). Innovative Combinations' Test: A Tool for Measuring the Melioration Skill. Teachers College Record.
- Passig, D. (2007). Melioration as a Higher Thinking Skill of Future Intelligence. Teachers College Record.
Session 2: February 21, 2009
- How innovative are you?
- Mini Seminars
- Technique 4: Rattlesnakes and Roses
- Technique 5: Da Vinci's Technique
- Technique 6: Stone Soup
- Peer feedback on lesson drafts