Effective English Communication in Creative Way

Introduction

Nowadays, the university graduate’s problem solving abilities and the creativity become a great concern in the community. A 13-week elective course is designed to enhance student’s creativity and communication skill. By working on the group project, students have to experience the process to think, design and communicate.


Philosophy

Base on the Qualification Framework (QF) by Education Bureau, HKSAR, the bachelor degree is belonged to the QF Level 5. From the “Generic Level Descriptors”, the university students should be able to “generate ideas through the analysis of abstract information and concepts”. Also, it suggested the process should be “utilized diagnostic and creative skills in a range of technical, professional or management functions and exercise appropriate judgment in planning, design, technical and/or supervisory functions related to products, services, operations or processes”. In this course, students need to communicate with other group members to design and execute the project.

According to Innovation and Creativity in Education and Training in the EU Members States (2009), “learning in a creative way is certainly a form of meaning-making”. It also involves bringing their expertise, experience and ideas into the classroom. Educational reformer, John Dewey (1977), also stated that “experience plus reflection equals learning”. If the 13-week course are designed with  activities only, students may feel that it is fun but not be able to change those learning experience become a real knowledge.

On the basis of the above philosophy, a 13-week interactive course about the communication and creative thinking is designed.

Intended Learning Outcome of the 13-week course:
Upon finished the course, students are able to apply creative thinking skills and methods to solve  problems.



Course outline, activities and assessments:

Week 1-3 – Group Discussion on different topics
In the first 3 weeks, different topics are given to (e.g. pop music, movies, mobile technology)  the students for group discussion. During group discussion,  “everyone must have freedom to communicate with anyone” (Catmull, 2008) is encouraged.

Assessment:
Teacher will assess the students through observation and provide the feedbacks to the students after the discussion. It is mainly focused on the brainstorming process and the communication skills. For examples, will student suspend their judgment when brain-storming? Will they combine and build on the ideas? Are they providing a suitable quantity of the ideas? Are they jotting down the notes during discussion? Do they have good attitude during the discussion? Teacher will have a checklist to facilitate the whole discussion.



Week 4-5 – Role-play exercise on Negotiation

In these 2 weeks, various scenarios will be given to the students for doing the role-play on negotiation. Teachers will select some students to have role-play exercise in the class. Through the role-play, student can demonstrate their creative thinking skill to achieve a win-win situation. Also, students can practice their communication skills in the process.

Assessment:
Other students who are not being selected for the role-play will be asked to provide feedbacks after the exercise. The feedback and sharing session aims to have a peer evaluation. It would be benefit to all the students. Students can share their own opinions of the case and know how to do better.

Week 6-13 – Group Project with creativity

Students are required to work on a group project. They have to discuss what kind of topic they want  to focus on (i.e. defining the problems). Students need to prepare a proposal at the beginning. After approving  by the teacher, they have to work out the plan. Students are also required to collect the evidences for the project. Those evidences are needed in the final presentation and the reports including the written report and self-reflection.

Assessment:
The assessments of the group project are the presentation and the final report. Through these, students will show what they have done in the group project and other students can also have the feedbacks on it. Also, they are requires to provide the self-reflection report which can ensure what they have learnt during the whole process.
In addition, an assessment rubric about the creativity has been given to students and teachers at the beginning of the project. Students will know how to get a better result or which part they need to improve. We hope that they will have the continuous improvement after finishing the course.

 

4)    Describe the situations, statements, individual behaviors, and team dynamics that were NOT helpful in developing your curricular pitch and explain how they inhibited you from arriving at an innovative curriculum

The curriculum is very interactive.  The classes’ activities are time consuming which enough time is required to provide for students to discuss and conclude.  It also relies on the involvements and contributions of the students both in and out of classes.  If the students are not willing to take the initiative in participating the exercises, that would inhibit us from arriving at the innovative curriculum.   

•    For the Group Discussion:
It trains the students’ brainstorming, communication and interpersonal skills.  If the students are too passive or shy to express their ideas during the discussion, it would be difficult to assess their critical thinking abilities.

•     For the Role Play on Negotiation:
It trains the students’ negotiation and problem solving skills.  The role play requires the students interact with each other and to negotiate with their group mates in order to compromise a final decision.  However, if one of the sides or both sides of the students do not have inputs during their negotiation, the role play would be very quiescent.

•    For the Group Project:
It trains the student’s collaborative, writing and presentation skills.  Again, if some of the group members are too passive to share their ideas for the project, or do not commit to work with the group, internal conflicts will happen between members with result of the low motivation of the collaboration.

5)    Describe the situations, statements, individual behaviors, and team dynamics that WERE helpful in developing your product pitch and explain how they facilitated you to arrive at an innovative curriculum

The students are different individuals with various family backgrounds, personalities, genders and experiences.  Many ideas will be delivered thru the class activities which are unexpected and creative that facilitated us to arrive at an innovative curriculum.

•    The students are free for sharing their ideas during the discussion, they inspire other students to drive other ideas and think further.   Many creative and innovative (even not realistic) ideas are driven.

•    The students have different point of views as they are from different backgrounds which their ideas are various and diverse.

•    If the team is a highly collaborative, the team members will encourage their teammates to express their ideas and respect them.  Thus, more imaginative and innovative ideas are urged.  A creative and productive team is then built which helps to facilitate to arrive at the innovative curriculum.      

6)  Explain and analyze how your collaboration, exchanges, and interactions with your concerned stakeholders have shaped your circular innovation. Quickly summarizes your stakeholders’ concerns, address the ways you have addressed their concerns, and explain how addressing their concerns improved your innovative process.

Stakeholder: Student

The innovation of the new curriculum can be shaped by the collaboration, exchanges and interactions with student through out different sessions in the curriculum.

i.    Brainstorming Group Discussions

In this session, students have to brainstorm any ideas of the assigned topic in different groups. Since the students are from different background, different ages, they have different experiences and different life styles etc., they should have different opinions and understandings on a same topic. Brainstorming is an appropriate way to gather and exchange all the ideas and stimulate students to think out of the box. As only a topic is given, they can think of many things to any extents of the topic through the collaboration and interactions among them. Sometimes, they can motivate each other by contributing more ideas in the discussion. Without any restriction and limitation, students feel free to discuss and work out many creative ideas. 

ii.    Role Play Activities

In this activity, students have to present their ideas in a way of role play that can catch the attention of the audiences. Role play instead of traditional presentation with a PowerPoint is chosen to be part of this curriculum, it is because role play is something that you have to collaborate, and interact with others in order to complete the task. Role play is like a story telling process, the story itself is not the most important thing, and how you tell the story is the most important. The more interesting way you tell the story, the more attentions you can catch. Thus, students will put more effort and more ideas to think about how to do the role play in order to catch the attentions. That is a way to think creatively through this activity.

iii.    Group Project

In this session, students had to gather and conclude the information and complete a report. Actually, what they have to do is to make a conclusion of the above two sessions.

Regarding to the concerns of students about the curriculum, the possible concerns maybe the workloads and the time.

Since there are three main sessions, the Brainstorming Group Discussion, Role Play Activities, and Group Project in the curriculum, workloads maybe considered as too much in comparing with others. As students’ efforts are necessary in all these sessions, they have to do many different tasks in different sessions. In order to address this concern, we have to let the students know that what they do in the curriculum is a way of learning, not just assignments. It is important to let them believe they can complete the tasks easily. Belief is an essential element of creativity. Through the process of addressing the concern, it can also develop the students’ beliefs.

For example, in the Brainstorming Group Discussion session, we can stimulate students’ thinking by playing some related video, and give them some examples, in order to enhance their abilities to think. Therefore, brainstorming is not a difficult task that requires much effort to finish.


Another students’ concern is the time, this curriculum is quite time-consuming as it includes different tasks before completing a final project. Actually, whether it is time-consuming or not, it all depends on how worth you consume the time. Let’s think in a different way, students only require to complete a project in this curriculum, and there are a clear guideline and steps to guide the students to finish the project; it is worth to doing such tasks in order to get a conclusion of the group project. Therefore, we can teach the students to think in many different ways in addressing this concern in order to be more innovative.

Every task in the curriculum is a step that leads the students to think more creative, learn how to be creative and evaluate themselves through their collaboration, communication and interaction among each others.

References

Catmull, E. (2008). How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity. Harvard Business Review, 86(9), 64-72.

Dewey, J. (1977). Experience and Education. New York, MA: Touchstone.

Ferrari, A., Cachia, R., & Punie, Y. (2009). Innovation and Creativity in Education and Training in the EU Member States: Fostering Creative Learning and Supporting Innovative Teaching. European Commission Joint Research Centre.

http://www.creativeeducationfoundation.org
http://www.virtualsalt.com
http://www.hkqf.gov.hk/guie/HKQF_GLD.asp