I just returned from a visit to The Teaching Company.  You may have seen their ads in the Wall Street Journal or any number of other publications; they develop and sell videotape and audiotape courses by the U.S.’s best professors.  I was honored to be invited there to do what they call an “audition lecture” of 30 minutes.  We’re talking about developing a 24-lecture course in “cultivating creativity” that is research based.  What would you like to see in such a course?

My first thoughts are to use the outline of my book Explaining Creativity, an overview of the research about creativity.  I’ve just signed with Oxford University Press to write a second edition of this book.  Although it was just published in 2006, the research has progressed rather rapidly since then, and there are enough new findings that a second edition is necessary.

And on a related note: I’ll be on sabbatical from Washington University for the next 12 months, and will be in residence at three different locations:

1. Four weeks this summer at the San Francisco Exploratorium;

2. Three months, the fall term, at the University of Cambridge, England;

3. January through May 2010 at the Savannah College of Art & Design.

I plan to put these three experiences together and write a book about how to teach creativity.