Tweeting Creativity

Discovery, Creativity and Serendipity in chemical research – that’s the topic in my Research Methods classes (I teach two sections) this past week. The students read interviews with famous chemists, and we talked about what we found surprising in the backgrounds, motivations and stories of these individuals. Following the lead of my colleague who taught the class last year, I have been trying to incorporate a “creativity stoker” in each class session. These are fun ten-minute activities to help the students get their creativity juices going.

The students had just been assigned their working groups for the semester. They will put together an original research proposal attempting to answer one aspect of a “Big Unsolved Problem” in chemistry. For their first activity as a team, so they could get to know each other and brainstorm, I used an exercise that my colleague had developed. The assignment: Come up with tweets to describe discovery, creativity and serendipity. Here are the three prompts.

·      Define “Discovery” in scientific research in under 140 characters.

·      Define “Creativity” in scientific research in under 140 characters.

·      Define “Serendipity” in scientific research in under 140 characters.

The team that I thought did the best job came up with these three.

·      Discovery: Gathering and uncovering of new knowledge and applications on topics of interest using the scientific method

·      Creativity: Thinking outside the box and making old things new, applying them to pursue innovative ideas

·      Serendipity: Happy accident, finding something by chance. Making your own luck by being open to opportunities, identifying them and acting on them.

From the other teams, here are three others that I thought were fun and clever:

·      Discovery: Diminishment of the unknown through exploration which generates new ideas.

·      Creativity: Coloring outside the molecule. #creative

·      Serendipity: Discovering creativity through chance

In this last one, the group managed to use “discover” and “creativity” in their definition of serendipity, which I thought was neat.

Students asked me if I had a Twitter account. I don’t. They said I should go make one. I don’t know about this and I don’t see myself as a tweeter even though I’ve been reading about the different uses of tweeting in academic circles. I think I prefer blogging over tweeting. It forces me to write something a little longer, and hopefully a piece that’s more thoughtful. Since one of the reasons for blogging was to improve my writing, I was rather pleased by the referee reports I received last week for my most recent manuscript. Both reviewers commented that the paper was clearly written. Both also recommended minor revisions with no further review needed so I was able to make the edits, resubmit, and it was accepted. A good way to end the month of September!