Creativity and Teaching

I was reading a post at the Innovation Tools site which discusses five things you can do or think about to enhance creativity. I found four of the five items and questions interesting.

Attend
What do you need to pay more attention to in order to manifest your most inspired idea or project?

Intend
In what ways can you strengthen your intention on a daily basis?

Extend
What boundaries, limits, or old paradigms are you willing to challenge this week?

Connect
Who (or what) do you need to connect with in a new way in order to manifest your hottest, new idea?

These items hit home with me – but not directly in a creativity context. I’ve been thinking about ways I might stimulate student motivation and foster problem solving skills in my first year chemistry students. Here's what came to my mind.

Attend
Although important, I wasn't thinking about class attendance. I thought of this like the Zen of chemistry. I have to be there in the moment and be focused. The same is true for the students. Everyone has to be concentrating and participating to get anywhere.

Intend
Especially from the student side, what is “…the primal purpose and commitment…that will sustain you through the doubts, fears, and unexpected obstacles along the way”? Many students project the attitude of giving up at the first sign of difficulty because everyone knows chemistry is hard. It seems they lack the determination to succeed. You hear Donald Trump say that all the time on The Apprentice. The trick is to instill that drive in my limited lecture time. I find this particularly frustrating and hard to overcome on an individual basis in a large class.

Extend
I feel only a minority of students push themselves when thinking about new concepts or when trying to develop problem solving skills. I sense several issues here that can vary by individual. Examples include difficulty with subject vocabulary, lack of confidence or drive when reaching limits, and insufficient background skills (e.g. math ability). I use several techniques to address these, but I’m always looking for better options to gently push the limits.

Connect
Making connections between concepts in different topics or chapters, or linking laboratory experience to lecture, has always been an obstacle for students. My typical student is low on Bloom’s taxonomy pyramid and has difficulty with problems that require making connections to solve. Many of my students would drive constructive learning theorists nuts! I hope using mind maps as a basis for lectures, along with Socratic discussions, will facilitate making connections. We’ll see if this will work in a large group.

Maybe I need to think more about motivating creativity rather than worrying so much about experiences, relevance to a major, or extrinsic factors for student motivation?