Serendipity35

I signed up for "A Crash Course on Creativity" MOOC being offered through Stanford University's Technology Ventures Program http://venture-lab.stanford.edu.  It runs from October 17 - December 7, 2012.

From what I have read about the Venture Lab, it started with some crowdsouricing and polling via social media which generated about 80,000 people who said they'd be interested in taking an online course.

They designed the platform, called Venture Lab, with the goal of collaboration which is different from other MOOC platforms that are predicated on individuals doing work on their own.  Venture Lab wants to take advantage of the social and experiential aspects of learning.

The "crash course" is designed to explore several factors that stimulate and inhibit creativity in individuals, teams, and organizations. In each session there is a focus on a different variable related to creativity, such as framing problems, challenging assumptions, and creative teams.

The course is experiential and won't be effective for anyone who just logs in and looks around. Each Wednesday a new challenge is presented, and the results are due the following Tuesday. Some of the challenges will be completed individually, and some will be done in teams. There will be a two-week project toward the end of the course that will allow you to use all the tools you have learned.

To foster collaboration and learning between the students, teams are created for each assignment. Each project will be done with a different team, so students get a chance to work with a wide variety of participants. All submissions will be viewed and evaluated by the course participants. There will also be a course Twitter feed and Facebook page, and several scheduled Google Hangouts that will enable active discussions on specific topics.

The recommended textbook is inGenius: A Crash Course on Creativity by the instructor, Tina Seelig. She is the Executive Director for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), the entrepreneurship center at Stanford University's School of Engineering, and the Director of the National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation (Epicenter). She teaches courses on creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

The workload is supposed to require between 1-5 hours a week. The tech requirements are a computer that allows you to watch the video lectures, and the ability to upload your assignments, which will be images, videos, slides, and text. You will also be required to collaborate with teammates via email, skype, and other free online tools.

This is an introductory course designed for anyone, anywhere in the world. There are no prerequisites. It would be helpful to have basic skills taking digital photos, creating slide, presentations, and creating short videos for your homework submissions.

Because this course focuses on creativity, evaluation of the projects is necessarily subjective. With goals to provide thoughtful feedback on submissions and to showcase the most creative solutions for each challenge, the entire class will be involved in providing feedback on the assignments. The more projects you review, the more feedback you receive on your project. Also, you will be getting guidance and feedback on your evaluations in order to make sure they are as accurate and constructive as possible. The projects that are the most highly rated will be showcased on the course home page.

Subject to satisfactory performance and course completion, you will receive a statement of accomplishment signed by the instructor. This statement will not stand in the place of a course taken at Stanford or an accredited institution.