Creative Assignments
Designing, Assigning, and Assessing Creativity/Creatively
Pırıl Atabay, Ph.D. & Garth Sabo, Ph.D.
Center for Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities
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Facilitators
Pırıl Atabay (atabaypi@msu.edu)
Garth Sabo (sabogart@msu.edu)
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Participant Introductions
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Workshop Goals
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What is a creative assignment?
Examples from Jeffrey Gandell, “The case for creative assignments in the English classroom”; Hartel, Nonone, Oh “The creative deliverable”; and Alternatives to Traditional Exams and Papers (Indiana University Bloomington)
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Building on the standard writing assignment, creatively
I asked students to start by identifying a “real-world problem” in one of the pieces of literature we read this semester. For example: we read a play called The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds, by Paul Zindel. The play is about a small family where a single mother is emotionally abusive toward her two young daughters, one of whom finds salvation in the school’s science fair. Potential “real-world” problems include: our behaviour is often a reflection of our feelings for ourselves; children often internalize abuse they receive from their parents; the underfunding of public schools diminishes their abilities to provide transformative experiences for students, etc.
Students were then tasked with creating a “prototype” of something that the characters in the play could use to help solve the problem, or help bring awareness to it. One student proposed creating a prototype of an “emotional puffer,” similar to the puffer that asthmatics use, that can regulate a person’s emotions when in high-stakes emotional moments. Another proposed a set of tarot cards with the characters from the play on them, showing the possible outcomes of their behaviour.
Along with these prototypes, students also submitted a two-page piece of writing that explained what their creative prototype was, and why they made the choices they made. The written text linked the piece to the literature: it had to detail how this “problem” manifested itself in the story and how the characters in the story themselves might have used their prototype. Finally, there was a showcase where students presented their prototypes to the other students, and went into detail about the links between their work and the piece of literature it was based on.
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“...’creative deliverable,’ that is, an assignment that gives students the freedom to display their understanding of course material in an almost unrestricted range of alternative formats and genres, while retaining some key features of traditional scholarship.”
“As we see it, a key aspect of the creative deliverable is that while learning to communicate in novel mediums, students must engage the academic and professional mediums. The work cannot be a flight of fancy fueled by imagination and inspiration, alone.”
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What examples can you share of work you’ve assigned that meets these definitions of creativity?
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Design: Why assign creativity/creatively?
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Motivating
Why alternative modalities?
Motivating– for both students and prof.: How can we inspire others if we are not motivated?
“Creative assignments help students produce knowledge (rather than merely reproduce it) and make connections (helps them retain knowledge)”
“Creative assignments provide options for engagement”: igniting the learning spark/sparking student interest (in ways that traditional essays do not)
(“Case for Creative Assignments”)
Risk taking- “flexibility, acceptance of uncertainty, and the capacity to embrace change…” needed for our future now more than ever (honors students?)
(Rebels in the classroom, 2013)
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Assign: How to support creativity?
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Helpful to think about
what
you
want
to assess
University of Indiana Bloomington Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning
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“It is important to provide appropriate direction and well-defined parameters that nurture and harness the creative process. Students will be coming from diverse backgrounds and may be interested in, but unfamiliar, with artistic production.” (“The creative deliverable” 179)
Wintrol and Jerinic’s revision processes in, “Rebels in the classroom”
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Trust?
Requirements:
Student proposals/Meetings
Proposal presentations/Peer feedback/Classroom decisions (democratic in terms of equal workload and rigor across teams)
Consultation with an artist in residence
A well defined timeline: production start date, how much time brainstorming, how much time “making” (word count)
Artist statement
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“[A]cross diverse content domains, from science to arts, anxiety was greater for situations that required creativity than similar situations that did not…These findings suggest that creativity anxiety may have wide-reaching impacts and distinguish creativity anxiety from anxiety about noncreative aspects of performance”
(42, emphasis added)
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How do (or might) you reduce students’ “creativity anxiety”?
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Provide multiple, varied examples of creative work
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Invite students to situate their work into course gaps
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Allow students to work in media they feel comfortable with
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Assess: How to evaluate creativity?
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One rubric for all assignments
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Sample
Alternative Modalities
Rubrics
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Spencer’s Three Key Shifts
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What questions/comments do you have?
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