Dumber Together? Brainstorming in a Professional Learning Community

You have seen it before. The PLC agenda says, “Brainstorm ideas for…” You look around and see the chart paper, pens, and Post-It notes lying on the table, and you think to yourself, “Why do we waste the time.”

You know the rules of brainstorming in PLCs…
1. No criticism
2. Wild ideas are welcome
3. Quantity is the goal, the more the better.
4. Look for combinations of previous ideas and improvements on previous ideas.

You also know that it helps if your PLCs…
1. Stay focused
2. Stick to one conversation at a time
3. Get visual and physical
4. Use chart paper, white boards, Post-It notes, etc.

You know all these things. But does it work the way you hope it would. Are your PLC brainstorming sessions effective? Are they creative? Do they produce quality ideas to drive instruction and increase student achievement?

According to Keith Sawyer, author of Group Genius, “In many organizations, the group ends up being dumber than the individual members.”

Why you ask?

Because, according to Sawyer, “…decades of research have consistently shown that brainstorming groups think of far fewer ideas than the same number of people who work alone and later pool their ideas.”

In other words, instead of brainstorming, you should brain assemble. Put the ideas generated by individual teachers alone into an “idea pool” an assemblage of ideas.

It not that these rules of common brainstorming don’t work, it just that they work best when done by one’s self. “These studies just show that the rules work better when people use them alone than when they use them in groups.”

A lot of bad ideas are of no use to a PLC. What is needed is a lot of good ideas, or at least as many good ideas as the team is capable of generating.

But what makes an idea “good?”

According to Sawyer, we often judge ideas based on the wrong criteria. “Most people use the wrong criteria to evaluate their ideas; they think about what will work, about what worked before, or about what is familiar to them.”

What if you judged ideas based on how creative, how original, how unique, or how valuable they are? If you knew this is how ideas generated by PLC team members would be measured, chances are the teams would generate more creative ideas. You should give directions to your PLC teams that explain this.

Sawyer refers to this as “critical instructions.”

Telling your PLC that we want well thought out ideas that meet the instructional needs of students, ideas that are practical, unique, valuable, and high quality; no silly or impossible ideas.

Establishing an evaluation criterion for ideas sounds counter-intuitive, but Sawyer cites studies that show brainstorming sessions are more productive when participants are told their ideas will be evaluated for creativity and that, in fact, participants are more creative than with no criteria at all.

So instead of just telling your PLC teams to fill up a piece of chart paper with ideas, give them “critical directions” and judge them according to your pre-established criteria. You will turn brainstorming into an effective PLC tool, instead of a time wasting activity that fills ups chart paper but does nothing to improve quality of ideas developed using "critical instructions" and "idea criterion." Use the "new rules" of brainstorming.

Comments

[kanor74]

Why not employ this great idea by having the PLC members pool their individual ideas into a Google Doc, or if the PLC has its own Ning or collaboration platform, add the question at hand and ask for input there. This also saves on the number of meetings to which one needs to set aside time to attend. PLC's are great, but the more global PLN can also be a great source for ideas and information to bring back to the PLC at home.

[DeirdreB]

I find this article very frustrating because my experience with brainstorming is very different from the unsourced information here, “…decades of research have consistently shown that brainstorming groups think of far fewer ideas than the same number of people who work alone and later pool their ideas.”

In my considerable experience, individual ideas built on the ideas of others and the patently ridiculous creates a break in tension that often inspires more depth from others. I've used both single sessions and pooling and they both have worked. Single session takes less time although electronic resources such as Google Docs may make that less of an issue.

[Rob Jacobs]

Kanor74, I totally agree with what you are describing. I have developed my own model based on the new realities that technology allows. I call it the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative. See: http://educationinnovation.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/07/welcome-to-the-revolution-the-professional-networked-learning-collaborative.html

[Rob Jacobs]

Deirdre,

My experience tends to mirror yours. I found that individual ideas built upon other ideas is powerful technique. Using wild or ridiculous ideas can be a valuable springboard to practical ideas.

However, there is a great deal of research cited in the book the seems to support the claim against group brainstorming.

The source of the quote is, as I mentioned in the post, from the book Group Genius by Keith Sawyer. The research he cites comes from...

A.F. Osborn, Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Problem Solving.

A.K. Offner, T.J. Kramer and J.P. Winter, "The Effects of Faciliation, Recording, and Pauses on Group Brainstorming," Small Group Research 27

D.W. Taylor, P.C. Berry, and C.H. Block, "Does Group Participation When Brainstorming Facilitate or Inhibit Creative Thinking?" Administrative Science Quarterly 3

M. Diehl and W. Stroebe: "Productive Loss in Brainstorming Groups: Towards the Solution of Riddle," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 53

E. Weisskopf-Joelson and T.S. Eliseo, "An Experimental Study of Effectiveness of Brainstorming," Journal of Applied Psychology

T.J. Bouchard and M. Hare, "Size, Performance, and Potential in Brainstorming Groups," Journal of Applied Psychology 54

Also see..
I.L Janis, Victims of Groupthink: A Psychological Study of Foreign-Policy Decisions and Fiascos.

[Perry Wiseman]

I think that this could go either way—depending on the circumstances. For one, if the group is bustling with trust, then the traditional "brainstorming" session can generate some great ideas.

In my experience in creating a PLC, whereas teams are working effectively and interdependently towards common goals, it is best to switch things up a bit. Take out the monotony! There are a slew of processes that can assist—e.g., online surveys, Open Space Technology (awesome!), Appreciative Inquiry, and other unique methods to engage large groups.

Check out a brief article on the use of anonymous processes to help urge all to participate in generating and winnowing ideas. This will help with weaning the group off having 1-2 individuals take "control" of the ideas.

http://wisefoundations.wordpress.com/2009/11/05/leadership-the-strategic-use-of-anonymity-in-decision-making/

Best of luck!
Perry