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How To Improve Creative Collaboration

After decades of living in near obscurity, Einstein published his theory of general relativity a little over a century ago. He had toiled away for years on those problems, and when he finally figured out his theory, the rewards and recognition that followed completely changed his life.

But did he really deserve all the accolades? Many of his ideas were fleshed out through regular discussions with his long time friends, Grossman and Besso. Grossman, in particular, was a gifted mathematician who helped Einstein at crucial points. So was Einstein really a lone genius or just a smart collaborator?

The answer is both. Einstein was both a lone genius and a smart collaborator. While he relied on his collaborators for solving some key parts, he also provided the insights and ideas that led to the theories. Removing any of the two elements would have resulted in failure.  

All significant creative accomplishments are the product of both individual excellence and fruitful collaborations. And as the problems and challenges we face become more complex, the importance of collaboration is only going to increase. 

However, collaboration is not easy. For instance, several studies have found that group brainstorming is less effective than individual brainstorming. The challenges that get in the way of productive group work include social loafing, evaluation apprehension and production blocking. 

So the real challenge in creative problem solving, is finding ways to balance both individual and group work. Given the challenges involved in group work, here are some tips to improve the quality of collaboration:

Interleave Solo and Group Work

One way to improve the creativity in a collaborative setting is to allow for both individual and group times in the problem solving process. Asking students to think of ideas before presenting to the group avoids the problem of production blocking in the group setting. During the group session, ideas can be pooled and combined, and if followed by another solo session where everyone gets a chance to reflect on the results, the outcome can be much better than either solo or group work. 

Additionally, some kinds of tasks are better suited for individual or group settings. For example, solo work in the initial ideation phase produces better results whereas evaluating ideas as a group is more effective than evaluating individually. 

Assign Clear Roles

Collaborative work also works better when team members have complementary roles that all contribute to the bigger task. Team members are more prone to social loafing when they all work on the same task but when each team member had a separate task, they are more motivated to do their share. These results were true even when team members knew that their individual work is not going to be identified in the task. 

Increase Attention To Group Ideas

The advantage of collaboration from a creativity perspective comes from being able to combine different ideas in new ways, which is a cognitively demanding task. Simply sharing each others’ ideas in a group setting does not help as much. However, allocating time to listen to different ideas and asking students to reflect on all group ideas, with the intent to find ways to integrate multiple ideas can improve the overall creativity of the group. Having a more diverse group also helps in this case, as each person brings a different perspective to the table all of which could potentially be combined in interesting ways.  

Creativity requires both individual and group work to flourish. Truly creative ideas might start with an individual but really take wings when they meet other ideas and perspectives. Students need to build skills for both working independently and collaboratively, in a way that produces better solutions and learning. 

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3 Reasons To Encourage Peer Learning In The Classroom

Lev Vygotsky, a highly influential Soviet psychologist, believed that learning in children is heavily influenced by social interaction. At the earliest stages, an infant’s unsuccessful grasping motion is (incorrectly) interpreted as pointing by parents and their subsequent response determines what the baby learns about that gesture. This kind of learning isn’t just limited to the infant stage or to simple tasks. Higher order cognitive processes, he believed, follow the same pattern – they start at the social level and are then internalized at an individual level.

Vygotsky’s theory of social constructivism is also the underpinning of the more recent peer and cooperative learning. While adults like parents and teachers play a crucial role in learning, children’s conversations with each other play an equally important role. Through exchanging ideas, asking questions or offering explanations children can help each other build better mental models of the concept they are learning. 

The advantages to peer learning aren’t limited to knowledge building. Several research studies have shown the benefits of using peer learning that go beyond the cognitive domain. Here are three reasons why peer learning can be beneficial to students and culture:

Better Learning Outcomes

The biggest advantage of peer learning is the increase in academic achievement. Several structures of peer cooperative learning, like Student Teams-Achievement Divisions and Teams-Games-Tournament, have been studied and all of them consistently shown that students perform significantly better with peer learning than without. While the majority of these studies focused more on knowledge acquisition, there are indications that peer learning is just as beneficial for building higher order thinking skills. In one study researchers broke out tasks into “high cognitive level” and “low cognitive level”, and found positive achievement gains on the high level items. 

Positive Social Gains

A key benefit of peer learning is the increase in communication and social interaction skills among students. One study found that the gains in cooperative learning skills correlated with social gains both in and outside of the class. Students in peer learning have also reported more positively on mutual concern –  liking their classmates’ and feeling that their classmates like them too. 

Improved Racial Relationships

Cooperative peer learning has been found to be one of the best ways to improve racial relationships. Several studies have documented that students in mixed race groups, name more of their classmates from different races as friends compared to control groups. One followup study found that the students who had worked in interracial groups made significantly more cross-racial friendships several months after the study ended. 

In our programs, peer learning is a central component in both structured and unstructured formats. For example, in our “How To Be An Inventor” program, we teach students how to give constructive feedback to each other. Before students present their ideas to the group, we explain that the goal for the students is to improve each other’s ideas and make it the best possible version. With that goal as the backdrop, we often find that students ask great questions and offer concrete suggestions to improve each others’ ideas. Peer learning is also supported in other unstructured ways when students browse their friends’ solutions online or when they walk over and see how others are working on a problem. 

While there is no formal reward associated with being constructive peers, the social recognition that comes with it, is enough to cognitively and emotionally engage students. In addition, we often find that students build more confidence and start relating better to their classmates.

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Summer Camp: Designing Board Games

We just wrapped up our multi-disciplinary summer camps this year, and once again had so much fun guiding our middle schoolers in their creative journey! Our challenge for students this year was to design original board games based on their own areas of interests. We partnered with Archimedes school, who taught 3D printing, so students could make meeples and dice for their games.

By asking students to design a game around their passion or interests, our goal was that they would bring their domain knowledge on the topic, without which they wouldn’t be able to make a sufficiently creative game. In addition, we expected them to be more engaged during learning and more incentivized to put in extra effort to create the best version of their idea. 

Game Design Concepts

To design a good game, students had to first learn some basic game concepts like game mechanics, victory conditions and tension. To make learning more relevant,  we brought in common (and a couple not-so-common) board games that students used in deconstructing the various elements. We also used other games like Rock-Paper-Scissors to demonstrate the concept of balance in a game (and it also gave us a chance to sneak in some math and logic). They figured out that a Rock-Paper-Scissors version with an even number of elements can never be balanced, and then had a blast designing their own balanced versions with more than three elements!

Creative Process

While planning for the camp we also designed how the creative process would flow. If you ask a student (or most adults for that matter) to come up with an original idea, it often stumps them. Integrating a creative process into the workflow can give students the tools and direction to think creatively, and makes the process far less intimidating. 

The two techniques we focused on for the camp were analogical and associative thinking, which we felt were best suited for this scenario. 

To start with students first picked a game they liked and created an analogous version based on their interest. As a simple example, suppose the theme is to teach children about nutrition and health, and the model game is Snakes and Ladders. After deconstructing the game into its elements, one could design a new board game where some spots, like eating junk food or catching a cold makes you lose spots while exercising might make you go forward more spots. 

At this point the game still looks a lot like Snakes and Ladders. You could then start associating  with other game elements and modifying the game. For instance, you could add chance cards (e.g. falling and breaking a bone that sends you back a few spots) or convert the game to a point based system. By using different game elements, the game now starts to evolve differently and takes a very different shape. 

Student Designed Games

It was fascinating to see the students come up with very interesting, and very different, ideas for their board games. Here is a sampling of the board games students designed:

  • Rainforest Exploration – A game that teaches you about different animals in the rainforest as you race to the finish. 
  • Sun Power: A game that incentivizes using renewable energy sources. 
  • Collect-It: An interior design game, where you race to decorate your room. 
  • Archi-tex: A game where you have to be the first one to build a 2,000 ft building. 
  • Prime Switch: A fast paced math game that tests your computationals skills.
  • Soccer Board Game: Score goals by answering soccer trivia questions. 

The most fun part, though, was to see the excitement and energy as students got ready for the final demo to parents. Almost every student found last minute mistakes or changes that they just had to fix, but eventually all of them were able to put their demo together! And of course, they all found several ways that they could have designed things differently. 

We hope they enjoyed playing their game with friends and family, and maybe even designed their next versions!


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Inventor Spotlight: Max Baryshnikov

Our featured student inventor this time is Max Baryshnikov, whose invention idea is to make a drone that helps in emergency services. His invention won a national level award as part of the “Student Ideas for a Better America” competition organized by the National Museum of Education. He conceived the idea for the drone as part of our summer camp, held in collaboration with the Archimedes School.

Here is Max talking about his idea in more detail.  

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

My name is Max Baryshnikov, I am currently 11 years old. I am in sixth grade of the International Community school.

What is your invention and how does it work?

My invention was a drone-like device. It would help emergency services when they need to explore and secure hazardous locations, mainly fires. It is based of a drone on wheels, but I thought of how I can modify it to make it helpful in fires. This drone would have bright lights, a small speaker, and a mechanism like a grappling hook. If the fire departments need to scout out a fire, they would send in this drone. It would drive around, finding a secure path to get into the fire. If it finds trapped survivors, it would turn on its lights to show the way; the speaker can be used to communicate with the survivors and lead them to safety. But if the drone can’t get to an area, it uses its grappling hook to hook into a higher location, and then it will utilize its bright lights, to mark paths.

How did you come up with the idea?

I came up with the idea when I thought: “There are so many problems in the world now, what can I do to help?” With a lot of fires going on during the summer when I attended this camp, fire drone seemed like a very useful device.

Did your prototype work? How was that experience?

My prototype didn’t work because I didn’t know how to fit this all into one drone, I also didn’t even have a way to test it in situations. The experience was a bit disappointing, when my prototype didn’t do well, but that means I hit a wall and if I hit a wall, that means I progressed, which made me happy.

What did you learn from the summer camp?

In my summer camp I learn about other wonderful inventors, their inventions, and how they worked. I also learned that if were to make something – we should organize it and evolve it.

What was your favorite memory from the camp?

My favorite memory from camp was probably learning about all the inventors. It was amazing to learn what they did to create their inventions that made them famous, and how they advanced their lives in such a long time ago.

What kind of problems do you want to solve when you grow up?

I don’t know what problems will come up in the future. At this age there is only so much I can do. But when I grow up, I can see what new problems develop in that time, because I can be more effective then, then I can now.

What will you be using your prize money for?

I don’t really want to spend my prize money immediately, because I don’t have anything in mind to use it for. I’m going to instead save it, so when I need it, I’ll always have it waiting.   

Congratulations Max for winning the award! We wish you the best as you solve future world problems.

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The Neuroscience Of Creativity

A few hours after Einstein died, Thomas Harvey, the pathologist who performed his autopsy, removed Einstein’s brain without his family’s permission and against Einstein’s wishes of what he wanted done with his remains. He then carved out his brain into 240 pieces and preserved them. After hiding them for several years, he finally sent parts of the brain to other scientists to conduct studies and unravel the mystery behind Einstein’s intellectual prowess.

One of the studies found that Einstein’s brain, compared to 11 other control brains, had a higher ratio of glial cells to neurons in a part of the association cortex, which is responsible for integrating and synthesizing information from multiple parts of the brain. This possibly resulted from Einstein spending so much time visualizing and solving complex scientific problems in creative ways. Not everyone agreed with the study’s conclusions though, and there have been valid criticisms of the way this and other similar studies were conducted.

Since the time of these (potentially flawed) studies, we have come a long way in understanding about the brain structures that aid in creative and critical thinking.

In a recent study, researchers found that the ability to think creatively depends on the interconnectedness between different parts of the brain involved in creative problem solving. The three large-scale networks that span both hemispheres and aid in creative thinking are:

  • Default network: This network consists of the cortical midline and posterior inferior parietal regions of the brain structures. The default network is active when you are not in deliberate thought and helps in idea generation.
  • Executive network: The executive network, which is composed of the anterior and lateral regions of the prefrontal cortex and other interconnected regions like the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). The executive network is active when you are consciously thinking, and is responsible for planning, reasoning and decision making.
  • Salience network: The salience network, comprised of bilateral insula and anterior cingulate cortex facilitates the transition between the default and executive networks.

The study, which used connectome based predictive modeling, found some interesting results.

First, people who were more creative showed dense functional connectivity between the parts of the brain that comprised the default, executive and salience networks. Of the highest connected nodes in the high creative network, almost a half were in the default network followed by those in the salience and executive networks. In comparison, the low creative network showed diffused connectivity mainly in the subcortical/brainstem regions. Second, creative people were able to engage simultaneously parts of the brain that are typically supposed to work in isolation. For example, the default and executive networks, which correspond to the ideation and evaluation phases respectively, are normally assumed to be active at separate times. Creative people, however, are able to engage these networks at the same time.

If you are one of the people who believe they weren’t born with the creative gene (or the creative brain), there is reason for some hope.

Studies have also found that training for creativity can be effective. In a study where participants were trained on divergent thinking, researchers found that due to neural plasticity, structural changes were found in some parts of the brain post training that caused improvement in the participants’ creativity.  Similar effects have been found in other studies that looked at music and visual art training, where researchers found plasticity in neural pathways that enhance creative cognition.

All of this clearly indicates that, from a cognitive development perspective, it’s vital to have creativity and arts integrated into school curriculum. As the researchers in the creativity training study summarized, “Obviously, it is promising that human creativity capacities can be developed through well-designed training programs, which may contribute to social development and human civilization.”