Fostering students’ creative thinking skills by means of a one-year creativity training program

Abstract

Creative thinking is among the most sought-after life and work skills in the 21 st century. The demand for creativity, however, exceeds the degree to which it is available and developed. The current project aimed to test the effectiveness of a one-year creativity training program for higher education. The creativity of students following the training was measured before, halfway, and after the training. In addition to the within-subjects comparison across time, performance was compared to a matched control group. At each of the measurement points, different versions of seven well-validated creativity tasks (capturing divergent and convergent creative thinking skills) were employed. The creativity training increased students' ideation skills and, more importantly their cognitive flexibility. However, no difference in originality was observed. Finally, an increase in performance was observed for one of the convergent creativity tasks, the Remote Associate Test. Implications for educational settings and directions for future research are discussed.

The Effectiveness of the Inquiry and Brain Storming Strategies in Developing Achievement and Creative Thinking Skills in Arabic Language of University Students

“…A lot of studies, including studies of Sak and Maker (2006), Coles and Banfield (2012), Anjarwati, Sajidan and Prayitno (2018), Ritter et al (2020), have confirmed that low levels of students' academic achievement and creative thinking skills are refer to teaching strategies. Traditional teaching strategies are related to the direct presentation of learning experiences, and do not support the student in developing multiple and varied paths of thinking.…”

“…The teachers have to change their teaching practices, and move from traditional teaching strategies to learning based students which confirm student positivity in learning situations. In fact, the traditional teaching strategies don't enhance the teacher and the students in developing creative thinking skills, developing thinking skills in general and academic achievement levels (Ritter et al, 2020).…”

Teaching Practices of EFL Teachers and the Enhancement of Creative Thinking Skills among Learners

“…People who are capable of generating original and valuable ideas will soon replace them. Thus, to remain competitive, individuals, nations, and organizations must think differently and make connections between seemingly unrelated things (Ritter, Gu, Crijns, & Biekens, 2020). Thinking differently means that the person has to be creative in his thinking.…”

From creativity to innovation

“…They found that this analytical approach or cognitive technique of strengths and weaknesses analysis improved people's ability to recognize highly original ideas. However, on the other hand, Ritter, Gu, Crijns, and Biekens (2020) found no effect of cognitive techniques on the ranking of new business ideas. In this study, 133 students attended a 140-hours cognitivebased creativity training where they learned to apply four cognitive techniques (i.e., simplify, differentiate, visualize, and tag the problem).…”

“…For example, the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) -a questionnaire developed by Eurostat to investigate organizations' innovation activities in 19 countries -revealed that in 57% of firms that they deemed as 'innovative', engaged in innovation-related training activities (OECD, 2010). Also in higher education, creativity training -executed as either distinct course segments or workshops -has been developed for almost every student population including, for example, psychology students (Vally et al, 2019), nursing students (Liu, Wang, Chen, & Chao, 2020), engineering students (Zhou, 2012), and business students (Ritter, Gu, Crijns, & Biekens, 2020).…”