Divergent thinking: creative, open-ended, spontaneous, unexpected, out of the box. With these unstructured descriptions of divergent thinking, how could this lend itself to eLearning instructional design?
In his article titled “Divergent Thinking in eLearning: What eLearning Professionals Should Know,” Christopher Pappas offers four best practices to encourage problem solving in the eLearning environment:
- Observation comes before feedback – feedback, including praise or constructive criticism, should come only after an instructor has observed the learner’s thinking process
- Every idea counts – the problem-solving process invites all ideas that could lead to unexpected solutions
- Encourage differing opinions – each participant is encouraged to have his or her own ideas and share them
- Combine unique ideas – because there may be multiple solutions to any given problem, combining ideas can produce exciting outcomes
How do can you apply these best practices to eLearning? Pappas provides 5 tips, which you can find here: http://tinyurl.com/j52dzdy
What do you think about divergent thinking, and how it can be implemented in an eLearning environment?