A Methodology for Incorporating Creativity into Lesson Plans

This paper presents a methodology for incorporating creativity in lesson plans. The methodology consists of 5 steps designed to elicit the creative thinking of learners based on the Process and Place aspects of creativity research. The final step of the methodology results in the production of a lesson plan (or learning design) for drawing out creativity in learners without adding additional topics to a lesson. The paper also describes a software prototype, The Muse, which was developed to evaluate the methodology. The evaluation involved a teacher using The Muse to create a lesson plan, successfully following all the steps of the methodology. Additionally, The Muse executed this lesson plan, which students followed successfully for six weeks as they worked on a creative project. The research described in the paper makes an important contribution to creativity research by showing how a learner’s creative process can be tracked digitally, in real-time.