101 Activities For Teaching Creativity And Problem Solving

Related Activities

• Text Tickler [20]

Procedure

1. Prior to the exercise, tell the participants to collect, as individuals, a variety of
   “best of” lists. The lists may or may not be related to any specific problem, and
   they don’t need to be “official.” If group members don’t have access to official
   lists, they may generate their own lists by reading movie reviews, brainstorming
   the best books of the year, the best cars, et cetera, or search the Internet.


2. Divide the participants into groups of four to seven people.


3. Distribute the Best of... Handout, review it with the participants, and answer
   any questions they may have.


4. Have the groups select one of the member’s lists and generate traits that make
   each item a certifiable “best.”


5. Tell the group to use the traits for each item to spark ideas, write them on Post-its
   and place them on a flip chart for evaluation.


6. Instruct the groups to repeat Steps 4 and 5 until they have generated a sufficient
   number of ideas.

Debrief/Discussion

The lists used for this exercise are not as important as their diversity and number. In other

words, the more stimuli the groups have, the greater the number of ideas they are likely

to produce. The lists themselves also can introduce a humorous element that, of course, is

conducive to creative thinking.

Also consider having participants debrief using the following questions:

• What was most helpful about this exercise?


• What was most challenging?


• What can we apply?


• How would you rate the value of this exercise to helping us with this issue?


• Will this exercise be helpful in the future for other sessions?


• What did you learn?


• What will we be able to use from this exercise?


• What ideas were generated, and which ones were most interesting?

Variation

• Instead of having the participants bring lists to the sessions, ask each group to gener-
  ate its own lists at the start of the exercise. This may help engage all of the participants
  immediately and serve as a warmup for generating ideas.

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