Chapman University Extended Education

Graduate Elective Credit and Sustained Professional Development

EDUC 9031B:  Hands on Strategies to Teach Inventive Thinking (1 semester hour)

Inventive thinking is critical as we prepare young people to solve problems and make decisions using the inventive processes.  You will analyze the need for inventive thinking in young people and then learn and apply hands strategies to teach the inventive thinking process. 

Overview:  The graduate course is designed to provide administrators and teachers with the needed for inventive thinking processes and an understanding of the specific strategies that support the invention process.  Each strategy will be learned and then applied to various situations regarding curriculum and instruction.  The continuum of strategies leads participants to begin with the notion of parallel thinking using Six Thinking Hats® for critical and creative thinking, brainstorming, more complex thinking processes, uncover problems, apply the  scientific problem solving method, create an invention to solve the problem,  and take the invention to a real life marketplace.  Students will take these strategies back to their children school and apply them.  This application can be achieved by developing and teaching a unit on invention, participating or initiating an invention convention, entering the national Invent America contest, or an individually designed project.   

Course Outline:   The graduate course is designed to provide administrators and teachers with the strategies needed to develop inventive thinking processes including:

1. The Six Thinking Hats®

2. Creative Thinking Skills of Brainstorming

3. Creative Thinking Skills of FFOE - Fluency, Flexibility, Originality, and Elaboration

4. Creative Thinking Skills of SCAMPER 

5. Inventions are Everywhere

6. Forced Associations or Random Entry process to foster creativity

7. Inventions Solve Problems or Fill Needs

8. Finding a Problem to Solve (Scientific Problem Solving)

9. Writing an Inventor’s Log or journal to keep accurate records of the invention process

10. Planning an Invention

11. Inventions from Everyday Objects

12. Researching Inventions

13. To the Market Place

14. Marketing Responsibilities and Ethics

Method of Evaluating Student’s Performance:

Every attempt will be made to evaluate the student in terms of the stated objectives using the following point system:   Participation and understanding of the strategies presented and application of them with young people or students.   The participants work during the in class session will count for 60%.  The project demonstrating application or these processes will count for 30% of the final grade.

Final grades will be determined with the following grading scale and will be based on the total number of points accumulated on the assignments of the course.  

                    100 - 90 = A     89 - 80 = B      79 - 70 = C