e-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning

14.1. What Are Thinking Skills?

Creativity training programs are popular. Over 25 percent of organizations with over one hundred employees provide some form of thinking or creativity skills training (Scott, Leritz, & Mumford, 2004). But what is creative thinking? Scott and her colleagues (2004) define creativity as involving "the production of original, potentially workable, solutions to novel, ill-defined problems of relatively high complexity" (p. 362). From designing websites to troubleshooting equipment problems, creative problem solving spans a broad range of workforce activities. In this chapter we use the terms creative thinking, critical thinking, and problem solving interchangeably to focus on the skills that help workers solve new ...