101 Activities For Teaching Creativity And Problem Solving

83. Group Not

Background

The title of this activity refers to an interesting question in small-group problem solving:

When is a group not a group? The answer is that a group isn’t a group when members

don’t interact during a group activity. Such “nongroups” are known as “nominal”

groups.

Group Not is based on one of the most heavily researched small-group idea genera-

tion activity: the Nominal Group Technique (NGT), developed by Delbecq and Van de

Ven (1971). Although this activity allows group members to discuss their ideas, the mem-

bers do so only after all the ideas have been generated.

Objectives

• To help participants generate as many creative ideas as possible


• To help participants learn how to use the activities to generate ideas

Participants

Small groups of four to seven people each

Materials, Supplies, and Equipment

• For each group: markers, two flip charts, and masking tape for posting flip-chart
  sheets


• For each participant: one sheet each of three different colors of sticking dots
  (^1 ⁄ 2 ” diameter) and one pad of 4 x 6 Post-it®Notes

Time

45 minutes

Related Activities

• As Easy As 6–3–5 [81]

Brainwriting with Related Stimuli 335

11 VG 329-354b 10/6/04 1:07 PM Page 335