Awakening: “The Sociological Imagination” Through Creativity

For my SaPP, I was asked to research what creativity is, why it is important to students, and create activities for students to strengthen their creative skills. To form my activities, I used a sociological lens, but also made my activities generic so that any professor could use my work. Specifically, I used the sociological imagination to develop my activities. C. Wright Mills, coined the term “the sociological imagination”, he explains that we must use our imagination to understand why personal issues are connected to greater issues we face as a society. Through my activities, students will face personal challenges and be encouraged to reflect on how these challenges affect broader society. My activities can be used during tutorials or lectures. To break this assignment down I developed a video about what creativity is and why it is important for students, an instruction manual for creative class engagement activities, and a deck of 12 creative class engagement activities to strengthen students' creative skills. In my work I discovered creativity is not an innate skill, we are not born with it, but it can be learned and strengthened. My findings concluded that engaging in creativity effectively is a process that requires observation, trial and error, and collaboration. Through this process, students can become critical thinkers, gain resiliency, and develop strong problem-solving skills.