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3 Keys To Creativity And Computer Science

How can we combine creativity and computer science to create positive education outcomes? The demand for computer science and information technology graduates is expected to grow by 14.6% over the next decade, much faster than any other area. While the number of computer science graduates is increasing, it is still not enough to meet the growing demand for STEM related jobs. Technical jobs also pay significantly more than other careers, yet many students continue to shy away from STEM fields.  

So, how do we encourage more students to pursue computer science which leads to both a lucrative and a fulfilling career? Here are three strategies to address challenges that students face in technical areas. 

Change Mindset 

One of the barriers to learning computer science is the perception that not everyone can become good at it. Parents, educators and others can inadvertently reinforce this stereotype when they use phrases like “not a technical person”. Much like the mindset about math, which plays a key role in the poor performance among US students, limiting beliefs about computer science creates a hesitancy towards the subject. When the adults in a child’s life themselves feel traumatized with subjects like math or computer science, it’s not surprising that the child develops a fear of approaching that subject. 

The reality is that there really is no “math brain” or a “computer science brain”. Most people can learn these subjects once they get over their mental block and put in the effort to learn. Neuroscience research shows that the human brain is quite malleable and it grows when you are learning a new skill. MRI scans of students doing math show that when students make a mistake a synapse fires even when students are not aware they made a mistake. As a result the brain grows when students are struggling with a concept.  

The good news, however, is that mindsets can be changed. Growth mindset, a concept pioneered by Stanford psychologist, Carol Dweck, is one approach to help students shift their mindset towards a subject that they find difficult. Helping students recognize that the process of learning any skill is going to feel uncomfortable as your brain starts to grow and reconfigure itself in order to become good at the new skill.  

Beyond building growth mindsets, educators need to combat the harmful stereotype that computer science is not “cool” or that it’s for “nerds”. This is where framing computer science as a way to exercise creativity is useful. Mitchel Resnick, Professor at MIT and creator of Scratch, believes we need to view computers more as finger paint instead of as some esoteric technology. He explains, “…until we start to think of computers more like finger paint and less like television, computers will not live up to their full potential.” Just like finger paints and unlike televisions, computers can be used for designing and creating things. Encouraging students to use computers in different ways to solve problems, or create new things can shape their attitudes in a more positive direction. 

Build Thinking Skills Early

STEM fields face a high attrition rate (~50%) as many students switch their major part way through. When students’ first exposure to a programming language is in college, they find the coursework more challenging and are more likely to drop out of the course. One way to combat this problem is to start building computational thinking skills early on. Computational thinking is an approach to formulating problems in a way that computers could be used to solve them. 

Building computational thinking skills is not hard and doesn’t necessarily need expensive resources like computers and software for all students. As an example, the Computer Science Unplugged project uses games and activities to expose children to thinking styles expected of a computer scientist, all done without using any computers. Not only do students learn concepts but the group games also build social connection and make the whole experience more enjoyable. In another example, students create an interactive play while learning programming fundamentals (like sequential logic, conditionals or flowcharts) along with creative thinking (associational and analogical thinking) and storytelling. The advantage of using an unplugged approach is that students can be introduced to useful computer science concepts at a younger age without making it overwhelming for them. 

Add Project Based Learning

Projects are another way to make learning more engaging and combat the negative stereotypes students might hold at the same time. When researchers at a university in Ohio redesigned their computer science classes to encourage more creative and hands-on learning, they found that in addition to an improvement in the quality of student work, the three year retention rate increased by 34%!  This is especially important for women, who typically view computer science courses  “to be overly technical, with little room for individual creativity.” 

By encouraging students to apply the concepts they are learning towards a project of their own choosing, educators can create an environment that students personally find meaningful. It also helps students view computer science as another tool that they can use to solve problems that they encounter. 

Technology has become an integral part of our lives and most work now requires some level of technical competence. The demand for STEM, and especially CS, is only going to accelerate as we move further into the 21st century. To encourage more students to pursue computer science, parents and educators need to pay attention to limiting mindsets, provide creative opportunities to learn core thinking skills and projects to apply their knowledge in real-world scenarios.  

This article first appeared on edCircuit. 

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Why Humility Is The Most Important Trait for Creative Leadership

Indra Nooyi, the former CEO of PepsiCo., took over the reins of the company in 2006. During the twelve years of her tenure, Pepsi’s revenue grew over 80%, cementing her reputation as a highly successful CEO. Nooyi led with a “Performance with a Purpose” strategy and drove a shift towards healthier food options to reduce obesity rates. But it was not just her strategic insights that made her a great leader, her humility played an equally big role.  

Among the more unconventional things she did as a leader was writing personal letters to the parents of her senior executives, thanking them for the “gift” of their children to the company. She got the idea when she became a CEO and saw people complimenting her mother on “doing a good job with her daughter”. It made her realize that parents often don’t get acknowledged for the success of their children. The letters, which ran into several hundred a year, honored the parents and cemented a stronger bond between employees and the company. 

What is Humility?

Humility is defined as a “relatively stable trait that is grounded in a self-view that something greater than the self exists.” It’s easy to see Nooyi’s humility in this context. She didn’t pat herself on the back, but deeply appreciated the contributions of her employees and their families, for the company’s success. 

In practice, this view that something greater than self exists, translates to three factors that define the conceptual core of humility:

  • Accurate Self Awareness:  Humble leaders have a realistic view of themselves and are more willing to accept their limitations. As a result, they do not have a strong need to dominate over others. 
  • Appreciation of Others: Humble leaders acknowledge and appreciate other people’s strengths and views. 
  • Openness to Feedback: Humble leaders are more open-minded and willing to learn from others. They can take critical feedback and use that to improve their leadership style.

Role of Humility in Creative Leadership

While humility is a healthy trait in itself, it is key in leadership roles where innovation is important. Research shows that “as individuals get promoted into leadership positions, they gain power and this power has some debilitating effects on the idea-generating process.” In particular, when people gain power they listen less carefully, are less open to others perspectives, and have less ability to handle complexity. 

In other words, when leaders lack humility, they are more likely to brush off someone’s idea quickly without exploring its full potential. Creative ideas emerge from integrating multiple perspectives, which requires a humble mindset (willingness to listen) and a cognitive aspect (to create new internal mental models). Without humility, it is hard to build on each others’ ideas that lead to groundbreaking innovation. 

Strategies to Build More Humility and Creativity

Humility is a prerequisite to being a more creative leader. Without humility it is hard to synthesize new ideas from multiple different perspectives. Here are three strategies that can help you build more humility and lead to more innovation from your team or organization. 

  • Pause before rejecting an idea: Imagine one of your reports comes to you with an idea. As soon as you hear the idea, you spot the flaws in the idea and your first impulse is to quickly dismiss it. Instead of rejecting the idea right away, pause and start digging deeper with a genuine goal to understand the intent behind the idea. Explore ways in which the flaws can be removed while retaining the positive elements. If this exploration leads to something meaningful, make a mental note about it. Over time, you might notice several instances that led to better ideas which will help build more appreciation for others’ ideas. 
  • Let others lead in group meetings: When someone raises a problem in a group meeting, it can be tempting as a leader to quickly jump into providing a solution. Instead, make a norm where you open up the problem and invite solutions from others before sharing your own. Only when you see you have a perspective or an idea that is different from what’s been suggested before, share it with the group. Every time you see “your” idea proposed by someone else or an even better idea from the group, make a mental note about it. This can help build self-awareness of your abilities and limitations. 
  • Steer conversations towards co-creation: Very often, in group meetings, people focus more on picking one idea vs. another. However, the most innovative ideas come from the merging of different concepts and perspectives. As a leader, focus on ideas that have merit and guide your team to synthesizing a more innovative idea by combining multiple good ones. This exercise can help build complex problem solving skills.
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What Neuroscience Tells Us About Learning

Students today spend more time on academic learning than generations before. They cover more ground – learning things like programming or environmental science that their parents didn’t have to fret about – and spend more hours doing homework after school. One study found that in the sixteen-year period from 1981 to 1997, there was a 25% decrease in time spent playing outside and a 145% increase in time spent doing homework. 

As our society advances even more, students will have to cover more and more content, not just during their K1-2 school years but throughout their careers. By some estimates, students growing up today will have to learn entirely new domains and reinvent their careers every few years. Learning is no longer limited to younger ages but is becoming a lifelong journey. 

What does this really imply?

Students have to learn to learn –  acquire knowledge and master concepts faster – without which they will find it harder to stay abreast of new developments coming their way. But it’s not just about superficially memorizing things. Students will have to understand how to apply their newfound knowledge to problem-solving. In other words, learning has to become a more efficient process in terms of speed, depth, and understanding.

Thankfully, advances in neuroscience are giving us clues on how to make learning more efficient. Understanding how the brain processes information can help students take charge of their own learning, not just in their student years but throughout their life.

Neuroscience Of How Our Brain Learns

At a high level, we can view learning as a three-step process. When we encounter any new information, our brain first encodes this information and places it in short-term memory. For example, if you come across a new fact, say learning about a new breed of dog, the information first goes into your short-term memory. The next day, you might recall that your childhood friend had a similar-looking dog, and now you start to remember other details about the dog – how friendly it was, how it played, and so on.

At this stage, your memory is in long-term storage; it continuously consolidates other pieces of information that you already had. Over time you might add more connections to this piece of information, maybe a joke you heard about it, and it starts to get more and more enmeshed with other pieces of memory. 

After a few days, you might forget the name of the breed and try to recall it. You struggle a bit and then remember your friend’s dog, the joke, and other bits of memory that were tied to it. And then the name suddenly comes back to you, and you get a sudden burst of relief! 

A few days later, as you share a story about your childhood friend, her dog and the name of the breed come to your mind effortlessly, and you marvel at how well you remember this now. 

The picture above encapsulates how our memory works. Once we consolidate information into our long-term memory, subsequent retrieval and reconsolidation help to strengthen the memory traces and make it easier to recall information in the future. 

Forgetting Is The Path To Learning

Over the last couple of decades, neuroscientists have discovered interesting things about how our memory works, and counterintuitive as it sounds, forgetting information is an important aspect of remembering! Our brain is constantly pruning information that it thinks it doesn’t need so that it can serve the really important bits of information faster. 

Imagine if your brain stored every little nugget of information that it receives – the color of the shirt a passenger wore in the subway, or the name of the street your friend in another state lives on – it would make it much harder to find the useful information that you really need. So if you don’t need any piece of information, its retrieval strength starts to get weaker. However, when you try to recall something that you have forgotten, i.e., when you have to struggle a bit to remember it, that’s when the brain gets a cue that this particular memory is important and might be needed again.

So, with the process of retrieval, it starts to reconsolidate the information – find newer connections to other traces of memory so the memory is stored more strongly. As a result, this process of forgetting and remembering actually helps you learn better. 

Neuroscience-based memory models give us clues on how to structure our learning for maximum effectiveness. Here are three ways to boost your learning.

Repurpose Failure

When students don’t remember or don’t apply concepts correctly, it’s a sign that the information has been stored weakly in the brain. However, instead of feeling that they are ‘not cut out’ for this kind of work, students need to understand that their failure is simply a sign for their brain to reconfigure and become more efficient. Human brains are designed to learn through mistakes, so it makes sense to reframe forgetting as what it really is – a trigger that tells us that we need to take additional steps to ensure learning is complete. Students should use the opportunity to review concepts again and try to reconcile the mistakes so their understanding of the subject increases.  

Adopt Active Learning Strategies & Neuroscience

Adding some challenge to the learning process that taps our brain’s natural mechanisms to process, store and understand information can significantly boost learning. Such challenges are ‘desirable difficulties’ because they make learning more efficient. Here are a few strategies that students and teachers can adopt: 

  • Retrieval Practice: When learning new information, periodically quiz yourself about the central ideas and new terms encountered without looking at the text. This forces your brain to fetch the answers from long-term memory, and repeated retrieval is going to strengthen your memory.
  • Spaced Learning: To add more desirable difficulty to learning, practice retrievals after a period of time. When you start forgetting, you exert more effort in trying to remember, which then cues the brain to store the information more deeply. The gap between learning and retrieving can be anything from a day to a week – the key is that the gap should allow for some forgetting to happen.
  • Interleaving: Instead of waiting to thoroughly master one concept before moving on to the next, try mixing up different kinds of problems or concepts once you feel you have gained sufficient understanding in one. Not only does this make good use of spacing, but it also allows you to spot connections or differences between different kinds of problems. 

Research studies show that such strategies can be very effective in the classroom. In one study, students who practiced math problems in three sessions spaced apart by a week performed twice as well on the final test compared to students who did all the practice problems in one session.  In another study, students performed significantly better on their science exam when a practice quiz one month before the exam interleaved concepts on the quiz. 

Associative Learning & Neuroscience

Another useful strategy in learning is to connect the information you are learning to other pieces of knowledge you already possess. If retrieval practice creates deep roots, then associative learning creates more branches that help anchor the information better. To build associative learning

  • Find an analogy: Ask yourself if the new concept is similar to any other piece of information that you already possess. As an example, you might make a connection between gravity and magnetism as both involve a force that they can’t see and attract objects. 
  • Find a personal connection: In some cases, your personal experience can be helpful in finding connections about what you are learning. For example, while learning about the ice age, you might remember an earlier trip to Grand Coulee, where they saw how the Missoula Floods carved out a massive canyon in a very short time. The scale and impact of the event will give you an enhanced perspective of the topic and deepen your understanding. 

Conclusion

By understanding the neuroscience behind learning, students can take charge of their own learning. The key to efficient learning is to add and embrace the right kind of challenges that push our brains to reconfigure themselves. Unless students lack relevant background or specific skills to make sense of the concept in front of them, such challenges should be welcomed instead of dread. 

With a deeper understanding of the learning process, students can try different approaches and customize them to their needs. As an example, for some students, one day of spacing might be enough, whereas, for others, it might be a week. For the latter set, practicing a skill every day might not be as effective because they haven’t forgotten enough for reconsolidation to take place. With some trial and error, students can identify strategies that work best for them and become smart learners. 

This article first appeared on edCircuit

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Assessing The Creative Health Of An Organization

With the proliferation of AI tools and their tremendous potential to improve productivity, leaders are reevaluating business priorities, and more specifically changes they need to make to work and culture. Given that AI can now handle many tasks better than humans, it stands to reason that creativity will take on an increasingly important role. It not only provides a sustainable competitive advantage but also improves employee engagement and organizational resilience.

Our understanding of creativity has evolved considerably over the last couple of decades. Despite the common perception that creativity is a fuzzy skill that you are either born with or not, we now know that creativity is a highly cognitive skill that can be tracked and improved. If companies want to get a better understanding of employee creativity and how it can be converted to meaningful innovation, they first need to assess their existing levels of creativity and how their culture might be inadvertently stifling innovation. Research has shown several different dimensions at varying organizational levels impact creativity and innovation. 

The Innovation Pipeline

At the heart of any disruptive innovation is a creative idea. The creative idea often starts small and over time, with iterations and feedback, becomes a breakthrough one. The 4-C model captures the level of creativity found in the real world starting with mini-c all the way to the boundary pushing Big-C. In an organizational setting, it makes more sense to view it in three phases (little-c, Pro-c and Big-c) as mini-c creativity is associated with personally meaningful ideas whereas employees typically offer ideas that are creative in broader contexts. 

The picture above shows a simplified view of the organizational innovation pipeline. (As a side note, we refer to innovation as gathering broad support among the management/company to take an idea to market, as opposed to market success which is the more common definition. We believe that within an organizational setting our definition is more appropriate). 

The creative journey starts with one person who conceives the idea, does some simple checks and determines that the idea has potential (in other words, it is both novel and useful). She then shares the idea with her team who debate the idea in more depth and through constructive discussions improve the idea even more – finding ways to make the idea more appealing to a broader set of people, or finding solutions to remove some of the challenges in the original idea. The team then decides to build a prototype to test out the idea further with real people. So from little-c, the idea moves on to Pro-c. Finally, the idea gets buyoff from management who allocate additional resources to make the idea launch ready. There might be more in-depth user level testing and additional iterations involved at this stage. Eventually the creative idea transitions into an innovative one that has a high chance of success in the marketplace if the right processes and checks were in place. At each stage of progression, the creative idea becomes more sophisticated and more potent, finally culminating in a (hopefully) breakthrough innovation. 

The fundamental challenge organizations have is to ensure that the pipeline allows ideas to flow freely and mature, so enough of them make it to the innovation stage. This is where deliberately building an innovation-friendly culture becomes essential. 

How Culture Impacts Innovation

An organization’s culture can either nurture or stifle innovation. To understand different ways that innovation gets affected in an organization, let’s look at it from the perspective of an idea as it makes its way through the innovation pipeline. 

Individual Level

A creative idea starts with a person who perhaps notices a problem or finds an interesting connection. If a sufficient number of ideas are not being generated at the beginning of the funnel, then the likelihood of reaching a breakthrough idea becomes low. Here are a few ways that ideas don’t go past the first stage:

  • Creative Capacity: If someone lacks creative confidence or specific creative thinking skills they might be coming up with few or minimally creative ones. Or, they might not be getting any time in their schedule to reflect and think creatively. Either way, their capacity to produce creative ideas is diminished. 
  • Motivation to share ideas: Assuming that people are capable of coming up with potentially creative ideas, the next barrier we hit is sharing ideas. People are less inclined to share an original idea if they feel the idea might be ignored or judged poorly, thereby affecting their social standing. Or people might simply not want to share their ideas, if they feel that they don’t get due credit for their work. In general, organizations that are hierarchical, risk averse or biased, disincentivize people from sharing their ideas. 

Team Level 

Most people assume that psychological safety is the main thing you need at a team level to allow good ideas to emerge. While this is a necessary first step, it’s not sufficient. For an idea to grow from little-c to a more improved Pro-c version, it needs to go through some extensive discussion. The main benefit of taking an idea to a group is that different perspectives and different ideas clash in a meaningful way to create something much more powerful. This crucial step separates mediocre teams from stellar ones as it requires both high cognitive and high emotional skills from the whole team. When done poorly, ideas can zoom past straight to innovation where they then face a higher chance of failure. Below are two broad ways teams fail at this stage:

  • Critiquing Instead Of Creating: The most common mistake that people make is to focus on fault-finding, with the intent of choosing the “best” idea instead of trying to create the best possible version of each incoming idea. People might also lack skills to engage in constructive debates and end up creating either a conflict-averse culture or a highly competitive one where ideas don’t get a chance to grow. 
  • Not Experimenting: Simply talking is usually not enough for an idea to be evaluated thoroughly. Data collected through prototypes or mini-experiments can lead to more healthy debates. Cultures that incentivize bold, visionary thinking without the rigor of research or experimentation create conditions (“pipe dream” culture) where people chase shiny ideas that often turn out to be riddled with insurmountable problems.  

Organizational Level

At the highest level leaders need to create structures and behavioral norms to support innovation throughout the organization. Without adequate support, it’s nearly impossible to convert employee creativity into organizational innovation. 

  • Formal Structures: To take incoming Pro-c ideas to market-ready innovations, organizations need to have formal programs that systematically and equitably review all incoming ideas. Many companies create hackathon-like programs as avenues for employees to exercise their creativity but such programs fail to produce any meaningful innovation as they are not integrated into the regular work process. Companies also fail to create formal incentive programs specifically for creativity that tap into people’s intrinsic motivation. 
  • Behavioral Norms: Company leaders play a crucial role in setting norms that promote an innovation-friendly culture. Do they explicitly solicit ideas from employees? Do they encourage their employees to challenge the status quo? Do they involve their employees in setting vision and values? Such behaviors create a more egalitarian culture that motivates employees to go above and beyond. 

Innovation Readiness Assessment

With the increasing importance of creativity and innovation in the business world, leaders need to understand in what ways their current culture supports or stifles innovation. Our Innovation Readiness Assessment is a research-based tool that helps identify bottlenecks in the innovation pipeline. It incorporates multiple dimensions that are known to impact creativity including work characteristics and biases, and covers all stages of the innovation pipeline.

Edgar Schein, the renowned organizational psychologist and author of Organizational Culture and Leadership, noted “the only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture.” By staying vigilant about how their culture influences innovation, leaders can ensure their company’s long-term success in a hyper competitive world.  

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Address Unfinished Learning Using Creativity And Arts  

During the Covid-19 pandemic, students all over the world faced one of the largest disruptors of education in history. School closures across more than 190 countries impacted the routine and learning outcomes of 1.6 Billion students. By August 2020, 93% of households in the US reported the use of remote learning. Despite things returning to normal for over a year, we continue to see the ripple effect of this massive disruption. 

A number of organizations and researchers have tried to estimate the loss in learning due to the pandemic. A report by Stanford University estimated that during Spring 2020, students lost between 57 to 183 days of learning in Reading and from 136 to 232 days of learning in Math. A study in the Netherlands, which had a relatively lockdown period and is known for its equitable and well-funded schools, showed that students made little to no progress in learning from home. 

One of the challenges with the analyses on learning loss thus far, is that they focus narrowly on a few subjects, primarily math and reading. Finding an effective set of solutions to address unfinished learning is not an easy task. However, there is a wrong solution – solely relying on standardized tests. A myopic focus on test scores leads to sub-par teaching (“teaching to the test”) and pushes out more holistic interventions. We have seen this play out before when the No Child Left Behind Act was implemented in 2002. The Act converted testing as an informational mechanism to an accountability mechanism, changing teaching patterns inside classrooms. Teachers spent less time on subjects that were not being tested, like the arts, and spent less time on open-ended exploratory work like project based learning. 

What we need are more holistic approaches that build student enthusiasm, curiosity and engagement towards learning. Here are three strategies to incorporate when designing intervention programs to address unfinished learning, without falling into the trap of standardized testing. 

Teach For Creativity

Incorporating creative thinking into regular subjects, like math, reading or science, deepens learning. Paradoxically, this approach ends up improving standardized test scores despite test results not being an explicit goal. Creative thinking encourages students to think about a concept from multiple perspectives, question assumptions they might be making and synthesize solutions from multiple strands. These cognitive processes help students deepen their understanding of the subject matter and retain information for longer. More importantly, they help students become better thinkers and problem solvers in the long run. 

For teachers to incorporate creativity into the classroom, they need to be mindful of the distinction between “teaching creatively” and “teaching for creativity.” When educators find a clever way to introduce a concept in the classroom, say using Bitmoji classrooms, they are teaching creatively. Their own creativity is at play in designing the lesson plan for the concept. This by itself is a good thing if it makes the lesson more engaging and helps students learn the concept more easily. However, “teaching for creativity” goes a step further – it allows students to build and exercise their own creativity. 

Well designed project-based learning modules are one way to encourage students to be more creative. However, it’s not hard to incorporate creative thinking in smaller doses by substituting a couple of traditional assignment questions with more creative ones. With this approach neither the students or the teachers are burdened with extra work. Key elements to keep in mind when incorporating creativity, in big or small doses, are:

  • Open-ended problems where multiple solutions are valid.
  • Problems are designed so that one more creative cognitive processes, like associative or analogical thinking, are engaged. 
  • An ability to share their work with their peers and learn from them.  

Integrate Arts

High quality arts programs, especially visual arts and music, have a strong correlation with academic success. Arts provides an avenue for students to build confidence to try new things in a safe environment. Incorporating arts increases both children’s self-efficacy and original thinking, according to a research study. As the authors noted, “Self-efficacious children believe they can be agents in creating their own futures and are more optimistic about what the world has in store for them.”

A randomized controlled trial with over ten thousand K-12 students in Texas, found that arts-learning experiences led to fewer disciplinary issues, higher student engagement and improved writing achievements. 

Reevaluate Evaluations

While standardized tests are a useful way to track student progress, they should be a small part of broader evaluations. Teachers should balance graded work with non-graded work that rely on constructive feedback. Quantitative scores orient students away from their own intrinsic motivation to extrinsic motivation, which leads to higher anxiety and lower interest in the subject matter. Providing opportunities to students to share their projects or other original work with their peers and get their feedback is another low-pressure way for students to learn from each other. Finally, teachers should also encourage frequent self-evaluations to build student capacity to critically analyze their own work. When students find their own areas of improvement, they are much more intrinsically motivated to improve and learn. 

The learning loss created by the pandemic is significant and real, but we need to approach it cautiously. Prioritizing standardized test scores instead of more holistic approaches can lead to disastrous consequences in the long-term. Instead we need to double down on tried and tested methods – incorporating creative thinking and arts, and toning down the performance pressure.  

This article first appeared on edCircuit.