Creativity or Conformity?Building Cultures of Creativity in Higher Education

A conference organised by the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff in collaboration with the HigherEducationAcademy

CardiffJanuary 8-10 2007

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Promoting students’ creative thinking through problem-based learning: a challenge for educators

Ruth Matheson and Jill Riley

CardiffUniversity

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Promoting students’ creative thinking through problem-based learning: a challenge for educators

Today students graduating from professional courses must be prepared to meet the challenges of change and diversity through offering innovative solutions to complex situations. The challenge for Higher Education is to provide opportunities for students to develop their creative potential and utilise this in practice. This paper explores how problem-based learning (PBL) might enhance students’ creativity drawing on the findings from a longitudinal study following one cohort of students through a three year programme leading to a Bachelor of Science degree in Occupational Therapy.

The nature of problem-based learning

PBL presents a small group of students with a carefully constructed problem, reflecting real life phenomena (Schmidt 1983). Through initial discussions students offertentative explanations and formulate questions which requirethem to think laterally, produce new ideas and identified learning needs (Barrows 1994). Followingindependent research, students share their findings with the group andthrough further discussion ideas are honed establishingtheir relevance to the problem. This may lead to further questioning,research and discussion before the group decide on how to act. The cycle (figure 1) is completed through an evaluation of the action.

Fig 1

The need for students to problem-solve creatively led us, as tutors, to question how the theory of creativity could inform the process and assist in the development of students’ individual creative potential.

The nature of creativity

Creativity encompasses the ability to produce something newthrough seeing beyond the immediate situation and redefining problems (Sternberg 1988). Systems theories of creativity propose that it is domain specific and culturally situated, therefore students need to internalise knowledge and understand the domains’ culture in order to be creative within it (Csikszentmihalyi 1996, Gardner 1999). Through early immersion in the profession’s culture and values, PBL allows students to use knowledge as they acquire it and develop creative solutions to relevant problems (Barrows 1994).

A traditional view of the creative process is encapsulated in a classical analytical framework, (Csikszentmihalyi 1996) comprises of the following steps:

  • Preparation
  • Incubation
  • Insight
  • Evaluation
  • Elaboration

Placing the creative process within our PBL cycle (figure 2) indicated to us where students’ creativity might be enhanced.

Fig 2

Because PBL is a student-centred approach, we felt the need to explore its relationship with creativity from the students’ perspective in order to gaining insights into aspects of their learning experience that might enhance or inhibit their creativity.

Methodology

An evaluation of one cohort of sixty eight students at the end of the first year of the programme in 2004 identified aspects of curriculum design and implementation that enhanced or inhibited their creative problem-solve abilities. These findings were exploredfurther through three focus groups utilising a qualitative and inductive approach to data gathering and analysis (Krueger and Casey 2000). The findings indicate that creativity is enhanced by:

  • A supportive environment to allow risk taking
  • Opportunities to develop an understanding of self
  • Real life scenarios that enhance creative problem-solving
  • Tutor facilitation that promotes creative thinking

A supportive environment to allow risk taking:

Creativity is enhanced in environments where students can freely exchange ideas, explore interests and have opportunities for choice and discovery (Collins and Amabile 1999). Students felt that to be creative they needed a comfortable, safe and supportiveenvironment whichoffered freedom and flexibility to try out new ideas. As one student put it:

It’s about providing enough opportunities and knowing it’s OK to try different avenues, everyone has got that within them, but the way you find it could be a completely different route to how somebody else finds it

In Higher Education,an organisational culture that dictates advanced timetabling and room bookings, opportunities for students to explore their own routes to creativity are limited. Pressure on space, time and resources, all of which were highlighted by students,can be obstacles to creative development (Amabile 1996).

For students apart of that supportive environment is their PBL group. The bond they develop and their trust in each other, which happens over time, has a profound effect on their creative thinking. Successful PBL relies on students being able to question and critical discuss issues. If students are to develop control over their own ideas, enthusiasm and good communication skills, all of which stimulate creativity (Amabile 1996), then they need support from their group.

‘If you’re not getting on with your group then it’s going to put a block on it…you don’t feel you can really have a good discussion, ‘cos people don’t want to be there so you don’t really have that free-thinking’

Some students’lack of interest in the process was clearly demotivating others who were then struggling to problem-solve creatively. This could be tackled through offering students additional opportunities to get to know their own strengths and where their creativity lies.

Opportunities to develop an understanding of self

Students valued opportunities to find out about themselves through activities they might use later in practice.

‘you get to sort of … learn about yourself and use that’… knowing ‘what makes you tick’

Through experiencing activities together they also learnt about each other

‘I think that having to trust people as well..’ and ‘think differently’.

Experiential learning offers opportunities to develop skills in new situations (Burnard 1991).But sometimes for students this means working outside their personal comfort zone:

Being put in a situations which you wouldn’t normally be put in, I guess and having to lead a group, which personally I’d have avoided if I hadn’t been on this course..

The value of experiential learning as a part of the PBL process was summed up by one student:

‘It’s like someone will explain a route to you, how to get somewhere… you try and envisage it, but if you’ve done that route for yourself then you can explain it to somebody else better’

When experiential learning is used in this way alongside PBL, students build a bank of transferable skills that can lead to further creative development and a deeper understanding of self.

Real life scenarios that enhance creative problem solving

Students were aware that in order to think creatively abouta problem theyrequired a real-life context theycould then visualise.This was facilitated by tutors’ ability to paint a picture using examples for their own experience:

“I think quite imaginatively, so I think in pictures…. When you put it into context it can clarify ideas”

Students felt that the presentation of a problem impacted on creative problem-solving. Traditionally written paper-based case scenarios have been used as a starting point and students recognised that they had developed word-spotting techniquesto identify the key points. This content-driven approach pushes the student to find textbook solutions, emphasising outcome rather than the learning process (Lloyd-Jones et al 1998).Whereas pictures, story boards, cartoons and experiential learning were sited as alternatives that would generate creative thinking:

“But I think a variety of different materials…pictures…medical information… setting.”

One of the challenges in curriculum design is to develop such opportunities. Problems should utilise students’ prior knowledge, allowing them to deconstruct it, incorporate new ideas, and generate discussion before reconstructing their learning to find a solution (Dolmans et al, 2005).

Tutor Facilitation that promotes creative thinking:

Tutor facilitation is central to PBLand student-centred learning. Itis a goal-orientated dynamic process where questioning, clarification and insights enhanceknowledge application (Burrows 1997, Dolmans et al 2005).

Students considered that the phrasing of questions was crucial in encouraging creative thinking. Tutors who purely asked the students “what do you think”put them on the spot:

“Passive questioning which just throws the question straight back at you gets in the way… panic… paralyses thought.”

Tutors must encourage lateral thinking fromthe outset to incubate ideas and generatecreative solutions. Closing this down too quickly leads to standardised answers, thus loosing the potential for creative thinking. Whereas rephrasing the problem:

“… encourages thinking…a range of ways to tackle a question.”

Reflexive tutors who became part of the learning processwere motivating; whereas others remained outside the group as passive observers:

“a lot of lecturers… use their own self and their own experiences… whereas others are quite stuck in the philosophy of PBL and it seems to put up a barrier”

Tutors who facilitate openness, encouragingregular group evaluation, allowing for peer and tutor review, were recognised as creating an environment were creative thought flourished (Clouston 2004).

Conclusion

A challenge for educators in preparing students for contemporary practice is to promote their creative thinking through providing a supportive environment within organisational constraints. This requires attention to group processes and finding ways to motivate students to engage in creative problem-solving. This can come about through experiential learning opportunities where students’ develop an enhanced self-understanding and discover where their own creativity lies.This in turn leads to acquiring transferable skills that can be utilised within the group and ultimately in practice. A further challenge comes from the need to develop ways of presenting problems to students in multi-media formats that encourage visualisation and lateral thinking. Finally tutors must be able to contextualise problems and facilitate reflexively, taking an active part in the PBL process in order to encourage students to think creatively.

References

Amabile T (1996) Creativity in Context Colorado: West View Press

Barrows (1994)Problem-Based Learning Applied to Medical Education. Southern IllinoisSchool of Medicine. Springfield: Illinois.

Burnard P (1991) Experiential Learning in Action Aldershot: Avebury

Burrows D, E (1997) Facilitation: A Concept Analysis, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 25, 396-404.

Clouston TJ (2004) Facilitating Tutorials in Problem-Based Learning in P Hartley, A Woods. M Pill (eds) Enhancing Teaching in Higher Education, Routledge, Oxon.

Collins M and Amabile T (1999) Motivation and Creativity. In Sternberg R (Ed) The Handbook of CreativityCambridge: CambridgeUniversity Presspp. 297-313

Csikszentmihalyi M (1996) Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and InventionNew York: HarperCollins

Dolmans D, De Grave W, Wolfhagen I, Van Der Vleuten C (2005) Problem-Based Learning: Future Challenges for EducationalPractice and Research. Medical Education 2005; 39: 732-741

Gardner H (1999) Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st CenturyNew York: Basic Books

Krueger R A and Casey M A (2000) Focus Groups: A Practical Guide for Applied Research 3rd Edition Thousand Oaks Ca: Sage

Lloyd-Jones G, Margetson D, Bligh J (1998) Problem-Based Learning: a Coat of Many Colours. Medical Education. 32, 402-494.

Schmidt (1983)Problem-Based Learning: Rationale and Description Medical Education 1983, 17, 11-16

Sternberg R (1988) The Nature of CreativityCambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press

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