Brainstorming Session

Practice

The classroom is divided up into groups of a suitable size for a brainstorming session. Each group elects its own chairman. If there is any difficulty about this then the teacher makes a suggestion. The notetaker is also selected in each group. It may be useful to have an auxiliary notetaker who can relieve the first one halfway through the session.

The general principles of the brainstorming session are explained with emphasis on the following points:

1. No criticism or evaluation.
2. Say anything you like no matter how wrong or ridiculous.
3. Do not try and develop ideas at length or make speeches, a few words are enough.
4. Give the notetaker a chance to get things down.
5. Listen to the chairman.

A warm up problem is then given to each group and they have a ten minute warm up session. At the end of this session they go straight into the main session for thirty minutes.

The teacher may sit in on the groups in turn. It is better not to be too intrusive. Few comments are made at the time but mental notes are kept for discussion afterwards. The only thing which justifies an intervention is any tendency to evaluate or criticize.

At the end of the sessions the groups come together again. In turn the notetakers from each group read out the list of ideas. The teacher may then comment as follows:

1. Comments on the actual session stressing perhaps the tendency to evaluate or the tendency to be too timid.
2. Comments on the lists of ideas. These could point out the similarity of some of the ideas, the originality of others.
3. Comments on the tone of the ideas. Some of the suggestions may have been quite sensible others quite ridiculous. If the suggestions do tend to be too solemn the teacher might point out that at least some of the suggestions during the sessions should be outrageous enough to cause a laugh.
4. The teacher then adds some ideas and suggestions of his own concerning the problems that have been discussed.

In going through the lists of suggestions the teacher may pick out some of the more outrageous ideas and proceed to show how they can be useful. This is done by extracting the functional principle of the idea and developing it further.

Evaluation

Evaluation sessions should not be held on the same day as the brainstorming sessions. The evaluation sessions are best done in front of the whole class and each idea is considered in turn for its direct or indirect usefulness.

One can have different categories into which each idea is placed. These might be:

• Directly useful.
• Interesting approach.
• For further examination.
• Discard.

An alternative to this general evaluation is to write the brainstorm lists on the blackboard a few items at a time and get each student to evaluate the items with votes. At the end the different evaluations can be compared by seeing how many ‘votes’ each item gets.

In this context the evaluation session is a necessary part of the brainstorm session but not an important part. Evaluations tend to be critical analysis and vertical thinking. Emphasis should be directed much more to the brainstorm session itself than to the subsequent evaluation.

It is important in any attempt at evaluation not to give the impression that the outrageous ideas were only of use in the brain-storming session but not of much practical use anywhere else. Such an impression would limit suggestions to the practical and the solemnly sensible which though worthwhile in themselves would never lead to new ideas. One of the most important functions of the evaluation session is to show that even the most outrageous suggestions can lead to useful ideas.