The generating ideas category includes the cognitive characteristics commonly referred to as divergent thinking or creative thinking abilities and metaphorical thinking. The specific characteristics in this category include fluency, flexibility, originality, elaboration, and metaphorical thinking.
Fluency refers to quantity or the ability to generate a large number of ideas in response to an open-ended question or in reference to one's thinking process. Fluency builds on the premise that quantity of idea generation can stimulate the production of ideas that will be both novel and useful; quantity provides an opportunity for quality.
Flexibility refers to the ability to shift the direction of one's thinking or to change one's point of view. Flexibility involves an openness to examine ideas or experiences in unexpected or varied ways, and thereby, to discover surprising and promising possibilities.
Originality refers to the ability to generate new and unusual ideas. Originality deals with generating options that are unusual or statistically infrequent (i.e., ideas that few people in any group might offer).
Elaboration refers to the ability to add details and to expand ideas. Elaboration involves making ideas richer, more interesting, or more complete.
Metaphorical thinking refers to the ability to use comparison or analogy to make new connections. Metaphorical thinking involves thinking about how different things are alike and different (or making the strange familiar or the familiar strange) and then transporting those connections to produce or discover new possibilities.
We often refer to people who are able to generate many, varied, and unusual possibilities as creative thinkers or creative people. People exhibit the characteristics associated with generating ideas by thinking of many possibilities, looking at things from many different angles, or producing novel ideas. You might observe them engaging in:
Asking what if or just suppose questions and then playing with those ideas.
Predicting, speculating, and forecasting ("What will happen if . . .") and then testing out their ideas.
Combining or changing parts to make new possibilities.
Thinking about metaphors or analogies to help them to look at something differently.
Deferring judgment and refraining from criticizing ideas when they are generating them.
Below are a number of idea generation techniques that can be used to help with the creative process for any discipline:
Below are some creative processes that can be integrated into a curriculum structure:
This category involves assessing divergent production abilities, skills, or preferences. These dimensions involve asking students to generate new and unusual ideas. Divergent productivity also involves the development of a large number of possibilities, many arrived at as the result of shifts in one's perception and thinking, and adding details, and expanding ideas as the process continues. This category also involves the ability to use metaphor or analogy as a springboard for creative connections or new possibilities.
Testing, requiring students to demonstrate idea generation, is an efficient means of assessing a student's level of divergent productivity. Such measures may yield direct evidence of the student's proficiency in divergent production. Be aware, however, that some experts consider divergent production to be specific to content or talent domains; the literature is divided regarding the domain generality of these factors.
Performance assessments centered on the creative problem-solving process might also be useful in assessing the five indicators above.
Originality, flexibility, and elaboration might be evaluated through an assessment of creative products produced by a student in an area of strength, although the product does not always reveal the processes that preceded it.
Rating scales completed by parents, teachers, or other evaluators for this category might include items describing the person's ability to generate new and unusual ideas.
Product assessments in creative writing, art and musical composition might reveal the use of Metaphorical Thinking or might demonstrate aspects of originality, flexibility, and elaboration.
Source: Treffinger, D. J., Young, G. C., Selby, E. C., & Shepardson C. (2002). Assessing creativity: A guide for educators (RM02170). Storrs, CT: The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, University of Connecticut.
Source: http://www.mindtools.com