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UNF professor facilitates "Creativity and Innovation" through online workshops

Ferman in his home officeLen Ferman, an adjunct professor of management, has taught the "Creativity and Innovation” course to both undergraduate and graduate students for more than five years. The course provides students with an overview of the innovation process and ways to develop creative solutions to problems. With the university’s recent transition to remote instruction, Ferman and his students have put their innovation skills to use to in preparation of moving a group-centric class to the online space.

To help students feel close to the in-classroom environment, Ferman created a plan to host group meetings on the remote conferencing service, Zoom. These Zoom meetings, facilitated by students designated as “meeting leaders,” gave students the opportunity to present their product and service concepts for their fictitious "client” and receive helpful feedback and constructive criticism from individuals from other groups.

Both the students and Ferman agree that the online workshop was a success. The Zoom meetings helped replicate the in-person workshop experience by keeping students engaged and provided an intimate and productive space to work that vastly differed from the typical group meetings in a classroom. The overall quality of the final concepts submitted were “as good or better” than concepts the professor has received from students in past semesters.

With the success of the first online workshop, Ferman plans to continue using Zoom as a resource for future workshops and final team presentations.

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Innovation