This week’s challenge was to choose an existing artefact and modify it, into something new. Pure creativity is always an area I’ve struggled with, often hitting “the wall” and being unable to think around it.

When this happens, I try to break out of my current thinking and onto a different plane. It can be as simple as switching to the standing desk, going for a walk, meditating, or occupying my mind, wholly, with some other task.

On this occasion, I went back to read one of the course recommended books, “Cambridge Handbook on Expertise and Expert Performance”. I was particularly struck by Chapter 2 “A Sociological/Philosophical Perspective on Expertise: The Acquisition of Expertise through Socialization”.

The different types of specialist expertise correspond to common-sense understandings of expertise.

The first three categories — beer-mat knowledge, popular understanding, and primary source knowledge — denote the kinds of understanding that can be achieved solely by using resources such as magazines, books, academic journals, Google, YouTube videos, and so on. As these sources do not involve direct interaction with specialist communities, none of the tacit knowledge that is unique to a specialism can be acquired. In contrast, the last two categories — interactional expertise and contributory expertise — depend on immersion in the relevant community as this is the only way to acquire the specialist tacit knowledge needed to become a more complete expert in an esoteric domain.

Source: Collins, H. and Evans, R. (2018)

I saw a correlation with a recent project I had been working on, specifically, meshtastic.org. I have been interacting with the code for a few months now, keeping up with the daily posts on the discourse site, but have not had the confidence nor ability to make a real contribution. Here was my opportunity to level up my specialist expertise and contribute.

Reflection

After submitting the rationale and creative process, I’ve had some time to reflect on the learning. I was initially very concerned that this wouldn’t be seen as creative enough, and outside of the bounds of an acceptable submission, so much so that I reached out to the module tutor and questioned it. He reassured me that it sounded good, and not to overthink it.

I also realized that I had failed to read the background material prior to taking on the challenge. Discovering the background reading is 282 pages, I don’t feel quite so bad. Simplifying the concept of “remediation”, to mean “fixing something”, I think my submission fits the concept better than something more traditionally creative.

References

  • Collins, H. and Evans, R. (2018). A sociological/philosophical perspective on expertise: The acquisition of expertise through socialization. In K.A. Ericsson, R.R. Hoffman & A. Kozbelt (Eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance. 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press. Available at: https://search-credoreference-com.ezproxy.falmouth.ac.uk/content/title/cupexpert?institutionId=4357&tab=contents [accessed 30 Sep 2020].

  • ‘Brainstorming: Generating Many Radical, Creative Ideas’. 2020. [online]. Available at: http://www.mindtools.com/brainstm.html [accessed 27 Sep 2020].

  • ‘Techniques for Idea Generation: Mind Maps’. 2015. Cleverism [online]. Available at: https://www.cleverism.com/techniques-idea-generation-mind-maps/ [accessed 27 Sep 2020].

  • ‘Opposite Thinking’. 2020. Board of Innovation [online]. Available at: https://www.boardofinnovation.com/tools/opposite-thinking/ [accessed 27 Sep 2020].

  • ‘Ideation Method: Mash-Up’. 2020. IDEO U [online]. Available at: https://www.ideou.com/pages/ideation-method-mash-up [accessed 27 Sep 2020].