90. Your Slip Is Showing
Background
This activity (also known as Crawford Slipwriting) may be the
“mother of all formal small group idea generation activities”—at
least in terms of being a progenitor of brainwriting activities. Dr.
C.C. Crawford developed this activity in the United States in the
1920s (see Crawford & Demidovitch, 1983; Whiting, 1958), and
Charles Clark (1978) has popularized the method over the years.
It is especially useful when you want to gather ideas from a large
number of people, such as participants at a conference.
Although it can accommodate a large number of people, Your
Slip Is Showing differs from Organizational Brainstorms [87] in
two ways. First, the participants in Organizational Brainstorms
are members of the same organization, submit ideas individually, and typically are by
themselves when submitting their ideas. The second difference is that participants in Your
Slip Is Showing generate their ideas while in small groups in the presence of other people,
although they do not have to share their ideas with others.Objectives
- To help participants generate as many creative ideas as possible
- To help participants learn how to use the activities to generate ideas
Participants
Thousands or as many as there are resources to process all the ideas. They may be in
small groups, but do not have to be since all ideas are generated by individuals and not
shared.Materials, Supplies, and Equipment
- For each participant, one pad of 3 x 5 or 4 x 6 Post-it®Notes and pens or pencils (If
Post-its are not available, substitute slips of paper, giving each person at least ten
slips)
Brainwriting with Related Stimuli 351
101 Activities for Teaching Creativity and Problem Solving.Copyright © 2005 by John Wiley &
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