Agenda 4 for Class Meeting on February 28

Last updated: 3/2/02
Link back to course Welcome

Agenda for Creativity Class Meeting on February 28
[Updated on Saturday March 2 to show what was actually covered during the class]

[Material not covered is shown in red]
[Material not originally in the agenda but presented orally are shown in blue]

Announcements:
1. Clock over the door is one hour early. (Three years to get the clock set to the right time, and they do it during the summer!)
2. Do an online signin tonight
3. Weekly course reports: one per week, rain or shine (but see assignments, below). If you make a comment that might possibly get a reply, I would appreciate your including your email address. Thanks.
4. After all of that voting, no changes in the dates or times of these classes.
5. New computers over Spring Break
6. Essay 1 - good.
7. Misha Anton - OK to ask him to join the conference as a guest? [Yes]
8. Tech - copying and pasting into the computer conference - problems with different file formats - in Word, should work if you Save As text (txt) - three formats
  1. Word processor formats - content and formatting (proprietary)
  2. HTML (web) - content and formatting (I think this will take over)
  3. Text (content only, the Lowest Common Denominator)
9. Online life at WSU is being upgraded rapidly
  1. http://pipeline.wayne.edu - portal or online hub, probably with links to all of the following
  2. web-based course schedule and registration starting this Fall including information about online classes
    http://www.classschedule.wayne.edu:5001/course_web/schedule/index.cfm
  3. Access ID will be common WSU logon as well as present WSU ISP and email accounts
    http://support.wayne.edu/ (also general computer support), http://support.wayne.edu/student/accessid/
  4. More contact through WSU email - if you don't use it, learn to forward it (need your Access ID and Password) - http://mail.wayne.edu/
  5. WSU online directory for faculty and staff - supply any one piece of information
    http://support.wayne.edu/acctmanagement/ldap_search.php3
10. [Some discussion of the animated Pikachu on the course home page. Will there be other animations in future weeks?]
Review of Essay form from Syllabus
1. Content - Use readings, the conference, your own thoughts. No extra research required.
2. Form - Title, Introduction, Body, Conclusion - do thinking before writing
3. Mechanics
  1. [Punctuation : / ; / ,]
  2. Homonyms: two, to, too / their, there, they're / due, dew, do
  3. Be consistent with capitalization: Creativity everywhere or creativity everywhere
  4. Subject-verb number agreement. Find the verb (action) first, then the subject (noun) is who/what carries out the action. Example: A group of artists ( is | are ) going to the gallery.
Taking an online course. Not about waiting for the course to come to you. You have to go out after the course. Be active, not passive. (Transparency) Web page under this Agenda on course web site.
Meaning of Creativity
1. Two layers of human activity - probably a hazy boundary
  1. Basic: eating, family, childbirth, breathing
  2. Cultural or symbolic: art, music, science, religion, politics, business. "Symbol" - something which stands for something else.
2. Creativity is only ever applied to the symbolic layer.
  1. Strong symbolic layer is what makes unmistakably human. Language, writing, art, decoration, culture - all arose at about the same time. What you study in school. Is this why a college education adds so much to the quality of life - an introduction to the life and times of symbols, of problem-solving, of Creativity?
3. Is everybody creative? - language [and everyday problem solving - at some level, we are all creative]
Significance of Creativity - more (Addition to C. E and F are new)
1. Made us what we are - take a look around you, take a look inside you
2. Keeps economy and society rolling
3. Major world problems of 21st century threaten human species, will only be solved creatively. Did not specifically mention Global Warming last week.
4. Personal Creativity - quality of life. Creativity pg 344.
5. When humans evolved, Creativity was a factor and a driver.
6. Creativity is not:
  1. Doing something well. A performer or interpreter is generally not counted as creative. Musician, conductor, actor/actress, movie producer (movie directors are often counted as the creative people).
  2. Being a genius - IQ does matter up to about 120 (high normal) but not above that (genius is usually felt to be around 150 and higher)
  3. A starving artist working alone in a garret. [Creative people move towards the center of their domain. This is the only way to find out what the problems int he domain are, and to get good.]
[Review of Corporate Creativity (D and E are new)
1. Why are corporations interested in Creativity?
2. Six principles - Csikszentmihaly and Gardner will use different words for most of the same ideas
3. What is alignment about?
4. One more reason - that's my company
5. Extreme corporate creativity has usually involved setting up a new company, or at least a new division - entrepreneur or intrapreneur - missing from Corporate Creativity and from Creativity. Even small groups or individual artists find that they are a business.
6. Ultimately about external conditions to allow Creativity. Idea is that individual Creativity is "natural" - allow it to happen and it will. Csikszentmihaly and Gardner continue with external conditions (Systems Theory) but add how it happens. The sequence]
  1. Corporate Creativity. First, many people say or assume that business cannot be creative. (How, then, do we account for the stream of new things in our lives?) From my own experience, business can be highly creative. Also, range of Creativity in there (Big C to little c.)
  2. How business does it differently: business is very good at bringing in resources after a "go" decision is made. The people in Creativity generally have to do this for themselves.
  3. [Theory X Vs Theory Y. Depending on Creativity can be a problem for "Theory X" supervisors.]
  4. Creativity. Csikszentmihaly forms a group that does more-or-less standardized interviews (Pg 393) with ninety-one elderly but living contemporary productive Americans (Pg 373). He finds that these people are uniformly happy, in an uncomplicated way. He also finds that they have paradoxical qualities - introvert Vs extrovert. These ninety-one are not household names (only a few from Business world, sort of throws them a bone). These people are probably creative, but there will be disagreement. Also explains "The Systems View of Creativity" - interaction between (i) the individual talent, (ii) the field, and (iii) the domain.
  5. Creating Minds. Gardner studies existing literature on seven dead "Big C" people active during 1890-1930 or so, writes uniform biographies and finds basic principles. These people will almost always be judged as creative, although perhaps not of the first rank. Their Creativity was also a dominant factor in their lives, so that this is a way to isolate Creativity and study it.
7. Why study highly creative people? If we are not sure about what Creativity is or how it works, a very good approach is to study people which are widely agreed to be creative, and in whom Creativity is a dominant factor. The average level of Creativity in the people studied increases as we go from Corporate Creativity to Creativity to Creating Minds. Gardner, in Creating Minds, will be much more specific in his findings than Csikszentmihalyi is in Creativity. On the other hand, the people in Creativity are happier and more satisfied than the people in Corporate Creativity, but the people studied in Creating Minds do not seem to be the happiest of all. Can the highest levels of Creativity happen when the person loves the domain too much? Can this distort our views about lower levels of Creativity?
[Ideas about Creativity - points added during and after class
1. Something that is not well-defined and is paradoxical.
  1. Paradoxical - may mean contradictory, or may mean apparently contradictory until really understood, then consistent.
2. What is it fair to ask people in this course to learn, then? a through d in class, e added afterwards
  1. The range of Creativity
  2. Your own informed opinion
  3. Where you fit in the range
  4. What you can do to further your own goals (self-determined)
  5. Examples of Creativity, creative people, and how Creativity is studied
3. How do you get to love something - a field or domain?
  1. Interest and commitment
  2. Success and acceptance - a child earning being taken seriously by a knowledgeable grownup
  3. Turn-ons or instant gratification (my own guess)
    1. "Aha" or "Eureka"
    2. Epiphany or arriving at a comprehensive overview
    3. "Flow" or, in sports, "The zone". Csikszentmihaly, Flow and Finding Flow
  4. Can you love something too much? - Csikszentmihaly's subjects Vs Gardner's subjects
4. The study of Creativity is interdisciplinary
  1. Examples of Creativity in all disciplines
  2. Many disciplines are needed to study Creativity
  3. Can we be Creative in the study of Creativity?
5. Refinement of statement that Creativity is shut down if it is evaluated or required. There is one type of evaluation that seems to foster Creativity - evaluation from someone who understands and even appreciates what you are trying to do, like a colleague
6. Possible models for creativity - I don't think we went over this one from the last class
  1. Restructuring the field, for example going back to basics ("a new paradigm") [paradigm - a pattern or model, here, for the way in which the field is conceived. Example 1950's life paradigm for a male was grow up, get a job, get married, buy a house, have children, participate in the community, grow old, retire, die soon afterwards]
    1. What are the assumptions in the field, even the unspoken assumptions?
    2. What would happen if we reversed this one, that one?
    3. Example - Euclidean geometry (life on a flat surface) says that parallel lines never meet. What if we negate this - parallel lines do meet? Geometry of a spherical surface, or other types of surfaces.]
7. I think you will find that Creativity is not a well-defined field with a strong consensus. In such a situation, I think the goal of the course must be for you to become aware of the range of thought, to recognize where a given opinion fits within the range. Also, there are many different types of studies, and you should try to understand their strengths and weaknesses.
  1. Can we be Creative in the study of Creativity?
8. Refinement of statement that Creativity is shut down if it is evaluated or required. There is one type of evaluation that seems to foster Creativity - evaluation from someone who understands and even appreciates what you are trying to do, like a colleague
  1. That is one of my personal goals in this course - to help you identify what you are interested in and what some next steps might be. If I make wrong assumptions about what your goals are, correct me.]
Discussion of reading in Creativity
1. Pg 11 at bottom - importance of Creativity
2. Pg 16 ff - happiness of the creative people
3. Pg 25 - different meanings of Creativity, which one he will use
4. Pg 32 ff - effect of field
5. Pg 39 ff - effect of domain (Physics Vs Psychology) - what does this remind you of from Corporate Creativity?
6. Pg 58 ff - List of contradictory personality traits in creative people. Hint from Freud.
7. Pg 79 ff - Five-step creative process
8. Pg 81 ff - Freeman Dyson's "aha" - joining two things previously seen as separate
9. Pg 95 - Significance of the choice of problem.
Coming up
1. Ideas about the topic and the course - handout
  [Handout is available on course web site. Twelve questions, answered privately in class, then three were used as a basis for postings during class.]
2. Posting
3. Now we have a long time without class meetings until April - April 4 and 11. Are you ready? Communicating:
  1. I will be posting web pages as lectures
  2. Computer conferencing
  3. Weekly course reports
  4. Email - weekly, also you can email me
  5. Telephone
  6. Face-to-face
  [Strengths and weaknesses of each form of communication.
  David will be adding lecture material to the course web site, weekly.]
  If this gets to seem like it is self study, then something is wrong. get in touch with me and get it fixed.
Assignments
1. Reading
2. Conference postings - seventh week of posting, should have fifteen
3. Weekly course report. This week, make the weekly report during this coming weekend, by telephone to me at home (248-549-8518)