Highlights •We examined the effects of exposure to live plants, views to nature and the colour green upon visual and verbal creativity in classroom settings. Participants completed a visual and verbal creativity task. Three groups were used; one group in a classroom surrounded my plants and view to natural settings, one with no views to nature but who completed the task on green paper, the third, with no plants present and no views to nature. Findings indicate visual creativity is increased by exposure to natural views, plants and the colour green. Findings indicate that access to natural views, plants and the colour green increase visual creativity, but have no impact on verbal creativity in classroom settings. The results suggest that creativity is domain specific and any practical measures taken to enhance creativity need to be aligned with the target domain. AbstractWe report upon a study concerned with the effect of exposure to live plants, views to nature and the colour green upon visual and verbal creativity. The study reported in this paper was undertaken with 108 business students at a British University who were randomly allocated to one of the three conditions. The control group were placed in a classroom with no plants present and blinds drawn to block view to natural settings, the first experimental group were placed in a classroom with no plants present, blinds drawn to block views to nature but completed the creativity tasks on green paper. The second experimental group were placed in the same room as the other groups, but were surrounded by live plants and had views to nature through the large classroom windows. All participants completed two creativity tasks; a visual creativity task and a verbal creativity task. Visual creativity was assessed using a modified version of Amabile's Consensual Assessment Technique (Amabile, 1982). Verbal creative was assessed using a modified scoring method of Guilford's alternative uses task developed by Silvia (2008). Findings indicate that access to natural views, plants and the colour green increase visual creativity, but have no impact on verbal creativity in classroom settings. The results suggest that creativity is domain specific and any practical measures taken to enhance creativity need to be aligned with the target domain.
The paper reviews an assessment regime for its capacity to engage university learners, enabling them to design radically new business offerings. We explore the effect of the briefing approach on defining the customer/offering match. This study is framed by participatory action research, where data draws on two distinctive module deliveries: one where the design brief asks learners to generate the offering first and then shape the customer segment. The second one supplies an archetype and asks learners to define customer first and then develop the offering. Our analysis reveals that learners' engagement with the design brief prompts an emergence of five patterns of learners' responses, leading to conclusions that the nature of design brief elements has an impact in shaping the overall learning. Moreover, going from customer to offering appears to generate better iterations between the two, overall leading to learners' engagement with the process not simply seeking an outcome.
This paper seeks to examine the transformational impact of a final year strategic design module on learners some years after its completion. A subset of learners, who completed the module between two and ten years, were surveyed using a semi-structured questionnaire around Fink's (2003) taxonomy of learning. We researched how much learners still make the connections between what they have learned in the module and their current circumstances. While potentially humbling to find out how little of the detailed content is retained, particularly five to ten years after the event, we argue that the impact of the module on learners developing their creative skill-set and effectiveness in navigating team dynamics has indeed been transformative. We suggest that educators could do more to embed this longer term transformational focus by explicitly raising the future in the classroom and enabling learners to build linkages to the development of their own future selves.
This paper outlines a research process entwined with delivery of a final year elective module “Managing Strategic Design”. This module challenges a mixture of business and design management final year undergraduate students to devel-op truly innovative business opportunities. The research has been based on six roundtable discussions with a variety of participants from design and business communities, as well as classroom observation and reflections from students on the aforementioned elective module. The process of creating these innovative opportunities is at times deeply uncomfortable but it is at these points that stu-dents’ learning can be most productive. The iterative process of research and teaching have led us, the authors, to reflect on the value and positioning of de-sign and strategic thinking in business education: the methodology behind our particular curriculum delivery drawing on cross disciplinary teaching and learn-ing; and the ability of students to learn from practice by experiencing ‘zones of discomfort’ and ‘what if’ scenarios. These reflections have altered the focus of the elective module, from provision of tools students need to know to under-standing the learning journey and facilitating the acquisition of decision-making confidence in response to a complex challenge.
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