101 Activities For Teaching Creativity And Problem Solving

Related Activities

• I Like It Like That [55]


• Rolestorming [77]

Procedure

1. Divide participants into small groups of four to seven people each.


2. Assign a facilitator to each group (or solicit volunteers).


3. Distribute the It’s Not My Job Handout, review it with the participants, and
   answer any questions they may have.


4. Ask each group to select a discipline (professional or nonprofessional activity) of
   interest to the group members. This discipline does not have to be a group mem-
   ber’s primary occupation or a traditional academic discipline. It even may be
   some activity such as gardening or building model airplanes. However, the group
   should be relatively knowledgeable about the choice.


5. Tell the groups to identify central concepts or themes from the discipline selected.


6. Instruct the facilitator in each group to record these concepts on a flip chart.


7. Have the groups select one of the concepts or themes and ask the contributor to
   describe it in some detail.


8. Tell the groups to use the descriptions to generate ideas, record them on Post-its,
   and place them on flip-chart paper for evaluation.


9. Have the groups repeat Steps 4 to 8 until enough ideas are generated or time is
   called.

Debrief/Discussion

This activity helps personalize the idea stimuli by using group members’ knowledge of

different disciplines. Although it is similar to analogies, the familiarity involved with the

disciplines could be either a positive or negative factor. One positive feature is the famil-

iarity that results in increased problem understanding; a negative is that too much famil-

iarity might make it more difficult to think of unique ideas. Because of the relatively

unusual nature of this approach, you might ask the group members to discuss its pros

and cons and any ways it might be improved.

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?

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