There are many possible measures of creativity, or at least, of originality. What you want is either a quickly-administered, easily-scored measure or a way of analyzing the students' actual work. Or maybe a little of both.

For a "quick and easy" assessment of originality, you could try a New Uses test or perhaps a Word Association test. A New Uses test asks the individual to think up various ways in which a common object could be put to use. Examples might include a brick, a coat hanger, a saucepan, or a bed-sheet. You look for two things: (1) How many valid responses does the person produce? (2) How unusual or uncommon are their ideas? Fluency and originality are both relevant. On a Word Association test, you present them with a list of words and ask them to write down the first word they think of in response to each. Make the time limit pretty short, but long enough to finish. (I've found that students can generate 40 or so words in about 3 minutes.) Here, too, it is the uncommonness of the responses that indicates originality.

At the other extreme, you could use samples of student writing from the beginning, middle, and end periods of the course. Create rating scales and have 2 - 3 colleagues evaluate the work without knowing when, or by whom, they were written. A 7-point scale can work well, with "4" representing "about average" for the population in question. Have them make 2 ratings of each piece of work. One scale, of course, will be a rating of creativity. The other should be for some non-creativity-related quality, such as their technical command of the language. (This is a literary class, right?) You are most interested in the creativity ratings, but you want the judges to differentiate creativity from technical skill. It's much easier to do this is they get to make both ratings.

I understand that to monitor creativity, a moment of reflection should be included. An exercise where students propose creative ideas for individuals, families and society as a whole happier.

This type of exercise performed frequently, students may take it as a challenge and constantly reflect on how certain liteeraturas can help generate ideas. And how these these ideas can contribute to the development of new solutions for everyday life.

I try to know whether there exists any valid "exercise" to indicate the (progressive) state of creativity throughout a literary course.

There are many possible measures of creativity, or at least, of originality. What you want is either a quickly-administered, easily-scored measure or a way of analyzing the students' actual work. Or maybe a little of both.

For a "quick and easy" assessment of originality, you could try a New Uses test or perhaps a Word Association test. A New Uses test asks the individual to think up various ways in which a common object could be put to use. Examples might include a brick, a coat hanger, a saucepan, or a bed-sheet. You look for two things: (1) How many valid responses does the person produce? (2) How unusual or uncommon are their ideas? Fluency and originality are both relevant. On a Word Association test, you present them with a list of words and ask them to write down the first word they think of in response to each. Make the time limit pretty short, but long enough to finish. (I've found that students can generate 40 or so words in about 3 minutes.) Here, too, it is the uncommonness of the responses that indicates originality.

At the other extreme, you could use samples of student writing from the beginning, middle, and end periods of the course. Create rating scales and have 2 - 3 colleagues evaluate the work without knowing when, or by whom, they were written. A 7-point scale can work well, with "4" representing "about average" for the population in question. Have them make 2 ratings of each piece of work. One scale, of course, will be a rating of creativity. The other should be for some non-creativity-related quality, such as their technical command of the language. (This is a literary class, right?) You are most interested in the creativity ratings, but you want the judges to differentiate creativity from technical skill. It's much easier to do this is they get to make both ratings.

Prof Joy, thank you very much for the detailed comment. The last part of your discussion (a way of analyzing the students' actual work) is directly related to my concern. I want to know whether we can apply a more "objective rating scale" to measure students' creativity/originality level before and after taking a literary course. That seems to be necessary in order to decrease the subjectivity level of the examination.

Hi,

We did an intervention study om creativity among students that might give you some ideas. Please see attachment. This is a quasi-experimental study that investigates effects of creativity training on creative self-efficacy.

Article Creative Self-Efficacy: An Intervention Study

You need to define what you are going to measure. What is "creativity"? It may involve divergent thinking or originality, but is not synonymous with them. As the study cited above suggests, creative performance is linked to one's beliefs about one's creativity. People who believe that creativity is an innate, fixed talent (that's a lot of people!) are less likely to become more creative than people who believe creativity is something anyone can learn. If your intention is to improve students' creativity, you may need to teach them what it is in your context, because creative skills are manifested in different ways in different contexts and cultures. As a result, there are no reliable objective measures of creativity that I am aware of, although as Dr Joy points out you can measure traits which are associated with creativity in certain contexts.

I like Stephen Joy's ideas, but I wondered if you wanted to get at creativity independently of verbal ability, or not. That makes a difference. If you want to know about literary creativity, and you don't mind that there is a "verbal bias," Stephen's description of ratings of essays is good. I will say that when I have done this--rate products done by students--I found good reliability, and that was true of professionals' ratings of students' products, students' ratings of students' products (peer ratings), and self-ratings. However, those three groups disagreed with one another, and the first of them seemed to give the lowest ratings, without much kurtosis or dispersion of scores. I saw this as not offering me good information to discriminate among A, B, and C students. I also thought this was true because the more professional raters seemed to have the highest standards, which did apply well to students.

There are various product rating research projects in the Creativity Research Journal.

Personally, I would also be tempted to use a journal, or a visual journal, so you could look at creativity both within literature and outside of literature.

If you want to (also?) use a quick and easy test, take a look at

creativitytestingservices.com

I'll start with two basic assertions:

1--literary criticism can bring some critical views on literary output and subjective perception and judgement of some autor(s). It may help your creative writing students in literary appreciation, but not how to become creative writers. It may help them to perceive how the literary critic mind works, in case they eventually want to publish something. However, these perceptive tools are not instrument to measure creativity.

2-- a course on literary creative writing may be more meaningful to measure your students creative ability. How measure output? After the course, you can send your students' output to top ranking poetry and fiction reviews for publication. They have skilled publishing board analysts who will evaluate these results. The more poems or fiction pieces, or even literary critism papers, you get accepted and published the better you can analyze both your course content as well as your students creative achievements. Then compare group A with group B, C, or D and rank the results of each group according to the number of pieces published in those reviews.

Hope I have contributed to reflection on the issue.

In our literary creation workshops -ciudArte (www.ciudarte.es)-, we address literary creation by dividing it into different themes (voice, rhythm, tone, metaphor, etc.). These are practical and experimented themes: they are not taken from a manual, but from personal experience of the writers who shaped this project. By dividing them we are enabled to assess the progress of our students. By this way it is possible for us to see how each student handles a particular aspect of creation; and in which ones he is better skilled and which ones need more dedication and guidance. The method of looking back to see the changes (improvement) over time is undoubtly used, and it is usually the teacher that first becomes aware when there has been an improvement. He then invites the student to compare it with a previous text so the proper student realizes it for himself, thus deepening his progress. We also realize collective work with all students -when courses are advanced and they have acquired a certain level- evaluating the texts all together. This is done through a careful and attentive reading of each text followed by a literary critique of the text itself. In this case, the teacher not only seeks to hear the text criticized but to have each of the criticisms exposed; precisely to try to distinguish what is the author's own voice (and secure it); what is objectively improvable (grammatical or spelling mistakes, conceptual errors, etc.); and what is more subjective (and therefore capable of being widely discussed among all). This work results very satisfying for all: author, critics and the teacher himself. Everyone learns.

Therefore, the fact of addressing literary creation by separation it into different matters helps us to examine the improvement of the students, because it enables us to evaluate it by the different aspects we work in class. So we all know what we mean when "criticizing" a text, because we use something like an own language, understandable by all. We can criticize a text, we can rewrite and edit through this methodological path; taking into account that humility is a prerequisite for learning (and teaching). Thanks to feedback from other students (always supervised by the teacher) one can learn to notice the use of the voice, how he handles the narrative tone or rhythm, and so the same with all the other issues. That helps a lot when evaluating or criticizing literature.

          Our workshops part from the idea that for one to "learn to write" it is necessary to "learn to gaze" (gaze, as to observe attentively ones surrounding), and we firmly believe (as experience shows) that anyone -children and adults- can learn to gaze calmly, and afterwards construct art over the observed. This philosophy is in part supported by the thought of the Spanish philosopher María Zambrano. The methodology we apply -learning by discovery- helps to guide the students towards their own path of creative discovery. Without a doubt, creativity is something that anyone can learn to discover for itself (because they already have it in themselves: each in their own way).

          We prefer to speak of creation rather than creativity. We relate literary creation with contemplation (an in-depth, paused gaze, into the inner and outer reality, and to the encounter of both realities). Personal creation would thus become the artistic form in which one learns to express his contemplation. It is therefore essential to respect the proper voice of the person. We also believe it to be true that the reading of world literature and individual work are essential for everyone to go acquiring artistic maturity. We are not trying to "impose" what is worthy or not, but try to achieve that each person discovers it for himself. And, of course, without commitment there can be no improvement.

Literary criticism on its own does not create writers. It is acquiring the ability to gaze attentively, and the urge to express and tell others what one really feels that invites oneself to work and develop artistically. In the case of the ciudArte workshops, literary criticism is not addressed as a criticism from outside, scientific or merely rational, but as a fundamental part of the art of rewriting. With this we mean that we do not distinguish the rewriting from the writing itself. It all forms part of the adventure of writing. Literary criticism is mainly employed with the student’s proper texts, to learn and practice the art of rewriting.

          With the knowledge that a text might be actually published the students put more effort into the art of rewriting, thus improving their skill. Therefore we own a humble editorial from which we publish collective books composed by texts of the students that attend the workshops. That facet (the encounter with the reader, talking about their own work in public presentations of the books, and listening to critiques from readers) enriches the labor of the workshop itself. We translate (currently only to German) and publish our own works. We prepare the presentations of our books and help distributing them around the island (Fuerteventura, Spain). All this learning process (gazing, contemplating, creating, reading, rewriting, designing, translating, publishing, displaying and distributing) is done by the students themselves, guided and animated by author Francisco Ramirez Viu, director of ciudArte. More advanced students then go along to become teaching assistants, especially with our children´s workshops.

This whole process would not be possible, obviously, without a great love for the word itself; for the written word. In ciudArte we do not treat the word as a single object, but as an act that affects the person who writes, and his environment. And from that perspective it is better understood what the word calls for: a deep attentive gaze and a commitment.

          Therefore we do not merely measure the creative evolution in class, but we start seeing it with the passage of time, because writing becomes part of our lives; there are colleagues writing novels, short stories, poems ... some just continue to attend the workshops. Many of us meet occasionally; sending our texts around for critique and suggestions ... We are continually working and learning. And in that learning process every one learns to look upon himself critically, with true desire to improve.

Here I will publish the same answer, in Spanish:

En los talleres ciudArte (www.ciudarte.es) abordamos la creación literaria por temas (voz, ritmo, tono, metáfora, etc.) y esto nos ayuda también a valorar la evolución de los alumnos. Son temas prácticos, experimentados: no están sacados de ningún manual, sino de la experiencia personal de los escritores que dieron forma a este proyecto. Así se puede observar cómo maneja cada alumno un determinado aspecto de la creación; en cuáles tiene más soltura y cuáles necesitan mayor dedicación. Desde luego, el método de echar la vista atrás para que los alumnos vean sus cambios (su mejoría) se usa, y es el profesor, habitualmente, el que se percata de algún cambio a mejor e invita a compararlo con un texto anterior para que el alumno también se dé cuenta y se afiance así su evolución. Pero también se hace un trabajo colectivo, con todos los alumnos -cuando los cursos están ya avanzados y estos han adquirido cierto nivel- para evaluar los textos entre todos. Esto se hace mediante una lectura atenta de cada texto y un trabajo posterior -también atento- de crítica literaria. En este caso, el profesor no solo busca escuchar el texto criticado sino cada una de las críticas expuestas; precisamente para tratar de distinguir lo que es voz propia del autor (y afianzarla); lo que es objetivamente mejorable (incorrecciones gramaticales u ortográficas, fallos conceptuales, etc.); y lo que es más subjetivo (y por tanto susceptible de ser discutido más ampliamente entre todos). Este trabajo resulta muy satisfactorio para todos: autor, críticos y profesor. Todos aprenden.

Por tanto, el hecho de abordar la creación literaria por temas ayuda a examinar la mejoría de los alumnos, ya que puedes valorarla según los diferentes aspectos que se trabajan en clase. Así todos sabemos de lo que hablamos cuando "criticamos" un texto, usamos algo así como un lenguaje entendible por todos. Podemos criticar un texto, lo podemos reescribir y corregir a través de esa metodología; teniendo muy en cuenta que la humildad es una condición imprescindible para aprender (y para enseñar). Gracias a los comentarios de los demás (siempre supervisados por el profesor) uno puede aprender a fijarse en el uso de la voz, en cómo maneja el tono narrativo o el ritmo, y así lo mismo con todos los otros temas. Eso ayuda bastante a la hora de evaluar o hacer crítica literaria.

Nuestros talleres parten de la idea de que para "aprender a escribir" es necesario “aprender a mirar”, y creemos firmemente (así lo demuestra también la experiencia) que cualquier persona -niños y adultos- pueden aprender a mirar reposadamente. Y construir arte después sobre lo mirado. Esta filosofía está sustentada en parte en el pensamiento de la filósofa española María Zambrano. La metodología empleada -“aprendizaje por descubrimiento”- contribuye a guiarles por su propio camino de descubrimiento creativo. Sin duda, la creatividad es algo que cualquier persona puede aprender a descubrir en sí misma (porque ya la tiene: cada cual a su manera).

Nosotros preferimos hablar de creación y no tanto de creatividad. Y relacionamos la creación literaria con la contemplación (una mirada honda, pausada, a la realidad interior y exterior; y al encuentro de ambas realidades). La creación personal sería la forma artística con la que cada uno aprende a expresar su mirada. Por eso es fundamental el respeto a la voz propia de cada persona. La lectura de literatura universal y el trabajo personal son esenciales para que cada cual vaya adquiriendo madurez artística. No se trata de "imponer" lo que vale o lo que no vale, sino de que cada persona lo vaya descubriendo por sí misma. Y, por supuesto, sin dedicación no hay mejora.

La crítica literaria por sí sola no hace escritores. Es el aprendizaje del mirar y las ganas de contar lo que se siente lo que invita al trabajo y a la evolución artística. En el caso de los talleres ciudArte, la crítica literaria no se aborda como tal (como una crítica desde fuera, científica o meramente racional), sino como una parte fundamental del arte de reescribir. Es decir, no distinguimos la reescritura de la escritura. Todo forma parte de la aventura de escribir. La crítica literaria se emplea, sobre todo, con los textos propios, para aprender a ejercitar el arte de reescribir.

El hecho de publicar también ayuda a poner más empeño en este arte de reescribir. Tenemos nuestra propia y humilde editorial en la que publicamos libros colectivos con las personas que asisten a los talleres. Esa faceta (el encuentro con el lector, hablar del propio trabajo en público en las presentaciones de los libros y el escuchar las críticas de los lectores) enriquece la labor del propio taller. Traducimos (de momento al alemán) y publicamos nuestras obras. Preparamos las presentaciones de los libros y ayudamos a distribuir los libros por la isla (Fuerteventura, Spain). Todo este proceso de aprendizaje (mirar, crear, leer, reescribir, diseñar, traducir, publicar, presentar y distribuir) lo hacemos los propios alumnos, guiados y animados por el escritor Francisco Ramírez Viu, director de ciudArte. Los alumnos mas avanzados luego se convierten en profesores ayudantes, en especial para los talleres con los niños.

Todo este proceso no sería posible, obviamente, sin un amor grande por la palabra; por la palabra escrita. En ciudArte no se trata a la palabra como un simple objeto, sino como un acto que afecta a la misma persona que escribe y a su entorno. Y desde esa perspectiva se comprende mejor lo que la palabra pide: una mirada honda y un compromiso.

Por tanto la evolución creativa no la medimos solo en clase, sino que la vamos viendo con el transcurrir del tiempo, porque escribir se va haciendo parte de nuestra vida; hay compañeros escribiendo novelas, relatos cortos, poemas... otros sencillamente siguen asistiendo a los talleres. Muchos nos reunimos, enviamos nuestros textos para recibir sugerencias... Estamos continuamente trabajando y aprendiendo. Y en ese aprendizaje también cada cual aprende a mirarse críticamente, con verdaderas ganas de mejorar.

No way to . . .. . . . Students have not learned craftsmanship . .... Any student or professor you know ever read a style manual or teach craftsmanship?

Dear Colleague Kornfield,

" No way to . . .. . . . Students have not learned craftsmanship . .... Any student or professor you know ever read a style manual or teach craftsmanship?"

I have done so.

Dear Colleague Gloria,

You are truly one-in-a-million. Congratulations

Your students really had a caring professional teaching them.

All-the-best,

Colleague Jack (:-)

Thanks, Colleague Jack Kornfield. I could hardly escape such training since I span both literature grad degrees and rhetoric and composition.

You should know that there have been updates to "style' and "craft" manuals (if you do not teach writing) because we now view audience as part of the writing process. The old ideals of "craft" used some mythical universal audience. Now we are more fine-tuned. We also analyze literature rhetorically. Kenneth Burke was very instrumental in foiunding this approach.