"Creativity is seeing what others see and thinking what no one else ever thought."
Albert Einstein

It is commonly believed that a primary teaching goal is to help students learn facts and procedures, and a professor’s role is to transmit these facts and procedures to students. But, the world is more technologically complex and economically competitive, so having the facts isn’t enough. Students need a deeper, conceptual understanding of complex concepts and should learn to work with these concepts creatively to come up with new ideas, theories, etc. This teaching tip offers a variety of class activities for cultivating creativity across discipline. 

Creative Benefits

Creative thinking involves synthesizing and combining course information in new ways characterized by innovation, risk-taking, and divergent thinking (AAC&U; Association of American Colleges & Universities). Creative thinking is considered an essential skill along with critical thinking in tackling modern problems, and the university classroom provides the perfect environment to help students get their creative juices flowing. Creative thinking has been tied to happiness, well-being, and student success through:

• increased imagination and originality,
• the promotion of openness to new ideas and perspectives,
• improved critical thinking,
• increased academic performance,
• improved self-esteem and optimism, and
• reduced stress and anxiety.

Creative Caveats

Creativity can be any expression, formal or informal, big or small, goal-oriented or personal — like role-playing, journaling, gardening, collecting, video game playing, and music making. One model describes creativity as existing on a continuum — ranging from mini-c (personally meaningful) and little-c (everyday creative) to pro-c (professional creative) and big-c (eminently) creative (Kaufman & Beghetto, 2009). But:

• All types have positive implications. Personally meaningful and everyday creative, however, may have the biggest impact.
• Creativity is not a finite set of things; many things qualify as creative endeavors.
• It requires one to lose their fear of being awkward, wrong, or odd, so it’s important to first create a classroom environment that supports creative thinking by having students get to know one another and interact to become comfortable taking risks, offering suggestions, and asking questions in front of their peers.
• It’s important to structure creative projects to promote engagement and integrity. Think about ways to break down ideas and activities into smaller assignments that build upon each other. Activities can be used to scaffold complexity.

100 Uses and Other Creative Teaching Tools and Techniques

Creative assignments can be incorporated into any course context to increase student engagement and motivation. Many are brief enough to be used as a module within a normal class session and do not require any special equipment.

100 Uses

To promote a creative classroom environment, start with 100 Uses, an easy-to-adopt strategy to warm up a group and make them more comfortable sharing their ideas.

• Task: In 10 minutes, ask students to come up with 100 uses for wire hangers, pizza boxes, pens, etc. Choose an object that ties in with your learning goals.
• Goal: Because the team needs all ideas to reach the 100, the group typically reserves their criticism for ‘bad’ suggestions and learns the value of building on each other and not inhibiting other’s ideas.

Mind mapping

Mind mapping is a visual representation of information, where a main topic branches out into related sub-topics. It allows your students to organize their thoughts and ideas and make connections in a non-linear manner. Mind mapping can cultivate creativity by encouraging students to brainstorm ideas about complex concepts freely and visualize relationships between the concepts, thinking outside the box. There are many ways to use mind mapping in the classroom to foster creativity:

• Host brainstorming sessions. Start with a central theme related to a topic and have students individually or in groups add related ideas as branches, encouraging diverse perspectives and unique connections. For new concepts - create a mind map together as a class to visually map out key aspects, allowing students to see the bigger picture and identify potential areas of exploration.
• Use creative writing prompts. Use mind maps to generate ideas for creative writing by starting with a central prompt and branching out with character traits, plot points, settings, and themes.
• Develop Pros and Cons. Use mind maps to brainstorm potential solutions, list pros and cons of each option, and analyze different perspectives.
• Use it in project planning. Create a mind map to outline project goals, tasks, timelines, and responsibilities, allowing students to visualize the project's different components and potential challenges.

Design for Play

Play with a purpose can support your learning goals. Play builds a low-stress, inclusive environment and enables students to connect with a new topic, strategy, or idea. Try trivia games, puzzles, video games, or role-playing. Structured, educational games can be used to support a new idea or connect with their learning experience. Check out this Reacting to the Past, an example of role-playing for student engagement.

References and Resources

Brosowsky, N. P., Barr, N., Mugon, J., Scholer, A. A., Seli, P., & Danckert, J. (2022). Creativity, Boredom Proneness and Well-Being in the Pandemic. Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland), 12(3), 68. 

Cavanagh, S. R. (2021). How to Play in the College Classroom in a Pandemic, and Why You Should. The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (2022). Getting Started with Creative Assignments. Columbia University. 

DiYanni, R. (2015). Critical and creative thinking : A brief guide for teachers. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. 

Kaufman, J. C., & Beghetto, R. A. (2009). Beyond Big and Little: The Four C Model of Creativity. Review of General Psychology, 13(1), 1-12. 

Tan, C. Y., Chuah, C. Q., Lee, S. T., & Tan, C. S. (2021). Being Creative Makes You Happier: The Positive Effect of Creativity on Subjective Well-Being. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(14), 7244. 

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About the Author

Rebecca Malatesta, PhD, is a Special Instructor and Student Success Coordinator in the Psychology Department. She is very interested in understanding barriers to student success and discovering evidenced-based strategies to address inclusion and belonging in the classroom and students’ subjective well-being. Rebecca loves to read, especially the classics. 

Others may share and adapt under Creative Commons License CC BY-NC.

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