"Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves." Rudyard Kipling
Worry about being taken seriously can wring the fun out of a course and stifle the creativity of teachers and learners. In this interactive workshop we will discuss our experiences of embracing creativity in our teaching across a variety of disciplines in higher education including arts, sciences and medicine. Gardner (2008, p. 162) is firm about the connection between disciplines and creativity: “… creativity goes hand in glove with disciplinary thinking”. Activation of imagination provokes learning because it is meaningful, “sticky,” and memorable (James & Brookfield, 2014). We will briefly review the literature on creativity, discussing a number of techniques for developing new approaches to teaching existing content, and providing examples of how these can be applied in the classroom using approaches described by Pink (2005) and Catmull & Wallace (2014). We will lead a discussion on how to combine unexpected elements to teach in new ways, how to find new angles on old topics and how to find ways to employ fun and creative approaches in seemingly “serious” fields. The workshop includes a live interactive exercise in creativity for the participants. Through interactive exercises and discussion, participants will generate a repertoire of ways to combine unexpected elements of creativity and play in their teaching.
References: 1. Gardner, H. (2008). 5 Minds for the Future. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
2. James, A., & Brookfield, S. D. (2014). Engaging Imagination: Helping Students Become Creative and Reflective Thinkers. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
3. Pink, D. H. (2005). A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. New York, NY: Riverhead.
4. Catmull, E., & Wallace, A. (2014). Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. New York, NY: Random House.
