Creativity and collaborative learning and teaching strategies in the design disciplines

Creativity can be described as the ability to generate new ideas and combine existing ideas in new ways to find novel solutions to problems. Creativity is enhanced by a free flow of knowledge and through social contact. On this basis, the authors argue that knowledge sharing is central to creativity in design and present preliminary evidence to support that view. Design education should therefore include learning and teaching approaches that encourage knowledge sharing. The authors suggest that these approaches should be based on the patterns of knowledge sharing of designers from the creative industries so that students are appropriately prepared for future employment. The paper presents an analysis of the practices of designers in the creative industries in Scotland. The data were gathered through a structured questionnaire distributed to a wide range of companies and from final-year students in design programmes, and the two data sets compared. In practice, employees in the creative industries consume and create knowledge by making use of a variety of distributed resources. Creativity is an important aspect of their practice and all the respondents believed that creativity was enhanced by knowledge sharing collaborative practices. Differences in the practices of students and employees are identified, and the findings are now being used to inform the development of innovative approaches to learning and teaching at Glasgow Caledonian University.