Ecreativity: Shape Your Future

"Creativity is not innovation, innovation is form of creativity. It is more like a thinking process."

"Language is not a formal learning, it is more adaptation process."

"A proper structure can make a mix to cultivate thinking and adaptive capabilities."

We are the consultant company “The Cassiopeian” have been appointed by the SDS Department (Student Development Services) of City University of Hong Kong to design a English language course teach students English as a second language, simultaneously help them to be creative as most of the teachers in Hong Kong do not have the creativity training (Cheng, 2004).

At the very beginning, we propose the university to sign a MoU with British council to have collaboration for the win-win of both the parties. Here university will achieve their desired objective and British Council will have students from the university and also generate adequate profit. At the same time, such collaboration will help CityU to enhance their international exposure and British Council to have better access in Hong Kong market.

Course Details planning

It will be a one year course for six credits. There will be three levels of the course: beginner level what will shape molecule to a skeleton of learning, advanced level that will lead the skeleton to a fleshed body and expert level will complete the learner in formal attire, being ready with language proficiency and also with creativity. Beginner and advanced level will be for three months and expert level will be for six months itself. We can assume that as a university student in Hong Kong, students already know the basics of English language, therefore we need to focus on the proficiency of utilization and at the same time nurture their creativity.

As we know that the learning a language has four parts: reading, writing, listening and speaking; we will focus on the reading and listening part in the beginner level and speaking and writing in the advanced level. In the expert level, we will mostly focus on the effective utilization of their learning.

Beginner level

Our objective in the beginner level is to introduce the students with structural orientation of English language of reading and listening form and develop their own creativity and therefore within the structure assimilate their molecules to shape a skeleton. Our intension is to develop the listening and reading skill in the beginning level to make them more accustomed with the language. To improve their listening, we prefer to engage them in listening in different areas of colloquial English speaking. For example: Russian English, Chinese English, Indian English, British English, American English, good English and bad English. Therefore, they can listen carefully and engage their brain for picking up the words and being active learner. Such way they will be able to learn English spontaneously and at the same time for their brain being active and learning different forms together, they will be creative. For the reading we suggest them to read English comics and play English games. As these people are more love to read comics of their own language and play games but offering them in reading comics in class or playing games, will enhance their reading of English and also grab their interest of reading and also the game instructions will help their reading and the mind games will help them to be creative. We will also show them foreign movies and also English movies with English subtitles to help them to grab the language.

Advanced level

 Objective of the advanced level is to flourish the developed skeleton of knowledge of creativity and English language to a complete body format with their thinking formation comprising speaking and writing skills. Students will engage in different role playing in the classroom based on imagining character. Speaking will focus on their dialogue and discussion on their imaginary role or continuous dialogue or story. For example: a student will be given an umbrella and ask him to imagine and define that in a different way or the instructor will start a story and ask the students to continue the story or the instructor may give a topic to the student and student will have to continue the describing the topic without mentioning the title of the topic. Thus it will help both speaker and listener to increase their language skill at the same time creativity with their divergent thinking (Plucker and Runco, 1999). The similar exercise will also be used for writing practice, whereas the topic might be writing a play with different roles or letter or application based on the role the student is playing, for example: a letter from boyfriend to girlfriend or father to a son or termination letter by the boss to employee or application to government.

We also prefer to incorporate the use of advanced technology like e-chat in this part. As most of students are now using smartphone and have QQ, Facebook, whazzup access there, we might form a group there and start different discussion topic like recent trends or gossips or spicy story in English and give different stimulus time to time to diversify their discussion to a different level and allow them to engage in more thinking process to make changes in the inclination and sort the implications of the gossips and so help them to think critically and creatively.

Expert level

Objective of the expert level is to formulate the creative execution and furnish the developed body of language and creativity with an formal level attire to make them ready to explore in the market. In this level, the students will be sent to different countries, 3 months for cultural adaptation training supported with English language and they will be sent to British council affiliated countries and under their supervision. The next 2 months they will have to work for British council what will help them to collaborate with different people and also from different countries. Such their English language will reach to the excellent level. Last month they will also stay at that country but they will have to work in an international project with virtual team. Thus they will have to be in a foreign country at least for six months what will develop their creativity and intellectual capacity (Maddux & Galinsky, 2006).

Their final evaluation of English proficiency and creativity development will be judged by their synergy of divergent and convergent thinking process (Treffinger, Isaksen and Droval, 1994) in their virtual team project. All the team members in the project will be the member of British council in different countries like our students. Each group will select a distinct industry and find the problems of that industry based on their own country and cultural perspective and finally they will go for a rule making process for the industrial development worldwide. Their individual input to the thinking process and policy development will judge their creativity and their presentation, writing the report and discussion in Q/A session will evaluate their English proficiency.

Stakeholders: Concerns and Collaborations

We have considered that there are eight different stakeholders actively or submissively will be involved in this program playing the role of inhibitor, facilitator and end user. They are the teachers- who will physically teach in the class, students, guardians- who will pay for their children, university governing body- who will get the bonanza, we-the consultant firm, SDS department of the university- who will lead the program, British council-who will get monetary and market expansion benefit but provide with resources and university grand commission- who will work as representative of government.

The program will be an integrated win-win for all the stakeholders considering the point of view of their individual perspectives and relative benefit analysis.

Teachers will have a more structured composition of curriculum to teach the class, however they need to be engaged in a more thinking process than the others what will also help them to think creatively themselves and motivate them for their self-interest and at the same time their knowledge distinction and differentiation in teaching such a challenging course will help them to develop career or move to other universities in future.

For the students, although it will be a challenging course to continue as most of the teaching forms are traditional, not creative and they are used to with such a structure; it will be difficult for the students to come out of the structure but at the same time it utilization of technology and opportunity to study and work abroad will draw their interest.

Guardians will be highly concerned as they are the one, who is paying the money for the course but they will also find the relative benefit over the cost, considering the foreign learning and working exposure of their children what can be a trademark for the children’s career orientation.

University governing body might find this irrational and expensive course to run, comparing with the other courses but they will also notice their opportunity of increasing exposure in the global marketplace. However, we think University might try to apply for a subsidy from the UGC under ministry of education for creating such a valuable course for the creative development of the future national leaders and upon proper diagnosis of our detail process and prospective future outcome, UGC will also consider it as beneficial for them.

As mentioned in the beginning, for SDS and British council, it is already a win-win, therefore they will be more focused on the implementation policy and service excellence during the continuation of the program.

As the consultant, our concern will be aligned with both SDS and British council for the successful implementation of the program and based on its success; we will be able to apply this policy to the other educational institutes.

Curricular Evaluate on Teaching Creativity

“Creativity is a skill for all, an ability that everyone can develop, and therefore that can be inhibited”.  We based our curricular innovation on this very insightful statement. The key question of our English language program is How to bring students to use their existing skills and knowledge in order to enhance the English learning process, and how to set up an appropriate environment (the “enablers” factors) that would foster creativity and innovation in the learning process. We design a program that use a framework known by everyone (Reading, Listening, Writing, Speaking), but propose to our student an innovative way to practice each step of the learning process. We want the student to transfer his existing knowledge and interests into the learning experience, in order to let him think differently. Listening to different English accents, playing games, reading comics in class instead of formal readings: we will bring to the classroom experience any element that the student is more comfortable with, in order to encourage him to be active, and above all, to dare.

We also think that the use of Technology within the classroom could be one of the most powerful “enabler” factors for an innovative English program. When you look at a classroom in Hong Kong, you can see the extent to which students are familiar with new technologies, and how much they interact with their electronic devices. Some teachers say that it is difficult to align technologies to their curricular, but we consider that it is a very important tool to catch the declining in-class attention of students, and to get them involved in the process. Teaching creativity also means bringing innovation in the usual opposition between Leisure and School work. Many studies have shown that technology for educational purpose has a positive impact on student’s self-confidence and implication. We want to teach creativity through a method that brings student’s “everyday reality into their educational process” (Wastiau et Al., 2009).

Curricular Evaluate on Assessing Creativity:

The assessment method is also a key factor in the implementation of an innovative English learning program. “If exam papers are asking for notional performances, teaching and learning will tend to focus on propositional knowledge”: this clearly means that a change in the teaching method implies a change in the assessment process. In our program, we want to avoid the “performance goal structure” that encourages to reduce mistakes, to run for the highest grades and that value competition among students. As mentioned in the Robinson Report table, our vision of the right assessment would be defined as “Formative”: we put a stress on the progress of each student, considering that our teaching is tailored for each student specificity.  The goal-oriented attitude will be rewarded, in focusing more on how much effort, ideas, and innovation the student put in the learning process, than on the final result.

We propose many different forms of assessment, from unusual assignments (performing role plays) to open-ended questions that would value creativity and not only formal answers. For instance, we think that a conversation between 2 students via an online forum is as valuable as a short essay in a written exam. Besides, when it comes to creativity, it is difficult to assess it during a final exam, since it is sometimes stressful and can damage creative behaviors among students. So we propose in our program a continuous assessment during our 3 phases (Beginner, Advanced and Expert) that would allow student to focus on the content without being inhibited by the result. Hence, the ultimate assessment of the student’s creativity will be judged based on his performance in the last month’s project.

Individual Behavior and Team Dynamics

The beauty of “The Cassiopeian” consulting firm is our strength and weakness, both are originated from the same foundation that is diversity. All of our conflicting and creative ideas, clash and co-operation generated during this course curriculum development because of our individual and cultural diversity (Hofstede, 1989).

Factors Inhibited

Concerning the different background, our team members come from different countries with three different cultural dimensions, therefore with different perspectives, thinking process and working procedure. According to the cultural dimensions of Hofstede, mass difference in IDV, UAI and LTO leaded us to contrasting ideologies, however resolved with the implication of similar PDI. For example: Arif, who is a boy come from Bangladesh and have various working experience, so he could think so many different ideas about the project, and Boris, who is a boy come from France, he like sharing his idea, and if he do not like the idea, he will persist his own idea. So when they have the different idea about the same project, they need to persuade each other, yet not revealed in the blog that generated during the storming stage (Shaw, 1998). Even the strong extent of creative idea of our team members sometimes hindered others mind and team creativity (Kirton, 1989). Technology was the medium of our group sharing and group thinking as we mostly used facebook as our virtual meeting place to share the ideas, however expertise in certain technology and access to those technologies from different location was not plausible what actually constrained our state of creativity development. For example: the Chinese Lunar New Year was an optimum time for us to work, however restriction of facebook, hampered our share of ideas on time, therefore inhibited us to a small extent.

Factors Facilitated

Again one of the most important factors worked between us was the diversification of knowledge and culture. Our previous work and cultural experience helped us to make prudent decisions about course curriculum development. We could think from within and out of the conventional English language course syllabus and helped each other to formulate our decision matrix combining the alternatives and considering the relative issues. Concerning the project, our team members hold common or overlapping cognitive representations of task requirement, goals and procedures and role responsibilities (Thompson and Fine, 1999) and sense of requirement. Our continuous communication process, except the technological constrains for a time being, was very much efficient to share any idea instantly for the feedback of the team (Catmull, 2008) and there we tried the lessons ourselves, specially the lessons for beginner and advanced level, we have tested ourselves. We have made a pool of concepts to develop the curriculum and from the pool of ideas, we formed the consensus. Above all, we all have recognized that the objective is not our individual goal, rather it is the group outcome and that helped us to continue in the groupthink process and develop our product pitch.

Conclusion

Creativity does not mean innovation; innovation is a form of output from creativity. It is nothing but thinking in a new way or beholding the old staff in a new way. The approaches we have designed here, you might find many of their existence in different learning modules; however we have combined them together and added new ingredients to formulate a structured shape and generate duple benefit. We have tried to keep it as interesting as possible, because once a scholar said that ‘when a novel becomes textbook, it is no more interesting to read’. We believe that there is no charisma or special spell to make the students creative or teach a second language, if they do not feel self-interest; therefore our approach was to make the course as interesting as possible and allow the students to enjoy the motion of learning with joy.

 “There is no secret ingredients, it is just you” - (Kung Fu Panda)

References:

Catmull, E. (September 2008), How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity, Harvard Business Review.

Cheng, V. M. Y. (August 2004), Developing Physics Learning Activities for Fostering Student Creativity in Hong Kong Context. Asia-Pacific Forum of Scientific Learning and Teaching- Volume 5, Issue-2.

Hofstede, G. (December 1989), Organizing for cultural diversity, European Management Journal, Volume 7, Issue 4, Pages 390-397.

Kirton,M.(1989).Adaptors and Innovators: Styles of creativity and problem-solving. New York: Roureledge.

Maddux, W. W. & Galinsky, A. D. (2006), Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders: Multicultural Experience Facilitates Creative Thinking and Problem Solving. International Association for Conflict Management (IACM) Meetings Paper.

Plucker, J. A. & Runco, M. A. Enhancement of Creativity (1999). In Runco M. A. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Creativity-vol 1, Academic Press, pp 669-675.

Shah, J. B. (October 1998), The Effects of Diversity on Small Work Group Processes and Performance, Human Relations, vol. 51.

Treffinger, D. J., Isaksen, S. G. & Droval, K. B. (1994), Creative Problem Solving: An Overview. In Runco M. A. (Ed.), Problem Finding, Problem Solving and Creativity, Ablex Publishing Corporation, pp (223-236).

Thompson, L. and Fine, G. (1999). Socically-shared cognition, affect,& behavior : A review and integration. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3, 278- 302