How do you assess creativity?

Harris, J. (2008). Developing a language for assessing creativity: a taxonomy to support student learning and assessment. 

Defining 'creativity' is a complex challenge, and as such assessing creativity can be difficult. Producing anything involves creativity, from an essay to a piece of art, and as such creativity is central to academic work in any discipline.

The above article argues for a need to develop a language to help us assess creativity with rigour and fairness, and proposes a taxonomy to help tutors move beyond intuition. How do you approach the assessment of creativity? What criteria do you use to compare creative work, and what are your thoughts about the taxonomy in the article?

What tools are you using on your lunchbreak?

(Obviously this assumes that you have time to take a lunch break).

I was in the process of putting together another e-Learning lunch when it occurred to me that introducing more tools isn't always helpful. So I wanted to ask you about the online tools and websites you use while digesting your sandwiches.

When you have an idle five minutes, what tools to you use to learn? Where do you go to find the latest news on creativity and education? What would you recommend to others, and why?

Welcome!

TaLKBAC has reached 60 members, and I'm delighted to welcome all those who joined the group in July:

• Frances Andrews, Sales Manager for UK Education Solutions at Panopto

• Vic Boyd, Blended Learning Coordinator at The Glasgow School of Art

• Nick Clement, Creative Director & Experience Designer at the British Interactive Media Association

• Anne Caron-Delion, Senior Lecturer at the University for the Creative Arts

• Rhiannon James, Talent & Strategy Lead (Europe) at SapientNitro

• Hannah Facey, Independent Art & Design Professional

• Lucy Renton, Associate Professor & Faculty Blended Learning Coordinator, Kingston University

• Rebecca Daniels, Senior Advisor at the University for the Creative Arts

• Fiona Macneill, Learning Technologies Adviser at the University of Brighton
  

• Stephen Davies, Lecturer in Design & Learning Mentor at the University for the Creative Arts

I hope you enjoy the discussions on TaLKBAC and find the group to be a useful place to discuss issues of creativity, learning and teaching.

Tony

Spotlight: Maria Costantino (part 2)

In the second part of her interview with TaLKBAC, Maria Costantino explains how she relates theory to practice in her teaching to help students understand the importance of situating and describing their work appropriately. Maria also describes how she teaches students how to research.

TaLKBAC Spotlight: Maria Costantino Part 2

If you missed part 1 of Maria's interview, you can view it here.

1/10 Newsfeed

Before we all disappear for the weekend, I wanted to pull together some of the useful news and articles that have cropped up over the last week.

This week's e-Learning Lunch featured a useful mind-mapping tool called Coggle which also allow you to work collaboratively online.

There was a lovely article on the Brain Pickings blog featuring an interview with Jeanette Winterton on Time, Language, Reading, and How Art Creates a Sanctified Space for the Human Spirit. Winterton believes that “art can make a difference because it pulls people up short.

It says, don’t accept things for their face value; you don’t have to go along with any of this; you can think for yourself.” There are many inspiring quotes in this interview and it's well worth a skim.



HEFCE (the Higher Education Funding Council for England) published a response to a recent report which highlighted the need for a more strategic approach to learning enhancement in universities. HEFCE went on to state that it "wants to play a key role in further enhancing teaching quality and stimulating innovation in a changing higher education and technology context".

 

TaLKBAC launched Spotlight, a new series of interviews with members of the TaLKBAC community, and this week featured part 1 of our interview with Maria Costantino. Maria provided a valuable insight into what it is like to be a critical theory tutor in an art and design university, and we will be bringing you part 2 of the interview next Wednesday.



Edudemic published an interesting article on how technology is rewiring our brains. Danah Boyd, of Microsoft Research, believes that “the techniques and mechanisms to engage in rapid-fire attention shifting will be extremely useful for the creative class whose job it is to integrate ideas; they relish opportunities to have stimuli that allow them to see things differently.” I'd be interested in hearing how you think this juxtaposes with some of the recent articles on how technology is potentially harming our ability to concentrate.

And lastly, I am currently putting together a 10 Days of Twitter event for the TaLKBAC community. I was hoping to launch this on Monday 4th August but I've underestimated the amount of preparation that is required! So please hold tight, we will be running this event over the next couple of months.

Have a great weekend all.

Spotlight: Maria Costantino

We're launching a brand new feature on TaLKBAC today called Spotlight. The aim of Spotlight is to provide a member of the group with an opportunity to share their thoughts and experiences of teaching, learning and creativity with the rest of the community.

Our first ever TaLKBAC Spotlight falls on Maria Costantino, a Critical Studies tutor at the University for the Creative Arts. In part 1 of this interview, Maria provides an insight into her experience of being a tutor in an art and design context and offers some valuable tips on how to provide effective support for students. 

TaLKBAC Spotlight: Maria Costantino Part 1
 

I would like to thank Maria for agreeing to let me interview her, and I hope you enjoy it. Please share any thoughts and questions you may have in the TaLKBAC group. It would be great to learn whether you agree or disagree with any of the points Maria makes, and also to hear about your own experiences of working in an art & design context.

Don't forget to tune in next Wednesday for part 2 of the interview. And lastly, if you would like to be interviewed for TaLKBAC Spotlight I would love to hear from you!

Creating mindmaps with Coggle

Mindmaps are a great way to organise ideas visually, but online mindmapping tools can sometimes be tricky to use. Having tried a number of such tools, Coggle is the most user-friendly and easy-to-use that I've found. And the good news is that it's free.

The video below provides a very quick demonstration of how to create a mindmap using Coggle:

 

Another nice feature is the ability to sign in with your Google account. This has the advantage of storing your Coggles in your Google Drive, and means that you can also invite other people to collaborate on your mindmaps.

If you're wondering how you might use a mindmap in an educational context, this article by TeachThought contains ten ways that teachers can use mindmaps with their students.

TaLKBAC is back!

The sun has been blazing away and hopefully you've been finding some time to get out there and enjoy it!

After a brief hiatus during which I consumed rather too much French wine and cheese, TaLKBAC is back. Whether you'll be spending your summer on a sunny beach or stuck in your office (hopefully not) you may find yourself in need of some stimulating discussion in the areas of learning and creativity. The TaLKBAC team will do our best to oblige, and over the next couple of months we'll be bringing you some new features to keep you inspired:


TaLKBAC Spotlight

Each month I will be asking a member of the community to share their thoughts and views on teaching, learning and creativity. There is already a significant amount of expertise in this group and I'm excited by the potential for us all to learn from each other's experience. This Wednesday will feature the first part of an interview with Maria Costantino.


10 Days of Twitter

Starting on Monday 4th August, this 10 day activity provides an opportunity for you to get started with Twitter and learn everything you need to know.




 TaLKBAC Superstar

There's nothing like an incentive to motivate people, and who doesn't want to be a star? Each month the TaLKBAC Superstar will be awarded to the person who has contributed the most knowledge to the community over the past month. And if a star isn't enough they'll also receive a £10 Amazon voucher.



This is all in addition to our regular features e-Learning Lunch and Hashtag Highlights. Roll on Monday, and let's get back to some serious talking. Have a great weekend all.

Tony

TaLKBAC holiday

This is just a quick post to say that I won't be posting on TaLKBAC for a couple of weeks as I'm off on my summer hols. But it's also a good moment to pause and look back at the last couple of months of TaLKBAC.

We've grown to a healthy 49 members and I'm looking forward to growing this past 50 and beyond once I get back. There have been some inspiring conversations so far, including Annamarie's thought-provoking discussion around celebrating the value of an arts degree which produced over thirty comments.

More recently, posts considering a potential vision for Higher Education in 2030 have yielded some insightful comments and I look forward to building on this and other themes over the coming months. We'll also be introducing a new feature called TaLKBAC Spotlight involving interviews with members of the community about their views on aspects of teaching, learning and creativity. Maria Costantino has kindly volunteered to be the first, so look out for this interview towards the end of the month.

In the meantime I hope you're enjoying the Hashtag Highlights and the tools showcased in e-Learning Lunch. The number of tools that can be used creatively to enhance teaching and learning continues to expand at an exponential rate, and I'll be doing my best to keep on top of these over the coming months.

Please do make use of TaLKBAC in my absence, we are growing into a supportive community with a considerable base of knowledge and expertise. If you have a question or discussion that you would like to share with the group then don't be shy, get involved!

I'm looking forward to my holiday, but I'm also excited about continuing to learn and discuss with you all on my return.

But in the meantime, happy holidays!

3/7: Hashtag Highlights

Before I list some of the interesting content that has cropped up on Twitter this week, I thought it might be useful to share this article by TeachThought. The article explains what hashtags are, how they work and some of the conventions around using them. Towards the bottom of the article you’ll also find a handy list of hashtags that are commonly used amongst educators.


#edtech (educational technology)

9 useful alternatives to Google for academics and student researchers. There are several alternatives to Google Search which can help you and your students locate relevant journal articles. Of particular interest is JURN, which provides access to over 3000 free arts and humanities journals.

#acwri (academic writing)

Stuck for words? A list of phrases to help you write your introduction. This academic phrasebank from the University of Manchester contains some useful suggestions to help students introduce key issues and concepts.

#creativity

How to kill creativity: cash, cynicism and headphones. In this article the creativity and advertising specialist John Hegarty proposes three useful tips to help creatives lengthen their creative careers.

 

There are also a number of ‘live’ chats that take place each week or month on Twitter. I wanted to draw attention to these as they provide great examples of how Twitter can be used to support real-time conversation with people across the world. If you’re interested in following the discussion just go to Twitter at the designated time and search for the desired hashtag. To participate, all you have to do is include hashtag in any tweets that you send.


#ukedchat

Every Thursday at 8pm GMT educators chat on Twitter using the #ukedchat hashtag. Beginning in 2010, the group has evolved into a supportive community of educators with a dedicated website containing a whole range of useful resources and jobs for educators. Read their mission statement here.

#artsedchat

On the second Sunday every month at 8.30am EST (1.30pm GMT) arts educators host a live chat on Twitter using the #artsedchat hashtag. More information can be found here. This hashtag is primarily used by educators in the USA but anyone can participate.

#ukfechat

This is a live chat for those teaching in the UK Further Education sector and takes place every Thursday between 9 and 10pm.

Following blogs with Feedly

If you are a regular reader of blogs then it's worth using a tool called a 'reader'. A reader is a bit like your own customisable newspaper which enables you to read all the blogs that you follow from a single place.

Feedly is a free blog reading tool which makes it easy to keep up with news in your field. If you're using blogs with your students then Feedly is also a useful way to track their activity and organise their blogs into yeargroups. The short video below provides an introduction to how to use Feedly:

Personalizing your Feedly from Feedly on Vimeo.

Using a blog reader such as Feedly helps you make the best use of your time. For example, you might allocate 30 minutes a week to skim through new items in your Feedly, then use a tool such as Diigo (featured in last week's e-Learning Lunch) to bookmark any interesting content. As you add new blogs to your Feedly reader you can create folders in the menu to organise your blogs into themes:

 

I hope you find it useful!

26/6: Hashtag Highlights

It never ceases to amaze me how much useful information is shared on Twitter. Hashtag Highlights is a weekly feature that pulls out some of the great content shared on Twitter over the last seven days.


#creativity

Feeling vs thinking: the secret to creative genius. To what extent are many of the big decisions in your life informed by your thinking, or your feeling? In this post Chris Barez-Brown considers the problem of applying our thinking to a problem too soon in preference to our gut feeling and intuition, and suggests that great creatives have developed the ability to trust their instincts.

Creativity is still underrated in business. The business world still doesn't fully appreciate the value of creativity, says leading advertising executive Phil Lader, arguing that many businesses still see creativity as "little more than a cosmetic". He also highlights the growing problem of some tech companies moving in on the work that has traditionally been undertaken by creative agencies.


#edtech (educational technology)

Is going paperless good for the classroom? When Kerry Gallagher took the plunge and moved to a fully paperless classroom she wanted to find out whether she'd made the right choice. Asking her students to share their thoughts revealed that, for many, increased use of technology had enhanced their learning.

63 things every student should know in a digital world. Sixty-three? When I first saw this I thought it would be information overload. But Terry Hick provides a series of short statements that challenge us to think about the skills and aptitudes that students will need in order to survive and thrive in an increasingly digital world. It is interesting to consider how many of these skills we expect our students to develop implicitly, and which ones it may be useful to make more explicit in programmes of learning.

Bookmarking, annotating and highlighting web pages with Diigo

  
We all spend a significant amount of our time accessing and reading information online. But how do we keep track of it all? And how to we make it easy to access the information that we need at the time when we need it?

The ability to store and retrieve information online in increasingly seen as an essential skill for graduates. This skill can be learned and developed by maintaining an organised set of 'bookmarks', and providing students with an introduction to bookmarking can help them manage their research while they are learning.

It is possible to create and store bookmarks in browsers such as Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer. However, a tool called Diigo goes further by enabling you to highlight text on webpages, add 'sticky' notes to capture your thoughts, and create lists which you can share with others. It is also possible to add 'tags' to each bookmark, meaning that you can easily pull out all the bookmarks with a particular tag.

The following short video provides a quick demonstration of how Diigo works:

Diigo is called a 'social' bookmarking tool because it enables students to comment on other people's bookmarks. This makes Diigo an innovative learning tool as it provides a way for students to reflect on both their own bookmarks and those stored by others.

Ideas for using Diigo with your students

• Students each create a Diigo account and use it to bookmark all their web-based research for a project or dissertation

• Tutor creates a list of online resources and shares it with students to help guide their research

• Tutor create a Diigo group and adds three bookmarked websites. Students are asked to compare and contrast each resource and add their comments underneath:

 

If you would like to explore using Diigo with your students please contact your Learning Technologist and they will be happy to help.

TaLKBAC summary to 22nd June 2014

The TaLKBAC group has been up and running for just about two months now, and members of the group have shared a whole range of interesting articles and resources. This post contains links to those that have generated significant discussion in the community.

If you think some articles are missing and should be included, please let me know and I will add them!
 

Why aren't students teaching the lesson? 

Discussion on TaLKBAC

Are lectures a good way to learn?

Discussion on TaLKBAC

Celebrating the value of an arts degree

Discussion on TaLKBAC

Denmark: The building blocks of education

Discussion on TaLKBAC

Do you use self assessment with your students?

Discussion on TaLKBAC