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Organization for Creative People – Why Your Brain May Be Keeping You From ‘Getting Things Done’

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Chapter 1: Introduction to ‘Creativity and Communication’ A welcome from the course designer (Draft version 2.2) Kia ora. Bon jour. Haere mai. Gutten tag! Editor’s Note: This is a development draft for introducing prospective students to the Unitec Creativity and Communication class, COMM5533 Semester July-November 2010. This draft is a ‘work-in-progress’. Changes are INEVITABLE. Suggestions for improvements and clarifications are WELCOME. Use the tumblr comments option on this blog. Before I introduce myself and the teaching team, let me anticipate questions you might be asking now that you have entered the blog for Unitec Institute of Technology’s course ‘COMM 5533 Creativity and Communication, CraC!: What is creativity? What is the value of creativity? Who can learn to become more creative? What is the connection between creativity and communication? How do I maximise what I want to gain from studying a course in creativity, such as COMM5533? What must I do to succeed in this class? There are answers to these questions. The bad news: the answers are not straightforward. The good news: we will begin to sketch out some answers in this first chapter of your learning adventure. First, a word of advice. Please imagine that this blog is your Hitchhikers Guide to an Alice-in-Wonderland learning adventure! Certainly, several previous students have compared their experience of this course with a trip to Wonderland. If you don’t believe me, take a brief detour to view this student’s experience: [link to NB student journal, upon approval] The 15 credit 150 hour Unitec course COMM5533 Creativity and Communication is unashamedly unusual, perhaps unique. As teachers, we have designed this course to lead you to practice what the course preaches. You will note that some people abbreviate the course name to CraC!. At times, some of the ideas will seem a bit ‘crac!pot’! … But please keep an open mind. Before you reach Chapter 3, you are required to commit to engage wholeheartedly in the CraC! course. Otherwise, I suggest you cancel your formal enrolment, and get your money back! Your choice: Will you remain topside in your normal world? … or will you engage in CraC!, leaping down, like Alice, through a rabbit hole, into the matrix wonder-world, eager to find answers to the questions I posed earlier? You have two chapters to review before making your final choice and commitment. Let’s commence the journey. [Images: link to example student blog, Cheshire cat? Rabbit?] Alice follows her curiousity. Image by valkyrieh116 via Flickr Now I will share some ideas that, I believe, will aid your response to the questions posed at the start of this chapter. (Note that I intended avoiding the word ‘answer’!) However, I intend to provide you with provisional answers and insights that will help you choose to engage productively in our learning adventure together. Some of the advice derives from cold-hearted analysis of statistical data of course grades. Some of the advice comes in the form of insight from previous learning partners who have participated successfully in earlier manifestations of the CraC! learning adventure. Their advice is hard-won. These are their gifts to you, as you will discover. Ooops! Have I lost some of you already? I apologise. That last sentence might be translated as: Some of the advice offered here is given by previous students who completed successfully the Creativity and Communications class in 2009…. Ignore at your own peril! Commence your thinking from where you want to arrive I recall a famous general [???] once remarked ‘Start your thinking from where you want to end up’ [Bother: I can’t find the source, but here is a citation that approximates my sentiment, Maher, 2001]. So let’s examine how you might succeed in this class as measured by the simple metric of achieving an excellent grade. An excellent grade is an A+, a mark of 90 per cent or better. Just 4 out of 55 students gained this distinction in 2009 - almost 8 per cent of students who enrolled. The factors that were associated with students achieving an excellent grade in the Creativity and Communications class in 2009 are presented here. In summary, the students: Submitted a substantial well-researched ‘second draft’ of their personal investigative assignment before the semester mid-break: around studio 7/week 7 Attended the field trip to NZI House, and participating in the masterclass with Beth Coleman, around Studio 4/week 4. Engaged rapidly with the task of journal keeping and/or online blogging within the first three studios. Were all women. I anticipate some additional questions from you: What’s a studio? What’s a learning partners? Why don’t you use conventional educational words like student, class, lecture, and book? What is a field trip? Why did the field trip help students to achieve better grades? What is a blog? Does that involve using technology? I’m a technophobe! How will I cope? What’s a peer evaluation? Does that mean other students get to grade my work? How do you ensure that evaluation process is valid, fair and ethical? I’ve heard there is a Group project for the CraC! course. Do I get to choose my team? How do I avoid being teamed up with free-loaders who contribute nothing, but rely on my hard work? Do I have to keep a journal? Who gets to see it? Must it be A4 or can I use my own diary? Can I keep the journal online as a blog? Who designed this course? What do they know about the subject of creativity?.. and about my needs from this course? Patience! Don’t Panic!!! You are attempting to leap far ahead in your learning journey. I suggest that we first return to the questions outlined at the start of this welcome chapter. Let’s start at the very beginning …. a very good place to start! Now it is time for you to do some thinking and work prior to our next meeting. Follow up and preparation activities for Chapter 2: Course Assignments and Schedule In our next chapter, we will: Discuss answers to the questions posed at the start of this Chapter. Overview the course assignments, and Outline how the teaching and study schedules will help you complete the course assignments successfully. Answer additional questions that I anticipate you might ask about how Crac! operates, and what CraC! expects of you. No sneak previews of Chapter 2 until you have done your own thinking and investigation, please! Homework In preparation for for our first studio/class/meeting/workshop, please commence  to the questions that follow - the introductory questions as presented at the start of Chapter 1. Write down your immediate ‘off-the cuff’ reactions. What are your opinions and guestimates of the ‘correct’ answers? I’ve provided some hints to help. What is creativity? Who you you associate with using creative processes, or producing creative outputs? What is the value and importance of creativity? To society? To business? To you and your family? Hint: consider creativity as one source of great technical and social innovations. Alternatively, consider creativity as the output of creative artists such as poets, writers, choreographers, dramatists, painters. Who can learn to become more creative? Anyone? But first let’s define and examine what people understand by the term ‘creativity’. What is the connection between creativity and communication? A novel, original, or creative idea might require that we use our best arts of persuasion to convince others that the new idea (a) will help and (b) will work in practice. How do we get ‘buy in’ to support, resource, and/or fund our idea? Should we use a ‘creative format’ presenting the communication - whether presenting on paper, ‘on stage’, or in a formal business meeting? How do I maximise what I want to gain from studying a course entitled ‘Creativity and Communication’? What do I want to achieve? Why am I selecting this course? How do I succeed in this class? What does ‘success’ mean, beyond getting a pass grade? How do I achieve an A+ grade? What must I sacrifice to get a pass grade? … an A+ grade? Now conduct some investigation to find answers. For example, follow the hyperlinks in this Chapter, or use your favourite research tool (Google and Wikipedia permitted!) Feel welcome to create some new questions to ask other students of creativity - including the teachers and tutors. (We are all learning partners in this CraC! journey). Extra for experts … and seekers of excellence: thoughts for your reflection Select one of the following tasks and prepare to lead an  in-class project related to the task. Task 1. Social creativity Read the following quote from a blog written by Johnni Moore. Are you surprised by Sawyer’s research findings? Why? Follow the link to Moore’s blog for further information…. begin feeding your curiosity about creativity. “Keith Sawyer has spent decades researching creativity. His latest post reports his interviews with winners of the New Yorker cartoon caption competition. Among his conclusions: ‘The first important discovery about creativity is that [original] ideas emerge over time, from hard work and constant revision. The ‘sudden flash of insight’ is largely a myth. And the same goes for the cartoon caption contest: caption winners almost never have their ideas instantly.’” Although creativity may love constraints, it doesn’t run on schedule, especially the manager’s schedule. (Keith Sawyer (2009), cited by Johnnie Moore, 2009) Task 2: A creative’s process of creative thinking View this video in which fiction author Amy Tan discusses her process of creative writing with (I suspect) a conference of nuclear physicists! (They laugh at very esoteric jokes about string theory, Heisenberg’s Principle of Uncertainty, and Quantum Mechanics) As you watch the video (approx 25 minutes), sketch out the notes you would use in a speech to report the influences of your creative process … or the creative process of someone who describes themselves as a ‘creative’. Novelist Amy Tan digs deep into the creative process, journeying through her childhood and family history and into the worlds of physics and chance, looking for hints of where her own creativity comes from. It’s a wild ride with a surprise ending. (AmyTan in YouTube, 2008) Task 3: The great debate Prepare notes for your participation in a debate on the proposition that: ‘Creativity is eseential to solving the ‘big problems’ of the world’. Hint: consider the as rich/poor divide; mankind’s reluctant response to global climate change and/or environmental degradation; the poor health status of recently-Westernised [modernised] peoples; the damage induced in young people through their inappropriate eating, excessive attention to body beautiful, and/or harmful addictive substances; the high cost of higher education. Task 4: Surfing the blogosphere for crac!pot ideas If you search the web for ‘crac unitec’ you may be surprised what you will find in the blogosphere inhabited by Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Try Crac! Identify seven items that you found unusual, interesting, or confirming about your interest in studying creativity. References Moore, J. (2009, October 24). Johnnie Moore’s Weblog: Social creativity. Retrieved November 28, 2009, from http://www.johnniemoore.com/blog/archives/002303.php Maher, B. (2001). Filling the glass: the skeptic’s guide to positive thinking in business. Dearborn Trade Publishing. YouTube - Amy Tan: Where does creativity hide? TEDTalksDirector. (2008, May 23). . Retrieved November 29, 2009, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D0pwe4vaQo&feature=player_embedded# Where Next for the author: Take in references, citations, links, and post Sunday draft for peer review Invite feedback from ‘top students’ … and others Consider the question: How does a teacher succeed in designing and teaching this course?! Write second chapter Previous versions Draft 1.0 28 Nov 2009  Afterthoughts and musings…. PO (de Bono): What if the ‘top four’ graduates of the ‘Class of CraC! 2009’ were tasked with re-designing and re-delivering the class in 2010. They could be paid and/or given credit for a ‘Special Credit’ to deliver the course as an advanced series of Creative Communication Campaign studios! Mentored by Peter Mellalieu (Crac Teacher 2009 in partnership with a tutor from Department of Communications) …. Hmm. Thinking….. Volunteers? Resource use Start: Sun 24 November. 6:00 am First draft. 55 minutes, +30 minutes. Speak through. Minor edits. Where next. Afterthoughts and musings…. 7:40 am: Breakfast 8:45 am: Third edit - introduce notion of the tutor avoiding straight-forward answers 9:20 am About to post - added images, hyper links. Further editing. 11:10 am Add Apture. Final testing of post 12 noon Published! 2:30 - 4:30 pm 90 mins polishing editing, plus 30 min viewing Amy Tan video. All lost due to a Tumblr crash! 08:30 pm 90 mins Resurrecting corrections from the afternoon. 12:30 pm Dec 1. 2h 45 Monitors’ visit. More fine tune editing. Would not SAVE! Had to preview then close tab, then rescue from draft. Fortunately my new edits mostly OK. I’d made a back-up to a word doc, too. 3:15 pm Lunch time - print version for Sara D, and publish ver 2.2

Chapter 1: Introduction to ‘Creativity and Communication’

A welcome from the course designer (Draft version 2.2)

Kia ora. Bon jour. Haere mai. Gutten tag!

Editor’s Note: This is a development draft for introducing prospective students to the Unitec Creativity and Communication class, COMM5533 Semester July-November 2010. This draft is a ‘work-in-progress’. Changes are INEVITABLE. Suggestions for improvements and clarifications are WELCOME. Use the tumblr comments option on this blog.

Before I introduce myself and the teaching team, let me anticipate questions you might be asking now that you have entered the blog for Unitec Institute of Technology’s course ‘COMM 5533 Creativity and Communication, CraC!:

  • What is creativity?
  • What is the value of creativity?
  • Who can learn to become more creative?
  • What is the connection between creativity and communication?
  • How do I maximise what I want to gain from studying a course in creativity, such as COMM5533?
  • What must I do to succeed in this class?

There are answers to these questions. The bad news: the answers are not straightforward. The good news: we will begin to sketch out some answers in this first chapter of your learning adventure.

First, a word of advice. Please imagine that this blog is your Hitchhikers Guide to an Alice-in-Wonderland learning adventure! Certainly, several previous students have compared their experience of this course with a trip to Wonderland. If you don’t believe me, take a brief detour to view this student’s experience: [link to NB student journal, upon approval]

The 15 credit 150 hour Unitec course COMM5533 Creativity and Communication is unashamedly unusual, perhaps unique. As teachers, we have designed this course to lead you to practice what the course preaches. You will note that some people abbreviate the course name to CraC!. At times, some of the ideas will seem a bit ‘crac!pot’! … But please keep an open mind.

Before you reach Chapter 3, you are required to commit to engage wholeheartedly in the CraC! course. Otherwise, I suggest you cancel your formal enrolment, and get your money back! Your choice: Will you remain topside in your normal world? … or will you engage in CraC!, leaping down, like Alice, through a rabbit hole, into the matrix wonder-world, eager to find answers to the questions I posed earlier? You have two chapters to review before making your final choice and commitment. Let’s commence the journey.

[Images: link to example student blog, Cheshire cat? Rabbit?]

Down the Rabbit Hole

Alice follows her curiousity. Image by valkyrieh116 via Flickr

Now I will share some ideas that, I believe, will aid your response to the questions posed at the start of this chapter. (Note that I intended avoiding the word ‘answer’!) However, I intend to provide you with provisional answers and insights that will help you choose to engage productively in our learning adventure together. Some of the advice derives from cold-hearted analysis of statistical data of course grades. Some of the advice comes in the form of insight from previous learning partners who have participated successfully in earlier manifestations of the CraC! learning adventure. Their advice is hard-won. These are their gifts to you, as you will discover.

Ooops! Have I lost some of you already? I apologise. That last sentence might be translated as:

Some of the advice offered here is given by previous students who completed successfully the Creativity and Communications class in 2009…. Ignore at your own peril!

Commence your thinking from where you want to arrive

I recall a famous general [???] once remarked ‘Start your thinking from where you want to end up’ [Bother: I can’t find the source, but here is a citation that approximates my sentiment, Maher, 2001]. So let’s examine how you might succeed in this class as measured by the simple metric of achieving an excellent grade. An excellent grade is an A+, a mark of 90 per cent or better. Just 4 out of 55 students gained this distinction in 2009 - almost 8 per cent of students who enrolled.

The factors that were associated with students achieving an excellent grade in the Creativity and Communications class in 2009 are presented here. In summary, the students:

  • Submitted a substantial well-researched ‘second draft’ of their personal investigative assignment before the semester mid-break: around studio 7/week 7
  • Attended the field trip to NZI House, and participating in the masterclass with Beth Coleman, around Studio 4/week 4.
  • Engaged rapidly with the task of journal keeping and/or online blogging within the first three studios.
  • Were all women.

I anticipate some additional questions from you:

  • What’s a studio?
  • What’s a learning partners?
  • Why don’t you use conventional educational words like student, class, lecture, and book?
  • What is a field trip? Why did the field trip help students to achieve better grades?
  • What is a blog? Does that involve using technology? I’m a technophobe! How will I cope?
  • What’s a peer evaluation? Does that mean other students get to grade my work? How do you ensure that evaluation process is valid, fair and ethical?
  • I’ve heard there is a Group project for the CraC! course. Do I get to choose my team? How do I avoid being teamed up with free-loaders who contribute nothing, but rely on my hard work?
  • Do I have to keep a journal? Who gets to see it? Must it be A4 or can I use my own diary? Can I keep the journal online as a blog?
  • Who designed this course? What do they know about the subject of creativity?.. and about my needs from this course?

Patience!

Don’t Panic!!!

You are attempting to leap far ahead in your learning journey. I suggest that we first return to the questions outlined at the start of this welcome chapter. Let’s start at the very beginning …. a very good place to start!

Now it is time for you to do some thinking and work prior to our next meeting.

Follow up and preparation activities for Chapter 2: Course Assignments and Schedule

In our next chapter, we will:

  • Discuss answers to the questions posed at the start of this Chapter.
  • Overview the course assignments, and
  • Outline how the teaching and study schedules will help you complete the course assignments successfully.
  • Answer additional questions that I anticipate you might ask about how Crac! operates, and what CraC! expects of you.

No sneak previews of Chapter 2 until you have done your own thinking and investigation, please!

Homework

In preparation for for our first studio/class/meeting/workshop, please commence  to the questions that follow - the introductory questions as presented at the start of Chapter 1.

Write down your immediate ‘off-the cuff’ reactions. What are your opinions and guestimates of the ‘correct’ answers? I’ve provided some hints to help.

  • What is creativity? Who you you associate with using creative processes, or producing creative outputs?
  • What is the value and importance of creativity? To society? To business? To you and your family? Hint: consider creativity as one source of great technical and social innovations. Alternatively, consider creativity as the output of creative artists such as poets, writers, choreographers, dramatists, painters.
  • Who can learn to become more creative? Anyone? But first let’s define and examine what people understand by the term ‘creativity’.
  • What is the connection between creativity and communication? A novel, original, or creative idea might require that we use our best arts of persuasion to convince others that the new idea (a) will help and (b) will work in practice. How do we get ‘buy in’ to support, resource, and/or fund our idea? Should we use a ‘creative format’ presenting the communication - whether presenting on paper, ‘on stage’, or in a formal business meeting?
  • How do I maximise what I want to gain from studying a course entitled ‘Creativity and Communication’? What do I want to achieve? Why am I selecting this course?
  • How do I succeed in this class? What does ‘success’ mean, beyond getting a pass grade? How do I achieve an A+ grade? What must I sacrifice to get a pass grade? … an A+ grade?

Now conduct some investigation to find answers. For example, follow the hyperlinks in this Chapter, or use your favourite research tool (Google and Wikipedia permitted!) Feel welcome to create some new questions to ask other students of creativity - including the teachers and tutors. (We are all learning partners in this CraC! journey).

Extra for experts … and seekers of excellence: thoughts for your reflection

Select one of the following tasks and prepare to lead an  in-class project related to the task.

Task 1. Social creativity

  • Read the following quote from a blog written by Johnni Moore. Are you surprised by Sawyer’s research findings? Why?
  • Follow the link to Moore’s blog for further information…. begin feeding your curiosity about creativity.

“Keith Sawyer has spent decades researching creativity. His latest post reports his interviews with winners of the New Yorker cartoon caption competition. Among his conclusions: ‘The first important discovery about creativity is that [original] ideas emerge over time, from hard work and constant revision. The ‘sudden flash of insight’ is largely a myth. And the same goes for the cartoon caption contest: caption winners almost never have their ideas instantly.’” Although creativity may love constraints, it doesn’t run on schedule, especially the manager’s schedule. (Keith Sawyer (2009), cited by Johnnie Moore, 2009)

Task 2: A creative’s process of creative thinking

View this video in which fiction author Amy Tan discusses her process of creative writing with (I suspect) a conference of nuclear physicists! (They laugh at very esoteric jokes about string theory, Heisenberg’s Principle of Uncertainty, and Quantum Mechanics)

As you watch the video (approx 25 minutes), sketch out the notes you would use in a speech to report the influences of your creative process … or the creative process of someone who describes themselves as a ‘creative’.

Novelist Amy Tan digs deep into the creative process, journeying through her childhood and family history and into the worlds of physics and chance, looking for hints of where her own creativity comes from. It’s a wild ride with a surprise ending. (AmyTan in YouTube, 2008)

Task 3: The great debate

Prepare notes for your participation in a debate on the proposition that: ‘Creativity is eseential to solving the ‘big problems’ of the world’. Hint: consider the as rich/poor divide; mankind’s reluctant response to global climate change and/or environmental degradation; the poor health status of recently-Westernised [modernised] peoples; the damage induced in young people through their inappropriate eating, excessive attention to body beautiful, and/or harmful addictive substances; the high cost of higher education.

Task 4: Surfing the blogosphere for crac!pot ideas

If you search the web for ‘crac unitec’ you may be surprised what you will find in the blogosphere inhabited by Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Try Crac!

Identify seven items that you found unusual, interesting, or confirming about your interest in studying creativity.

References

Moore, J. (2009, October 24). Johnnie Moore’s Weblog: Social creativity. Retrieved November 28, 2009, from http://www.johnniemoore.com/blog/archives/002303.php

Maher, B. (2001). Filling the glass: the skeptic’s guide to positive thinking in business. Dearborn Trade Publishing.

YouTube - Amy Tan: Where does creativity hide? TEDTalksDirector. (2008, May 23). . Retrieved November 29, 2009, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D0pwe4vaQo&feature=player_embedded#

Where Next for the author:

  • Take in references, citations, links, and post Sunday draft for peer review
  • Invite feedback from ‘top students’ … and others
  • Consider the question: How does a teacher succeed in designing and teaching this course?!
  • Write second chapter

Previous versions

Draft 1.0 28 Nov 2009 

Afterthoughts and musings….

PO (de Bono): What if the ‘top four’ graduates of the ‘Class of CraC! 2009’ were tasked with re-designing and re-delivering the class in 2010. They could be paid and/or given credit for a ‘Special Credit’ to deliver the course as an advanced series of Creative Communication Campaign studios! Mentored by Peter Mellalieu (Crac Teacher 2009 in partnership with a tutor from Department of Communications) …. Hmm. Thinking….. Volunteers?

Resource use

Start: Sun 24 November. 6:00 am

First draft. 55 minutes,

+30 minutes. Speak through. Minor edits. Where next. Afterthoughts and musings….

7:40 am: Breakfast

8:45 am: Third edit - introduce notion of the tutor avoiding straight-forward answers

9:20 am About to post - added images, hyper links. Further editing.

11:10 am Add Apture. Final testing of post

12 noon Published!

2:30 - 4:30 pm 90 mins polishing editing, plus 30 min viewing Amy Tan video. All lost due to a Tumblr crash!

08:30 pm 90 mins Resurrecting corrections from the afternoon.

12:30 pm Dec 1. 2h 45 Monitors’ visit. More fine tune editing. Would not SAVE! Had to preview then close tab, then rescue from draft. Fortunately my new edits mostly OK. I’d made a back-up to a word doc, too.

3:15 pm Lunch time - print version for Sara D, and publish ver 2.2

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Snippets from your reflective journals

Creative Commons Creativity PosterImage by maven via Flickr

From now on, I intend to post six snippets each day selected from a list of snippets I have snipped from your final reflective journals.

No particular order or theme. I will sort by theme later! Each snippet is intended to come from a different person.

Here is snip set one:

  • I started this course with an open mind, because I really was not all that sure what creativity in communication actually was. All I knew was it sounded fun and relevant to Events management…. I think most of us learning partners would initially have thought creativity was an attribute that only stereotypical types, like artists and writers had. I honestly think most students learned that yes, creativity can be taught or enhanced.
  • I must say, when I had a look at all the work we had I felt desperate… Although it was only an elective (and not even from my department) it was as busy as my compulsory class. However, once I started working on each assignment, everything suddenly started to seem possible. There was hope (^^)!
  • Expectations: My initial thoughts about creativity in communication were that the course would involve learning about new creative ways of communicating to solve problems or conflicts etc; in real truth I had no real idea about what to expect.
  • If you take a look through the tumblr archive, from week one up until now the so called ‘blogisphere’ has changed dramatically as members of the class (myself included) have begun to catch on and understand what this class is all about. Providing that future classes are taught how to use tumblr properly (which would eliminate time wasting like we have experienced) I feel that this feature of the class will be an incredibly valuable tool, as it allows students to gather their ideas and thoughts into a space where they can share and help other students who may not be quite as advanced. It also allows the lecturer … to gauge … where the class is at in terms of their understanding which is important when preparing for future lectures. I can personally think of numerous times when I have gone to other people’s blogs for inspiration. There [are] a number of other highlights I could mention from the time we have spent in this class however I believe that it is the visit to IAG and  the ‘blogisphere’ that have benefited us the most, especially when it came to our group assignment.
  • Tumblr not only became a must for this course, but it opened my mind to the fact that yes new things are a little tricky and take time but the way we communicate is evolving with technology and as a communications student I have to keep up this, just as a doctor has to keep with new equipment and medicine. … Tumblr became a ‘must visit’ site every time the laptop was opened.
  • Through this course I got to investigate something I never really understood. Throughout my life I was always told in different ways that I was very creative. But to me I thought this just meant I was eccentric and interested in more aesthetic aspects, and this mean that I was only good at visual tasks not academic-based processes. From this course I have gained a whole new way of thinking and have learnt that to have a skill of creativity is a great asset and that there are different ways of using this tool of creation and imagination.

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Crac 2010 - Teaching and learning creative and critical thinking

In this module, we’€™ll take a look at what one teacher is doing to bring critical and creative thinking into her classes. Her students are learning to take a “think locally and act globally”€ approach to problem-solving and new areas of inquiry in their learning as they develop their language skills.

This is the first week in a large class of young adults. The teacher is using a content-based approach with a Mass Media theme as a basis for the day’s activities. She is assessing students’€™ skills as they participate in and complete a series of tasks. Observe the sequence of activities that she has students do over the course of the class. Ask yourself, “€œIn what ways are critical and creative thinking involved?”

An innovative offering from the Office of English Language Programs, Shaping the Way We Teach English, is a 14-module teacher training video series developed and produced in cooperation with the University of Oregon.

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