THEME: TAL2022 - Interview with Patricia Wolf

The TICON project is a part of the bundle of projects where Patricia and her colleagues look at how they can upskill teachers who are in using creative methods in their teaching. Behind the project stands SDU, EGE University, Turkey, Hochschule der Medien, Germany, University of Galway, Ireland and EOLAS S.L., Spain.

It all started with the collaborative of researchers who sensed the need for a project to help teachers teach creativity in the physical classroom. Then they applied ERASMUS+ for a project where we could develop a curriculum to upskill teachers for physical classroom creativity teaching. And they got this granted. But then we had this situation with COVID, and there was then an additional call for capacity building for digital environments for such teaching. Then, also according to their own experiences that the digital environment is even more challenging for several reasons – including the importance of building trust and concrete participating in the creative methods. This sparkled an application for a sister project that also got granted and was started it in May 2021. The project ends in April 23, but the resources will be implemented for continuous use and benefit for teachers.

Find the TICON website here TICON – Teaching Creativity Online (creativityteaching.eu).

Patricia Wolf explains: “The target groups for the TICON resources are teachers in higher education – originally engineering teachers, but as it turned out any teacher can benefit from the online resources. And it's not necessarily only teaching where you can use the methods and resources - it may also be valuable for company workshops etc.. If you want to teach creativity for the first time then I would strongly recommend 1st to go to the self learning material, download it and then take it from there. All the questions related to preparation will guide you to select good methods from a broad variety. I would also recommend you to study the explanations and presentations.

Materials are designed in a very broad framework to benefit both experienced as well as less experienced teachers. It will inspire and renew method repertoire, but it also opens for individuals to dig a bit deeper into understanding methods, philosophy, and teaching creativity. The TICON project has developed a learning environment that addresses both physical teaching and online learning activities and it contains three types of learning material.”

Patricia explains the content in three categories. The first type of material is Learning videos and experience videos from teachers who have taught creativity online and videos explaining why creativity is important at all. Why should you use creative methods? What is the challenge? And so on. The second one is a method box, that contains about 50 methods, which describe in detail how you can or how you should use certain creative methods. It describes what the method in general is about, what the purpose is, how you would use it in a normal classroom setting very shortly, and then more extensively what you need to do to use it online, how you would prepare it, and so on. And then, it also contains examples and links to all these method descriptions. The third type of learning material is self-learning material. You can download valuable resources such as a document about preparing a session, which kind of questions to asks, the important questions, and documents where you can write what you want to do and so on – so materials for planning teaching, but also, checklists like do’s and don'ts checklists. 

Patricia and her colleagues also have an upcoming knowledge forum for interactions between teachers. That's the last thing being added to the platform so there are still parts under development.

Finally, Patricia explained her own benefit from presenting at the TAL2022 conference. She was amazed by the many represented different approaches to teaching at TAL2022. At the poster session she even was introduced to methods that could be adapted directly into TICON. The workshop at TAL2022 was the first public demonstration in Denmark of the toolbox. And she got a lot of very good comments and constructive feedback on TICON that has now been reported back to the platform designers. 

Further resources and readings

• Find Patricia's abstracts with the title "Teaching creativity online – A curriculum and learning environment for upskilling Higher Education educators" in TAL2022's Book of Abstracts.
• An invitation to participate in the upcoming seminar “Sparking Creativity Online” 25 April 2023 at SDU, which is open for all interested parties.  Here you can expand your insight in the TICON project and learning materials. There will be an industrial keynote from “Hydac” who do many fine innovation workshops online.
• In near future the TICON webpage will also be available at the SDU resource https://ie.sdu.dk/.
• A further resource of interest to the newsletter readers - The Becreate platform
• Further readings: Wolf, P., Linden, E., Wittmer, A., & Klotz, U. (2022). Enhancing scenario originality: A conceptual framework for leveraging self-transcending knowledge in scenario development. Long Range Planning, 102266. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lrp.2022.102266.