Creative Journal Synthesis
Solve one problem from one of your journal reflections—assignments 1, 2, 3, 4.
I Repeat: Choose one problem from one of your reflections/assignments and attempt to creatively solve it. This excludes your team presentations.
Use the following “creative thinking” techniques:
1) PROBLEM DEFINITION, i.e. critically examine and attempt to redefine the problem;
2) FREE ASSOCIATION — Document in detail the process of free association, i.e. your prompts, and how you used your prompts to reflect on the problem.
-To clarify a bit, from the content of all of your journal reflections, select one issue as the one problem to solve.
-This is to be done individually, with a partner or a group of three.
-To solve that one problem from any one of your journal reflection assignments, employ the ideas of “problem definition”–redefining the problem, and “free association.”
-Break it down into these three parts:
1) PROBLEM DEFINITION (Redefining the Problem)
2) FREE ASSOCIATION
3) SYNTHESIS OF 1 AND 2
Part 1) “Problem Definition” should require 2 pages (double spaced, clear and concise, font Arial 12)
-Critically examine the problem in terms of the “problem definition” approach as explained in your lecture notes. Explain how your attempt at redefining the problem may lead to a solution.
Part 2) “Free Association” should require 2 pages (double spaced, clear and concise, font Arial 12)
-You are mainly keeping track of the “problem” and the “prompts,” as well as the new ideas generated from these associations … Do any new ideas lead to possible solutions? Briefly explain.
Document the creative process of using at least 3 different “prompts” in connection with your problem.
Part 3) Synthesize your results from Part 1) and Part 2) as a possible solution to the original problem in about 3 pages:
• Your synthesis and solution will also extensively include the application of the “decision-making” theory of Jacques Derrida.
• Your creative and responsible decision takes place in the context of “undecidability.”
• The situation is undecidable because you must attempt to invent a solution that equally affirms both “singularity” (a new creation, innovation, exceptionality, uniqueness, difference, etc.) and “universality” (current knowledge, current rules, current regulations, current laws, ethics, etc.)
• Unlike Socrates, who claims that the argument (“universality”) made the decision for him, you must invent a decision which refers to both “universality” and “singularity.”
• Therefore, your new, creative solution will be an innovation and yet it will be responsible to laws, rules, regulations, ethics, and/or knowledge.
