Todd Lubart [00:00:00]:
Since you can now get a lot of ideas quickly, the getting the ideas part has just become a bit easier. And now suddenly deciding which ideas to keep has become a lot more difficult because before you spent all your effort to get ideas and you were just able to get maybe 1015, you didn’t have to choose much because you were happy to keep them. Now you can get 50 or 60 ideas in about one millisecond if changing the nature of divergent thinking hello everyone.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:37]:
My name is Dr. Matthew Werwood.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:38]:
And my name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:41]:
This is the fueling Creativity in Education podcast.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:44]:
On this podcast, we’ll be talking about various creativity topics and how they relate to the fields of education.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:51]:
We’ll be talking with scholars, educators, and resident experts about their work, challenges they face, and exploring new perspectives of creativity.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:59]:
All with a goal to help fuel a more rich and informed discussion that provides teachers, administrators, and emerging scholars with the information they need to infuse creativity into teaching and learning.

Matthew Worwood [00:01:11]:
So let’s begin. Hello and welcome back to part two of our double espresso episode with Dr. Todd Lubart. In the first episode, we had an absolutely amazing conversation about measuring creativity. And in part two, we might revisit that as we look at the future of creativity. And of course, when we’re talking about the future of creativity, we probably will get into some generative AI as well. So let’s begin.

Cyndi Burnett [00:01:36]:
So, Todd, you’ve been one of the.

Cyndi Burnett [00:01:38]:
Most prolific researchers in the field of creativity for the last 35 years. So in the first episode that we did with you, we talked about creative potential in students. So I want to build the bridge and talk about if we started to look at creative potential in students, what would that mean for the future? What do you think?

Todd Lubart [00:01:58]:
Well, I think that that remains as a very untapped reservoir of personal and societal development because, as you know, the educational system has globally focused on various important topics, but not totally yet on creative thinking, and that has been shown to be an upcoming vector of societal growth and development. So both on the personal, individual self development and on the societal development, it would be really good to detect this potential so that we can develop it, because if you just don’t detect it, you just try to develop it for everybody in a generic way, and we can imagine that’s not that efficient.

Matthew Worwood [00:02:52]:
Todd, I just want to build on this a little bit, and I’m envisioning this future where students have the opportunity to engage in these tests within an education environment, and then they’re identified as having creative potential in certain areas. What if I’m a student who’s identified as having creative potential in, let’s say, a science domain, but my passions reside in the humanities. Is that a potential outcome? And then how might we wrestle with that?

Todd Lubart [00:03:23]:
That is a potential outcome. Of course it’s well put by what you said. And then the person can say, well, if I love the literary domain, but I don’t have the creative potential, well, either. I put effort now to develop that aspect of literary creativity if it’s part of the literary domain, but not all the literary domain is being creative in literary topics. Okay, so it could help me to redouble my efforts maybe, and develop the somewhat lesser potential I have into greater opportunities and potential and accomplishments. Or I could say, should I swim upstream or should I swim with the current? And let’s see if in science there’s things of interest to me that connect with the literary topic, because as you know, there’s a whole domain, for example, of text analyses, scientific analyses of text and of language and other things that are connected. So we wouldn’t want to tell the child, look, either it’s science or it’s it, you know, it’s like you might be able to mix them. It might give people a way to do somewhat of an active guidance choices in their studies.

Cyndi Burnett [00:04:57]:
So, Tod, how do you think we could bring education so that it’s more individualized toward those creative potentials rather than a one size fits all? And why do you think we should go in that direction?

Todd Lubart [00:05:10]:
In terms of, in a general way, differentiated education is often cited as a more engaging mode of learning because you get to do the exercises that you need to do that are in your zone of proximal development compared to doing everything that everybody’s doing. And some moments you’re into it, and some moments it’s something you know you’re already okay with or whatever. And so in terms of motivation too, and impact of that educational experience, time spent, it should be much greater when it’s individualized. Differentiated education. This is typically harder to do for teachers, but if you have tools to help see what is the package of activities that students should do, then you can somewhat more easily develop the individualized programs so that during activity learning periods, different kids are working on different activities, but they’re all advancing on their creativity. In this specific case that we’re talking about, that’s why it is more engaging. It’s probably more effective in terms of outcomes too. And so the one size fits all.

Todd Lubart [00:06:37]:
It’s a starting point, but it’s not necessarily the optimal educational experience. It’s like when you go to the restaurant, do we give everyone the same exact meal? Well, maybe in a cafeteria at school that could happen, but usually not, because not so many people will be that happy. And so they have some choice. They all get a dessert, they all get a mean dish. But there’s a little bit of options in there to optimize their experience in the school cafeteria, in our case here.

Matthew Worwood [00:07:17]:
Do you want to bring more creative and critical thinking into your school? Look no further than our podcast sponsor, curiosity to create.

Cyndi Burnett [00:07:25]:
Curiosity to create is a nonprofit organization dedicated to engaging professional development for school districts and empowering educators through online courses and personal coaching.

Matthew Worwood [00:07:37]:
And if you’re craving a community of creative educators who love new ideas, don’t miss out on their creative thinking network. Get access to monthly webinars, creative lesson plans, and a supportive community all focused on fostering creativity in the classroom.

Cyndi Burnett [00:07:52]:
To learn more, check out curiositytocreate.org or check out the links in the show notes for this episode.

Matthew Worwood [00:08:00]:
So, Tod, I want to switch things up a little bit. So just this week I shared a post on LinkedIn and I was just exploring how we may need to approach the teaching or the promotion of divergent thinking somewhat differently in an age of generative AI. And the reason why I bring this up is I was thinking specifically about a classroom environment. And there are sometimes, I believe, barriers to divergent thinking, both in terms of a student’s knowledge of the topic to which you might be asking them to generate ideas about. And then also sometimes there’s time. Time is a fact. We can’t approach every single class assignment, such as a paper, as a creative problem solving exercise where you go through a period of clarifying the problem. So what I’m asking is, what’s your opinion about generative AI specifically when it comes to the generation of ideas in a school environment?

Todd Lubart [00:08:57]:
Right? That’s a very good question because that’s a topic these days. And in fact, we are doing research on using generative AI for divergent thinking, as a tool, as a helping tool, and in fact, generative AI. It provides a good first set of ideas. Of course, if you use it, if one student uses it, another student uses it next to that one, it’s the same generative AI more or less looking up in the same database. So these students risk to get somewhat similar sets of ideas coming to them. So the somewhat personal approach that through your experience, you generate your own set of ideas and your neighbor generates a different set because of your life experiences, is going to be limited by this generative AI tool because you’re all using the same massive database. I’ll say a word about that in a moment. But since you can now get a lot of ideas quickly, the getting the ideas part has just become a bit easier.

Todd Lubart [00:10:07]:
And now suddenly deciding which ideas to keep has become a lot more difficult, because before you spent all your effort to get ideas and you were just able to get maybe 1015, you didn’t have to choose much because you were happy to keep them. Now you can get 50 or 60 ideas in about one millisecond, and suddenly you got to become a pretty good judge of what should I keep and what should I follow up. And so divergent thinking has just entered into a new phase of existence for humans. Now, in terms of some of our research, in particular with one student in PhD whose name is Floron van Chong, he’s asking generative AI to do a divergent thinking task again, like 50 times, and it keeps giving around 40, 50 ideas each time. But there’s a kind of a pool of ideas, and so certain ideas keep coming up. Of course, we wipe out the memory of Chat GPT, so it doesn’t know what it just said each time. And so what you find is that there’s a certain variability from time to time, but there’s a certain high percentage that keeps coming. Every time you ask the same task to a generative AI, it keeps giving you more or less the same set of ideas.

Todd Lubart [00:11:44]:
So that’s why it is very interesting time for educators, because they have this new tool, it would be a pity not to deploy it in the classroom. And students say, why shouldn’t I? But it’s changing the nature of divergent thinking.

Matthew Worwood [00:12:05]:
And you know what I like about that response? And it’s kind of similar to where I’ve been going. Based on my experience deploying it in the classroom and some of the readings that I’ve done, there is still that front end divergent thinking, somewhat originality. And I think if any educators are listening right now, when we’re thinking about, I know that a big term at the moment is this concept of prompt engineering, but I think it’s making sure that we’re still trying to promote some creativity, whether it’s students starting off with their interests, their curiosities, but making sure that the same prompts aren’t being put into, to your point, the same tool that’s got access to the same database, but then on the back end of things, and I’m assuming this will continue to evolve as we think about converging on ideas. I do think that that domain knowledge is also going to become important because we’re going to have to have more information, more knowledge at hand in order for us to select the choice that might be most relevant to the context to which we’re engaging in this assignment. So the key point for me is that over the last week, divergent thinking remains as important as ever, as does convergent thinking. But as you said, todd, I like this idea that we’re moving into a new phase with generative AI as a tool to assist us in the process.

Todd Lubart [00:13:27]:
Yes, exactly. And the idea about the prompting, asking the right question is itself a phase of creative thinking. And exploring the question space is important. So it is a skill that’s called problem posing in the creative process literature sometimes. And obviously that’s a skill to be developed, as John Dewey said. I believe it was John Dewey, a question well posed is half solved. Well, with Generative AI. A question well posed is like 90% solved now.

Todd Lubart [00:14:10]:
But you do need this domain knowledge to decide what to keep, what to throw away, what to combine, what to expand on. Because there is now a new tendency. I ask generative AI a question, it gives me an answer. I say, okay, I’m done. But normally you’re not necessarily done. You should use it as a base to go further. So we call that creation mode with AI compared to outsourcing to AI. Just tell me.

Todd Lubart [00:14:45]:
And that’s it. It tells you a list of ideas. You say, well, then there’s my list. That is a lazy person’s approach to AI.

Cyndi Burnett [00:14:56]:
I’d like to take a more broad look on this, because you’ve done work not only in AI, but also in video games and virtual reality and creativity. So if we were going to go high in the sky and look toward the future of creativity and education and technology, what do you see the main threads within that area?

Todd Lubart [00:15:16]:
Well, I think that you’ll have a convergence with, first of all, you’ll have the generative AI to integrate in terms of game based mechanisms, game based learning. There’s a lot to develop in the regular classrooms to integrate more. The gaming approach, the game based learning approach, and some of our work on playing board games, for example, has shown that it really can boost people’s creativity when the game requires original thinking to get the points, and it builds self efficacy and it’s a fun experience. So it looks like it’s not your normal class activity. So that’s kind of engaging. Also in terms of virtual reality, we have a long line since more than ten years of VR rooms with avatars representing people, and we have found that we can actually configure some spaces so that it looks like a space that makes you feel it’s a creative place to be in virtual reality. Of course. And this boosts your performance because you say, wow, I’m feeling creative here.

Todd Lubart [00:16:28]:
Then we give you an avatar that looks like a creative person according to your social imagination. Maybe it looks like Einstein or something else, and you’re in the Avatar. It’s kind of you. You play it, and that has another boost to your creativity. And so we have seen the ability in divergent thinking to almost double the performance of normal people through VR rooms with creative looking avatars.

Cyndi Burnett [00:17:00]:
What are creative rooms? What do they look like in virtual reality?

Todd Lubart [00:17:03]:
They look like whatever you say should be in a place that makes you feel creative. I’ll tell you what psychology students in France like. They like to be in an artist’s studio with view of the sky, green plants, some stuff that looks like outer space, photos, painting tools, a bookshelf with various books on it, and, yeah, a view on nature. And it looks like you’re in an artist studio. And when you put them in there, how do we know that’s good for them? We gave them questionnaires and we said, what should we put in a place to make it creative for you? And they listed stuff, and we put the stuff in and they get there and they go, hey, this looks like a pretty creative place for me. Of course, other populations don’t put the same stuff. If a bunch of kids say, what’s cool for us is multicolored walls, we can do it. If another bunch of kids say, what’s cool for us is yellow walls, we can do it.

Todd Lubart [00:18:05]:
Because it’s just a parameter we change. There’s nothing exceptionally required. It’s what makes you feel it’s a sweet spot.

Cyndi Burnett [00:18:17]:
I love that so much. I love being able to just imagine your own creative space and then to make it come alive in virtual reality and what that might do for students.

Matthew Worwood [00:18:27]:
I totally agree, and I think that’s a great way in some ways, to finish up the episode. As we’re looking toward the future of creativity, not only are we thinking about generative AI and being able to measure creative potential, but we’ve also been able to bring in virtual reality that might provide physical spaces to which might facilitate and induce creativity a lot better. What an incredible double espresso episode, I must say. But it’s not finished. In fact, it’s not finished because, Tod, before we let you go, we have to ask a question. We ask all of our guests, which is for you to provide three tips for educators when it comes to nurturing creative potential or creativity in their classroom environments.

Todd Lubart [00:19:08]:
Okay, my first tip is to invest in the creative challenge, which means teachers investing class time and investing their efforts to design some activities for it, because you have to invest to reap the benefit. My second suggestion is to enhance the measurement of creative potential, because when we measure stuff, we can see progress, and it also makes it more tangible in terms of educating it. And my third is to, obviously, to focus on the individual differences in student learner profiles and to give exercises that would fit the students so they’ll feel more engaged and hopefully make more progress because they’re getting the kind of thing that would be the most valuable to them.

Cyndi Burnett [00:20:02]:
Fantastic. Well, Tod, thank you so much for your time today, and thank you for the incredible work you’ve done for the field of creativity over the last 35 years. I’ve learned so much in this last hour with you, and we greatly appreciate you coming onto the show.

Todd Lubart [00:20:16]:
Well, thanks so much for your invitation and thanks that you organize this show, because that’s the way I hope that all the educators in the world they can benefit from, know different information that’s available and put some research into play. And just to upgrade on this topic of creativity. Thanks to your show.

Matthew Worwood [00:20:42]:
And Todd, I think that’s a great tagline to end our double espresso, because we certainly work toward bridging the gap. And so if you’re a teacher listening right now, please think about sharing this episode with your colleagues or your administrators. If you really liked this episode and you want to go a step further, please write us a review, take a screenshot of that review, share it with us, and we will provide you some goodies from the show. And then finally, we know that we’ve got some emerging scholars in the field of creativity. And I think that this show, particularly maybe the latter part of the show, hopefully provides you with some ideas on what you might go and explore as you go and look at making an impact in creativity and education. My name is Dr. Matthew Werwood, and.

Cyndi Burnett [00:21:27]:
My name is Dr. Cindy Burnett. This episode was produced by Matthew Warwood and Cindy Burnett. Our podcast sponsor is curiosity to create, and our editor is Sam Atkinson.