CONE (Creativity, Originality, and Novelty of Expression) Projects: Explaining Course Concepts through Creative Thinking

Abstract

Creative thinking is an important learning outcome for students because it can help students learn course concepts and help prepare students for the workforce. This article explains an assignment where students cultivate creative thinking on course concepts. Students are tasked with developing an original creative project, such as a poem, drawing, comic, satire, song, or story, and connecting this creative project to a specific course concept being covered in class. This article explains how to conduct and debrief this assignment. Examples and variations of this assignment are also discussed.

Keywords:

• Creative thinking
• applied learning
• originality

Acknowledgments

I was originally introduced to a form of this assignment several years ago when I was in a graduate communication course taught by Dr. S. Shyam Sundar. The class was on the psychology of communication technology, and Dr. Sundar provided topics such as “World Wide Wait” and “Me, Myself, and My Avatar.” I know that Dr. Sundar still does these creative projects in the classes he teaches. Dr. Sundar gave me permission to write this article and reviewed an earlier draft. Dr. Sundar told me that he got the idea from his (now deceased) advisor Dr. Clifford Nass, who asked his students to “create something original and present it on one page, back in the day when assignment submissions were on paper.”

Notes

1 Adopted from Dr. S. Shyam Sundar.

2 Jaccard, J., and J. Jacoby. 2010. Theory Construction and Model-Building Skills: A Practical Guide for Social Scientists. New York: NY: The Guilford Press. p. 42.