Synthesis Through Reflection

As you learned in week three of class, reflection is an important part of our ability to get in touch with our creative and innovative selves. The purpose of this discussion is to critically reflect on your work throughout this course, and to synthesize your own personal philosophy of innovation and creativity through that reflection.

Prepare: To successfully complete this discussion:

• Read Hot Topic 6: Creativity and Conformity: A Paradoxical Relationship from the Plucker (2017) text. (Will be attached)
• Watch the following videos:
• The Surprising Habits of Original Thinkers – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxbCHn6gE3U&feature=youtu.be
• The Art of Innovation – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mtjatz9r-Vc&feature=youtu.be
• Reexamine the ideas presented in the Collaborative Commons shared space. (If you need any of these let me know)

Reflect: As you near the end of this course, consider what you have accomplished over the past five weeks and what you have learned about relationships between creativity and innovation. Consider how you will use this insight and continue to build upon it both during your degree program and after graduation in your personal and professional life.

Write: Present a synopsis of your key findings, conclusions, and opinions that you developed in your Final Project. Your initial post should address all of the components below, be at least 250-300 words and be posted by Day 3.

• Discuss the most important concepts and skills you learned from this course.
  • What techniques and approaches were the most valuable for you and why?
  • What areas of personal strength and limitation have you discovered?
  • What areas will you focus on to continue to develop your strengths and contend with your limitations?
• Explain how you can cultivate creativity within the constraints of multiple contexts. Envision utilizing the capabilities you have developed in this course as you transition to life after graduation, be it graduate school, your professional career, or other areas of your life.
• Reconstruct your original philosophy of innovation and creativity (from the Week 1 Personal Connection to Creativity and Innovation assignment) and post a concise revised version of your philosophy.

NOTE: PICK A TOPIC (BY TODAY) AND LET ME KNOW SO I CAN SUBMIT IT FOR APPROVAL AND THEN YOU CAN BEGIN WRITING.

1. Just go with whatever interests you that relates to motivation. My guidelines are only (1) length (4-5 pages single-spaced or 8-10 double-spaced); (2) sources (at least 2 other than the textbook, and they can be reputable web sites as well as books and journal articles); (3) style (the more coherent and tied together the narrative is, the better the grade, so topics should not to be so overly broad that coherence is difficult to achieve); (4) your own opinions are encouraged, and particularly important when there is controversy between two or more viewpoints. There are no guidelines for topic other than that, so please just say what interests you and I’ll take it from there. I am most familiar with the APA style for references, but if you have another format that you’re comfortable with that’s OK too. More important than format is that (1) every item cited in the text must be in the references as well, and the other way around and (2) the references be in alphabetical or numerical order. Even more important, the citations in the text need to be complete and match the references listed at the end. For example, if in the text you are taking some material from the article by Kraut (1982) on facial feedback and emotion, it is not enough to list the Kraut article at the end: you also must cite it in parentheses or brackets at the place in the text where you are using that material. That way the reader knows as exactly as possible the sources of your stated ideas, and can check them on his or her own. Related to that: if you cite one article in the text but found that article within another article that you actually read, it is important that you say so in the references at the end, again so the reader interested in pursuing the topic further can find what you found. There are many ways to do that: one way would be to say “Kraut (1982) … Cited in Ekman (1986) …”I am not expecting the paper to be a research article presenting original findings, though I will accept it with pleasure if it is! So you don’t need the APA trappings of Abstract, Introduction, Methods, etc., though sub-sections usually make it go smoother.In addition to guidelines for what is legal for a termpaper, there are also some guidelines for effective writing:Do not choose a topic that’s overly large (e.g., motivation for success in education is probably too big, but motivation for success in high school algebra is not).Try to avoid long run-on paragraphs. Generally a paragraph that’s longer than a page single-spaced or two pages double-spaced is likely to be too long. Break up the paragraph when the ideas become different, even if related (that’s something that’s a matter of feel.)

2. Here are a few past 3320 term paper titles if you need them to think of your own term paper topic. They are roughly grouped together by topic area. But please remember:(1)This list is far from complete(2)If you have an idea for what you want to do that doesn’t match closely to anything on the list, that doesn’t disqualify your idea, as long as it has something to do with motivation of some group of people or animals or motivation in some pursuit or task (very broad: it can be expansion of something in the Petri book, as long as you use at least 2 other sources, something from your own life, something from other literature, et cetera).:

Fear: the Most Dreaded of Emotions

Hedonism

An Inquiry Into the Whys of Laughter

On Becoming Self-actualized: An Autobiographical Account

The Cultural Aspects of Anorexia Nervosa

Effects of Culture and Race on Eating Disorders

Extrinsic Motivation of Anorexia and Bulimia

Sexual Addiction

What Motivates the Acts of Adultery: A Marital Affair

Adolescent Substance

UseAlcohol and Suicide: A Deeper Connection?

Methamphetamine Motivation

Britney Spears’ Substance and Alcohol Abuse

Conditioned Responses and Learned Helplessness in Relation to Drug Use

How to Quit Smoking: Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0420293/  (Re: Zimbardo – A movie you might want to see)

Please create your own thread and respond to several of your peers. Minimum of two responses required weekly.

Topics this week:

1. Stanford Prison Simulation: Look for some of the information on the Standford Prison Simulation. Phillip Zimbardo maintains a website for the experiment, linking it to contemporary issues like the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib during US military action in Iraq. You should also be able to link this to World War II. Please look at this website and provide your reactions in terms of the legitimacy of this kind of research. Feel free to be totally honest.

http://www.prisonexp.org

As you think about the experiment, think about things like Nazi Germany when seemingly ordinary citizens behaved in very extraordinary ways… and not always good ways.

Think about what motivated them to alter their ‘regular’ behaviors. How many of us would alter our behavior under dire and stressful conditions?

OR, perhaps even better:

A Similar Experiment

Go here to consider this one: http://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html

Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience.

He examined justifications for acts of genocide offered by those accused at the World War II, Nuremberg War Criminal trials. Their defense often was based on “obedience” – that they were just following orders of their superiors.

The experiments began in July 1961, a year after the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised the experiment to answer the question “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?” (Milgram, 1974).

Milgram (1963) wanted to investigate whether Germans were particularly obedient to authority figures as this was a common explanation for the Nazi killings in World War II.

Milgram selected participants for his experiment by advertising for male participants to take part in a study of learning at Yale University. The procedure was that the participant was paired with another person and they drew lots to find out who would be the ‘learner’ and who would be the ‘teacher’. The draw was fixed so that the participant was always the teacher, and the learner was one of Milgram’s confederates (pretending to be a real participant).

You can choose to read about Stanley Milgram‘s experiment/s on obedience. Same things.. think about what motivated these people to alter their behaviors and continue the experiment.

Check out the movie that depicts this quite successfully: Experimenter (2015)

I watched it recently on either Netflix or Amazon. It was well done. And it did explain very nicely Milgram‘s motives. It also pointed out the flaws in his research.

Here are some sites to assist:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2013/10/02/the-shocking-truth-of-the-notorious-milgram-obedience-experiments/#.VtNH7eIm670

https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2013/09/28/stanley-milgram-and-uncertainty-evil/qUjame9xApiKc6evtgQRqN/story.html

http://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html

http://www.magpictures.com/experimenter/  (Re: Milgram – A movie you might want to see)

2. Read the first 3 chapters of Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Shyphillis Experiments. Cite three things from your reading that made a strong impression on you and discuss them here.

 

OPTIONAL: Go read about the Institutional Review Board and the Belmont Report and explain how the advent of the Institutional Review Board and the Belmont Report might have affected this type of experimentation (Stanford Prison) and discuss the changed meaning of appropriate research. Click on research ethics at http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/siegle/research/Ethics/ethics.htm

PAPER TO BE SUBMITTED TO TURN IT I NO PLAGIARISM
Summary of assignment
• Task: In this assignment you will write a list of at least 5 sources in alphabetical order in
APA format. In addition, each reference will be followed by a short analytical summary
of 150-200 words. At the end of the short summary, you will include a sentence or two
that critically analyzes the source and that mentions distinctive features about the article
and why it may or may not be useful for you in pursuing more research.
• Length: Each annotation should be 150-200 words.
• Format: APA
• Sources: Five sources, all of which you fill find through UMUC’s OneSearch
o All of your articles should be from scholarly journals or credible trade journals.
They should not be from popular journals.
Strategies in Selecting a Topic for your Annotated Bibliography