CEE 2015 Workshops Round 2

Workshops: Round Two (Monday, June 15 - 2:00 3:30 pm)

Presenter(s)

Affiliation

Title

Farzad H. Eskafi, Dr. Kenes

Beketayev

SparcIt

Automated and Streamlined Creativity

Assessment
Rockwell Hall Room 301
Creative Problem Solving when you are
Teaching Creative Problem Solving
Rockwell Hall Room 301
Sustainable Food Chain Value: A Leadership
Exercise to Foster the Best Use of
Resources
Rockwell Hall Room 305
Developing Your Creative Potential: Artistic
Strategies to Engage Exploration and
Discovery
Rockwell Hall Room 306
Play 2 Learn
Rockwell Hall Room 308

Sheridan College
Patrice Esson
Francisco Martinez and
Emilio Vera

Certificate in Creative
Leadership and Facilitation
for Innovation Mexico City

Bernie Murray

Ryerson University

Juliana Sanchez-Trujillo
Erica Swiatek

University of la Sabana
Innovate Faster

2A: Automated and Streamlined Creativity Assessment

In this interactive workshop participants will learn about the theory of psychometric creativity, be able to perform creativity
exercises on their laptops or tablets and get exposure to the underlying implementation that can evaluate their exercise
results like an expert instructor. The workshop includes two-three sets of creative thinking exercises followed by an
overview of SparcIts semantic-based engine, IgniteIt.
Farzad Eskafi and Dr. Kenes Beketayev work at SparcIt, an NSF-funded technology and creativity company based in the
San Francisco Bay Area, CA. Based on over 50 years of psychological research, SparcIt has developed the first-ever
automated platform to accurately assess and categorize an individual or teams' creative thinking abilities. Some are
divergent thinkers and generate many ideas, other have the knack to focus on very original ones.

2B:

Creative Problem Solving when you are Teaching Creative Problem Solving

Creative thinking and creative problem solving courses are often popular undergraduate courses. Many professors prefer
to teach such courses to small classes. However, sometimes student demand and enrollment leads to larger classes. This
session explores the challenges associated with, and solutions generated for, teaching and conducting creative problem
solving facilitation within the context of moderately large classes of 40 to 60 students. The workshop will cover all aspects of
planning - and executing creative problem solving facilitations in the context of an undergraduate course. We will explore
both the pedagogical considerations and logistical challenges of conducting facilitations over a four to five week period in
which each student serves as the client and his/her classmates serve as the creative problem solving facilitators and
resource group members. We will explore student sign ups, observing multiple concurrent sessions, giving feedback
among others. Reflections and best practices will be discussed.
Patrice Esson earned her Ph.D. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from Virginia Tech. She has over 10 years of
experience teaching at the college and university levels. Her teaching repertoire includes introductory and advanced level
psychology and business management related courses. Patrice is also actively involved in curriculum development.

2C:

Sustainable Food Chain Value: A Leadership Exercise to Foster

CEE 2015 Workshops Round 2

the Best Use of Resources

Sustainable chain value is the ability to better use the available resources in companies to create a sustainable growth. The
exercise will generate a deep reflection using this analogy and examine how to better use internal resources and to identify
the cost and waste companies base solutions on imported resources. Participants will explore the questions:
Is there an over waste when we import resources from abroad?
Do we really assess the cost benefit of bringing resources from other places?
How should be the model that balance a good pace of growth and reduce the waste of resources and the over
cost?
Emilio Vera is the Operations and Information Technology Director at Assurant Solutions in Mexico City. He is an executive
with 18 years of experience leading global corporations in operations, information technology, business development and
strategic planning within Mexico, Latin American & European markets.
Francisco Martinez-Rivera is the Commercial and Marketing Director at Assurant Solutions in Mexico City. He is an
executive with more than 15 years of experience, mainly focused in commercial strategy, marketing and business
development, collaborating in local and global corporations within distribution, retail, financial and insurance sectors.

2D: Developing Your Creative Potential: Artistic Strategies to

Engage Exploration and Discovery
This workshop will focus on individual and group strategies used to help people develop their creative potential through a
series of artistic practices and creative problem solving assignments. Gaining an understanding of creative thinking
strategies teamed with new abilities and skills will inform conference participants on ways to think differently. Participants
will enhance their creative potential using techniques that expand ideas into innovative concepts. Practical exercises and an
application of new knowledge will allow participants to explore alternative ways to present ideas and to convey that
understanding to others. The purpose is to engage people by changing habitual patterns of behavior that result from cultural
or societal norms. Exemplars used in the educational setting in design and music will be presented.
Bernie Murray is an Associate Professor in the School of Fashion at Ryerson University. She is currently pursuing her
doctorate in Curriculum Studies and Teacher Development in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. Her research agenda includes: Creativity- creative
process, inspiration, product, motivation, and the environment; design process; draping; corsetry; teaching and learning: studio-based
pedagogy and reflective practice.

2E:

Play 2 Learn

This session will introduce current research on how play impacts learning and how learning is enhanced through play. Also,
an enhanced and easy to remember model for creative teaching and learning will be presented, as well as strategies on
how to use it to both plan and deliver classes. Building on the works of David Meier and E. Paul Torrance, this model
presents four different stages in the learning process: Preparing, Learning through Laughter, Accelerating and Yo-Yo effect.
The idea is to increase knowledge applicability and decrease training times.
Juliana Sanchez-Trujillo is a Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Professor at Sabana University in Bogota,
Colombia. She is a representative of New & Improved LLC in Latin America, a certified Lego Serious Play workshop
designer and facilitator, and a FourSight facilitator. Juliana holds a M.S. Creativity and Innovation from Buffalo State, State
University of New York and a B.A. Corporate Communications from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Bogota.
Erica Swiatek is a high energy, passionate, facilitator, consultant and trainer. Designing and delivering instructor-led
courses, games, and activities in creative problem solving, innovation, leadership skills, change management and team
building. She has several years of experience working with call centers and large health insurance companies. Erica
graduated from Buffalo State with a Masters of Science in Creativity and Change Leadership. She loved it so much she
became an adjunct faculty there and teaches at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.