Krista Sarraf: hi everyone i'm Dr krista Spyker seraph and i'm thrilled to talk to you today about writing to think creatively.
Krista Sarraf: I teach in the English department and the speak rate specialist at wvu and speak right is epperly colleges way of integrating writing and speaking into our curriculum.
Krista Sarraf: And through speaker I I support faculty in various disciplines and so today i'm going to talk to you a little bit about how we can encourage students to think a little more creatively.
Krista Sarraf: and especially how we can use informal writing or low stakes writing in our classes, so that we don't increase our grading load, at the same time.
Krista Sarraf: So to start i'd like to get us on the same page about what counts is creativity and then why creativity and writing go in hand and then we'll talk about some different activities and resources that you can use in your classes and add into your lesson plans.
Krista Sarraf: So a common problem that we all face as instructors, is that we want our students to generate new interesting and effective approaches to disciplinary problems.
Krista Sarraf: Whether that's a unique but effective way of approaching a math problem and unconventional approach to reading a letter text a pitch for an innovative business idea or new ways to manage manage infectious disease.
Krista Sarraf: Plus we're responsible for ensuring that our students learn how to communicate, not only with others in their disciplines, but in the workplace as well, so how can we teach students content encourage Problem Solving and improve our students communication skills all at the same time.
Krista Sarraf: So what if, instead of viewing this as a really difficult thing that's hot, you know that we can accomplish we viewed it as an opportunity.
Krista Sarraf: So we can actually use writing intensive courses and tools from entrepreneurship and innovation to help students become problem solvers and this fits in with web us a vision which is.
Krista Sarraf: That as one West Virginia university, we are purposeful in our studies and our work so that we can partner with our communities both near and far to bring needed and valued solutions to real life problems.
Krista Sarraf: And so what if we could work towards that goal of web us fishing integrating writing into the curriculum and then also infusing innovation design and entrepreneurship into the curriculum without increasing our workload this workshop is designed to help you do that.
Krista Sarraf: So let's start, though with defining creativity, what do you think of as creativity, how would you define it.
Krista Sarraf: So for our purposes today creativity is new or unique and effective approaches to writing problems.
Krista Sarraf: So you can help students to think about ideas in a more creative way by asking them to reflect on their dispositions or attitudes towards creativity and to spark a conversation about creativity in your field.
Krista Sarraf: So before we dive into far I want you to think about your own dispositions towards creativity.
Krista Sarraf: So you might pause the video and take five minutes to write about an early experience with creativity educational or otherwise, and then think about some of the questions on the screen.
Krista Sarraf: Like how did they experience shape your view of creativity and when you hear the word creativity what comes to mind and so i'll let you pause the video and do that and, again, this is also something you can try with your students.
Krista Sarraf: So the purpose of reflecting on your own dispositions is to show you how you define and think about creativity.
Krista Sarraf: And everybody has different ways of thinking about creativity, it depends on the domain and people's backgrounds and that's because creativity is really a complex concept.
Krista Sarraf: And because defining creativity can be so slippery sometimes we just don't define it at all, and we call it just anything unconventional or expressive.
Krista Sarraf: But it will help us and our students if we commit to finding a definition of creativity.
Krista Sarraf: And as be selected definition, I encourage us to think about the values that we want to instill in our students.
Krista Sarraf: So for me, I want my students to understand that everyone has the capacity to be creative, given the right conditions and motivations.
Krista Sarraf: People can with practice become more effective creative thinkers and my notion of creativity, then relies on dweck growth mindset theory which he outlines in her 2006 book mindsets the new psychology of success.
Krista Sarraf: Do X growth mindset theory suggests that people can become more creative with practice.
Krista Sarraf: Other notions of creativity rely on the idea of quote creative people, for example, haley Cox and loaders 2010 study extracted treats from gallup's study of 2.2 million employees and employers about creative people.
Krista Sarraf: And they came up with different qualities like futuristic visionary, which is somebody excited about the future someone whose idea oriented or excited about ideas.
Krista Sarraf: connective or ability, the ability to connect unrelated concepts and adaptive or prepared to change.
Krista Sarraf: So i'd suggest that, instead of declaring our students as creative people, though we try to facilitate mindsets, for example, we can foster their excitement about ideas or their ability to adapt to change.
Krista Sarraf: Another notion of creativity that is particularly useful for us is the notion of creativity as problem solving.
Krista Sarraf: And this is useful for various disciplines, because each discipline has problems that's trying to address and sometimes these problems are particularly complex or wicked problems that lack a single correct answer.
Krista Sarraf: And when we have these wicked problems we need original and effective solutions which leads to the working definition of creativity on the screen.
Krista Sarraf: Students in our classes need creativity to address all kinds of problems and as educators, we want to foster a habit of creativity.
Krista Sarraf: As thing and can along say we want to give students, the opportunity to engage in creative habits and we can do this through curriculum design more broadly.
Krista Sarraf: But today we're going to look at a specific element of curriculum design, which is using informal writing to encourage idea generation.
Krista Sarraf: This helps students to practice things like divergent thinking and to develop their creative self efficacy, so they perceive themselves as creative and view their creativity as an asset.
Krista Sarraf: So you might pause and think about how you approach creativity in your classes what strategies, do you currently have to foster creativity.
Krista Sarraf: And one strategy i'm sharing today is informal writing so we need creative thinking when we write, we have to think about who's your audience who do I.
Krista Sarraf: How do I communicate with someone I haven't met before we also need writing to problem solve or come up with ideas and execute like writing grant documents executing different creative ideas and so informal writing helps lead us to use different things.
Krista Sarraf: So we might think about some of the different scholarship on creative creative thinking and informal writing so, for example when students seem afraid to take risks.
Krista Sarraf: Informal writing provides students with a space to play and take risks teaches divergent thinking skills and promotes originality.
Krista Sarraf: Students might think that creativity is only art based and informal writing helps students reflect on different ways that they can be creative.
Krista Sarraf: Sometimes, our students struggle to come up with ideas and informal writing assist students in generating lots of ideas and selecting a feasible one to implement.
Krista Sarraf: Sometimes we need to use our class time just to focus on content and we don't have time to assign formal writing.
Krista Sarraf: And so informal writing helps students to think more deeply about the content and also increases writing skills and creative thinking, while asking students to think through content.
Krista Sarraf: And also, if you don't have a lot of time to grade writing or you have too many students and formal writing doesn't need to be collected or graded.
Krista Sarraf: So i'm going to show you some different activities, but first let's talk about what it means to do informal writing.
Krista Sarraf: So informal writing activities are writing tools that help students to enact creative thinking they might be exploratory reflective and brainstorming.
Krista Sarraf: And, whereas formal writing needs to be polished and edited like a nice pair of dress shoes and formal writing is writing that gets you from point A to be like a pair of comfortable speakers.
Krista Sarraf: So ultimately we're trying to teach our disciplines content, while simultaneously promoting creativity and integrating writing in our classes.
Krista Sarraf: And this is a really tall task but interestingly creativity can be fostered through writing.
Krista Sarraf: So my personal research investigates how nonprofit writers use creativity to fundraise and the study resulted in a model of creativity, for the writing studies context.
Krista Sarraf: That considers how personal knowledge and motivation external factors texts and writing processes mediate a writer's creative approach to communication problem.
Krista Sarraf: My finding that workplace writers use writing processes to engage in creative thinking has shaped my teaching practices and is part of what i'm going to show you today.
Krista Sarraf: So in my classes, I asked students to do this activity here, so I have them describe a wicked problem.
Krista Sarraf: Then I have them come up with a list that's a divergent thinking list so lots of different ideas about how they could address that program project, excuse me problem.
Krista Sarraf: And then, a convergent thinking list, where they select one or two solutions, so you can have students write in a Google document and share their wicked problem sequences in class.
Krista Sarraf: Another activity that you can do is to have students describe a problem involving writing and how they applied creative thinking to address the problem.
Krista Sarraf: The problem could be one that they face in class and another class at work or even in your personal life.
Krista Sarraf: And you would ask students to describe both the problem that gave rise to creativity and how you could and did troubleshoot the problem, how the student could or did troubleshoot the problem, excuse me.
Krista Sarraf: The third one, is a divergent thinking list so using the wicked problems they wrote about set a timer for three minutes and list as many ideas as possible, and they might use a mind map or a graphic organizer to kind of come up with those ideas.
Krista Sarraf: And again here's the convergent thinking list so then judge the ideas on the divergent thinking list and drop down the feasibility and select how you to implement each one, and this helps move us from creative ideation to create an implementation.
Krista Sarraf: Another activity is that you could have students come up with analogies and metaphors and this could be done verbally or via writing.
Krista Sarraf: And analogies and metaphors are really helpful because they help students to compare concepts to one another, and so, by doing this comparison encourages students to look at problems and new ways.
Krista Sarraf: You could also engage students in free writing in which they set a timer for three minutes and they write without stopping or editing.
Krista Sarraf: And if you're going to teach free writing it helps to first rewrite with your students and show students different free writing examples.
Krista Sarraf: Pointing out areas where there's some play and flexibility and open mindedness and directing students kind of as a free right almost like you're doing the guided meditation.
Krista Sarraf: There are lots of different ways to include informal writing in your classes, you can have students spend five minutes of class time on writing you don't have to collect the writing.
Krista Sarraf: Or you could create an informal writing assignment as part of your of your overall grading and I did that in one of my classes and i'm happy to share that assignment with you.
Krista Sarraf: So again, the goal here was to just show you some ways to use informal writing to promote creative thinking among your students, if you have any questions, please visit us at speak right.wvu.edu or reach out Thank you so much.