Abstract
As a Master’s of Education in Learning Sciences candidate at the University of Washington and a licensed architect, I co-taught the course Cultivating Creativity with Professor Iain Robertson, Winter Quarter 2012. This course is offered annually to a group of 15 Honors students at the University. Professor Robertson has taught this class for five years. Participating students were in ‘non-creative’ majors such as Biology, Chemistry, or Math. Two students were in Computer Science and Religious Studies. Most of the students arrived expecting to ‘learn’ how to be creative. Through exercises that Professor Robertson developed, the students gained confidence in their individual and collective creativity. They also began to experiment with materials and ideas as they discovered their creative confidence and voices. Students wrote weekly reflections after each week’s exercises. I have created a Prezi presentation using excerpts from these reflections with images from the course work to demonstrate the power of a course designed to cultivate creative thinking. The students' voices, together with supporting literature, shows the importance of teaching design and creative thinking skills within the framework of ”non-creative” curricula. This paper works in tandem with viewing the Prezi.
Keywords
Creativity, design thinking, innovation, creative thinking skills
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/learnxdesign.2013.129
Citation
Schlitt, G.(2013) Cultivating creativity: documenting the journey, in Reitan, J.B., Lloyd, P., Bohemia, E., Nielsen, L.M., Digranes, I., & Lutnæs, E. (eds.), DRS // Cumulus: Design Learning for Tomorrow, 14-17 May, Oslo, Norway. https://doi.org/10.21606/learnxdesign.2013.129
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Cultivating creativity: documenting the journey
As a Master’s of Education in Learning Sciences candidate at the University of Washington and a licensed architect, I co-taught the course Cultivating Creativity with Professor Iain Robertson, Winter Quarter 2012. This course is offered annually to a group of 15 Honors students at the University. Professor Robertson has taught this class for five years. Participating students were in ‘non-creative’ majors such as Biology, Chemistry, or Math. Two students were in Computer Science and Religious Studies. Most of the students arrived expecting to ‘learn’ how to be creative. Through exercises that Professor Robertson developed, the students gained confidence in their individual and collective creativity. They also began to experiment with materials and ideas as they discovered their creative confidence and voices. Students wrote weekly reflections after each week’s exercises. I have created a Prezi presentation using excerpts from these reflections with images from the course work to demonstrate the power of a course designed to cultivate creative thinking. The students' voices, together with supporting literature, shows the importance of teaching design and creative thinking skills within the framework of ”non-creative” curricula. This paper works in tandem with viewing the Prezi.