All 2 entries tagged Creative Spaces

Students’ experiences of creativity, Martin Oliver et al

Follow-up to Creativity and curricula in higher education: academics’ perspectives, Margaret Edwards et al from Inspires Learning - Robert O'Toole

A report on research carried out by Martin Oliver, Bharat Shah, Chris McGoldrick and Margaret Edwards, based upon interviews with 25 students from a wide range of disciplines at UCL and LJMU. This investigation of student views accompanies a chapter on those of academics³.

Again the results are rich, deep and wide ranging. I have selected points most relevant to my own research (my notes in square brackets or bold).

Notes

Defining creativity

“Rather than giving one coherent, integrated account, they typically drew on a number of different discourses, often presenting contrasting or even inconsistent positions at different points in the interviews.” p.44

[People most usually define creativity by emphasising its supposed antithesis - rigidity, dogma, lack of spontaneity; or by referring to complete works that are deemed to be ‘creative’ - typically artistic acts or acts of perceived genius.]

Students lack time and energy for creativity

“Other comments were concerned with things students felt helped with creativity. These included physical exercise (as a way of reducing stress), being with creative people and reading or watching something inspiring. Some students suggested that study pressure was squeezing activities such as these out, either because it took up too much time or left students feeling tired.” p.48

“As one student summarised: ‘you need time and space in your mind to be creative and if your mind is full of studying and this and that and the other then there’s no space for it’.” p.51 [Note the opposition between creativity and studying. Also creativity time is referred to as being spatial - often people spatialise time when it is under threat and needs to be protected.]

Creative teaching

“Examples of techniques included role playing (by the teacher, not the students), debates and creating posters that were then presented to the class or displayed in a public place.” p.49

“Some conventional forms of teaching were also felt to support creativity. These were inevitably dialogic, and focussed on opportunities for discussion that addressed students’ current understanding or beliefs.” p.50 [Conversational framework]

Academia perceived to be in opposition to creativity

“In many students’ comments there was a sense of frustration at a perceived conflict between being creative and being ‘academic’. Many of the students experienced academic values as being controlling, conformist and inflexible, more concerned with producing ‘clones’ than supporting new ideas. These students framed their experience in terms of rote learning, spoon feeding and regurgitation.” p.54

“…students identified many things that limited or inhibited creativity. As before, some of these point to a perceived contrast between creativity and acceptable academic work.” p.50

“Some comments were simple suggestions for teaching techniques that could be used to provide a contrast to current teaching. (Such contrasts typically portrayed current teaching  as transmissive and dull; however, in context, it seems likely that this is a rhetorical description rather than a judgement about their courses.)” p.49

“Students on vocational courses pointed to work placements, often as an explicit contrast to their academic study. They identified the people they encountered and the problems that arose in that situation as requiring the new solutions to be created, or existing ones to be adapted; it was also suggested that personal style could be expressed in such situations in a way that was not always possible within the formal educational component of the course.” p.50

[Perhaps questioning the relevance of academic work and modes of assessment]

“There’s an infinite amount of possibilities, it’s really, really daunting. […], I’ll do whatever I want and it might be something completely different, which is incredibly satisfying but it’s terrifying as well.” p.49

[Some students might actually need creativity to be controlled and bounded by a discipline, as they might feel to challenged by risk and unpredictability]

Academia perceived as allowing bounded creativity

“It is important to point out that not all students were dissatisfied with their experience of academia. Indeed some came to appreciate the creative endeavour of academic work, even if they tempered this with the suggestion that is was somehow not for them…” p.55

Assessment styles opposed to creativity - essays, exams - but essays seen as more creative

[exams] “It’s also about spontaneity isn’t it? So you can be creative and you’ve spent a month revising and your head is full of crap.” p.54

Creative study

“…even within ‘uncreative’ disciplines, some students admitted they found ways to be creative, such as developing short-cuts or quicker approaches that helped them in their work.” p.55 [students use creative techniques to subvert academia]

“Just as students described creativity in their teachers’ practices, they also discussed their own. They deemed this to be particularly important, since they felt it was learning, not teaching, that was central to their academic success; bad teaching might not inspire, but it did not prevent learning.” p.51

Specific techniques identified

“making links across different contexts” p.51 [cross-pollinating]

“interpreting texts” p.52

“case studies”, “videos”, ‘the Internet” p.52

LEARNING SPACE

“The environment in which study took place was felt to be important. Several students stressed the importance of comfort (‘a big, comfortable chair or something’), and many identified ‘distractions’ such as music, exercise or a window to look out of as being important….However, other participants spoke of exactly the same distractions in negative ways; the key to this was in whether the student had the choice to distract themselves in such ways.” p.52 [Do students understand how different spaces are used in different ways?]

Conclusions

“…there seemed to be a desire for spaces within the course that were open to risk-taking, free from the need to justify decisions and where failure was an opportunity for learning rather than a problem.” p.57

[That students see creativity as being an important part of how they achieve (or survive), regardless of whether it is sanctioned or not, or whether it is used for legitimate or subversive purposes, it is important].

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¹ Developing Creativity in Higher Education: An Imaginative Curriculum, Norman Jackson, Martin Oliver, Malcolm Shaw and James Wisdom, Routledge 2006
² Students’ experiences of creativity, Martin Oliver, Bharat Shah, Chris McGoldrick and Margaret Edwards, in Jackson et al 2006.
³ Creativity and curricula in higher education: academics’ perspectives, Margaret Edwards, Chris McGoldrick and Martin Oliver, in Jackson et al 2006, p.60-73

Robert O'Toole : 17 Oct 2009 20:34 |  Tags: Academic Book Chapter Creative Spaces Creativity Inspiration |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Creativity and curricula in higher education: academics’ perspectives, Margaret Edwards et al

How do practising higher education teachers define ‘creativity’? How do they see it as fitting into their curricula and their roles as teachers and academics? What strategies do they use to make teaching and learning more ‘creative’? What obstacles do they face?

Between 2002 and 2004, Margaret Edwards, Chris McGoldrick and Martin Oliver conducted deep-searching interviews with 32 members of academic staff from UCL and Liverpool John Moores University. Their results are summarized in this most useful paper¹ published as a chapter in Developing Creativity in Higher Education².

The chapter is packed with significant findings and interpretations of views from teachers actively engaged with higher education’s most challenging issues (notably assessment, feedback, key skills and employability). My research concerns examining how such ‘creative practices’ may help us to address these issues, and how new concepts of ‘space’ and ‘design’ can make creativity work in the HE context. I will also be talking upon the subject of learning space and technology at a couple of forthcoming conferences. In this article I will select from the many interesting points made in the chapter, reporting upon things that are particularly relevant to my work. However, there’s much more to it than this – so I recommend reading the full chapter (indeed the whole book).

A dissonance between ‘creativity’ (as perceived) and the demands of HE teaching

Definitions of creativity vary widely and contain conflicting and sometimes paradoxical elements, as should be expected for such a molar concept. However, there is a common belief that ‘creative’ practices introduce a degree of unpredictability, if not chaos, especially in cases where “the lived curriculum arose dynamically out of interactions with the students.” p.60

One respondent stated:

“You’ve got to improvise – it’s like a performance in a way.” p.60

This poses the potential for a conflict between analytical, objective driven learning design approaches and creative work. How can creativity ever provide SMART (specific, measurable, assessable, realizable, time-related) objectives? p.62

I argue that the conflict can be resolved through design thinking practises. For example, in their influential Harvard Business Review article of 1977, Eileen Morley and Andrew Silver described how professional film-making is a well structured, well understood formal management process that accomadates risk-taking and dynamic emergence of un-anticipated outputs (it is in that sense highly creative and controlled).³

A mismatch between feedback regimes and creative relationships

“Institutional arrangements for student feedback were not felt to be particularly effective in either university. Students could regard them as ‘an annoying routine’, and academics rarely found this type of feedback helpful (‘because … they just tick the numbers, and the numbers are arbitrary anyway – what does plus two mean?’). Student representatives on Boards of Study and informal feedback were found to be much more helpful. Generally, however, students tended to concentrate on details and ‘not to be all that insightful about the whole curriculum’.” p.63

I argue that creative practices, embedded within the curriculum, may actually improve the quality of feedback (helping to establish and maintain a mutual understanding and clarity of communication). However, success may be dependent upon establishing good creative practices and appropriate creative spaces (physical and online).

The necessity for appropriate creative spaces

“Creating spaces - several participants noted how ‘crammed’ curricula tends to be, attempting to cover an ambitious range of topics. A recurrent theme in interviews was the need to replace some content with ‘creative space’ – areas of the curriculum where teacher and student felt able to try things out and negotiate what should be done, and how to do it. Such spaces created opportunities for ‘more relaxed pedagogy and … discussion, workshop, individual feedback – you need this for deeper understandings’. Important features of such ‘creative space’ were that it should be enjoyable (‘I’d want to make it fun!’), part of the course, but not so tightly assessed that risk-taking and the exploitation of ideas were inhibited. Moreover, it was felt that the ‘space’ was not boundless. As a curriculum designer, ‘your creative act is in trying to build in these spaces … in a way … which will still allow students to feel secure that there is a curriculum and that they aren’t just in a free for all.’ “ p.64

My aim is to show how we can understand the role of different types of space in creative learning activities, and how we can build effective teaching and learning around such spaces. A ‘design patterns’ approach is an essential tool in achieving this. With such an approach, practises and curricula may be developed to harness the power of creative practices without resulting in chaos and over-complex requirements.

Some good practices

Teaching for Creativity – ‘… techniques that teachers associated with technology …’ p.64-65

•    Developing critical thinking.
•    Encouraging lateral thinking and problem-working.
•    Move between the university and ‘outside.’ Get students outside of classrooms.
•    Give space for group work.
•    Increase student confidence (in staff and student colleagues).
•    Have fun!

Assessment is an obstacle challenge

"Assessment appeared central to the whole issue of designing creative curricula. As one participant commented, ‘If the assessment process is right, you can cope: creativity is encouraged’." p.66

Creative approaches to assessment

"In Arts disciplines, exhibitions, portfolios and performances were used for assessment, and would be viewed by internal and external assessors. ‘Mini-vivas’ would give undergraduates an opportunity to comment upon their work and would be taped in final-year modules for external examiners. Outside Arts disciplines, more than one assessor would comment upon assessments that were specifically designed to incorporate creative work; these included oral presentations, poster demonstrations and role play." p.67

Creative spaces are important for…

Designing problem-based, research-based tasks for first-years, aiming to help them with the transition from school.

Designing final-year courses: “The idea of creative space … was felt to be particularly important here.” p.68

Creative practices and spaces help with student-teacher relations, help to get final-year students to be more active and challenging.

The traditional module structure hinders creative work

"A very considerable discouragement to creative curricular design and student learning was felt to be the university’s ‘insistence on [semester-long] modules … there is no space, there is assessment crowding in and reduced opportunity for formative assessment…" p.70

Do less better!

"Given the central role of creativity, one starting point might be to consider whether there is an over-teaching of content coupled with too little ‘high gain [student] and low pain [academic] assessment’ (Knight and Yorke, 2003)." p.73

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¹ Developing Creativity in Higher Education: An Imaginative Curriculum, Norman Jackson, Martin Oliver, Malcolm Shaw and James Wisdom, Routledge 2006
² Creativity and curricula in higher education: academics’ perspectives, Margaret Edwards, Chris McGoldrick and Martin Oliver, in Jackson et al 2006, p.60-73
³ A Film Director's Approach to Managing Creativity, Eileen Morley and Andrew Silver, in Harvard Business Review March 1977

Robert O'Toole : 14 Oct 2009 14:24 |  Tags: Academic Book Chapter Creative Spaces Creativity Inspiration |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem