IDEA Objective 6: Developing creative capacities
What is this objective?
- This objective is on the highest level of cognition in Bloom’s revised taxonomy, “creativity”.
- Creativity is not just a product of elusive inspiration, but a cognitive domain that requires reorganization of elements into new and distinct patterns or structures. Even if the creative activity comes from “out of the blue”, it still requires inputs from creator’s idea, concepts and complex interactions of experience, training and intuition.
How can one teach this objective?
- Carefully design activities that require assembly, disassembly and transformation of prior learning and allows students to combine it with new knowledge and skills to form distinct products.
- Encourage collaborative learning as a tool for developing creativity.Collaborative tasks push the students to exchange idea and debate the pros and cons of proposed idea.
- Give projects, tests or assignments that require original or creative thinking.
- Introduce stimulating ideas about the course content and concepts to raise student interest.
- Stimulate students to intellectual efforts beyond that required by the course.
How can one assess this objective?
- Ask students to provide a self-report and their actual achievement of the learning outcomes.
- Ask for student feedback on some of the questions like; i) were you flexible and adaptable? ii) do the students actually perceive what they are taught?
Reference and resource:
- https://www.ideaedu.org/Resources-Events/Teaching-Learning-Resources/Developing-creative-capacities
- https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/570907.570945
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2736021/
Author:
Praveena Kanchupati, PhD. Candidate and GTA Consultant
Center for Enhancement of Teaching and Learning
Contact:
Kevin Sackreiter, Ed.D., Director
Center for the Enhancement of Teaching & Learning
Contributions:
Shelly Bayer, Ed.D.