The SCAMPER technique is an innovative and valuable technique that helps to create new ideas. This technique is used in a lot of fields ranging from designing to teaching. This brainstorming technique compels a person to observe your service or product from seven different perspectives.
SCAMPER is an acronym for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify/Magnify, Purpose, Eliminate/Minimize and Rearrange/Reverse. Each of these tools will help you develop innovative and creative ideas for improving services and developing new products.
SCAMPER Tools
- Substitute – The first tool is to search for a part of the teaching process, substitute it with something else, and observe the results. Testing with an alternative always helps you to understand which one works better for you.
- Combine – Sometimes, combining two different kinds of teaching processes might turn out to be a great idea churning out better processes and better products.
- Adapt – Sometimes, the solution is right before us, yet we do not realize it. Adapting from your surroundings and the environment helps you develop solutions way earlier and quickly than we expect. For instance, adapting different types of games from the environment will help students relate to lessons in a far better manner.
- Modify/Magnify – Another method to come up with an easy solution to an existing problem would be to modify or add or remove any aspect in the teaching process to give you a new perspective that will help you look at things differently.
- Purpose – This method is similar to the adapting method. However, this method is more about incorporating an existing idea to the one we are working on right now based on the purpose of the new one.
- Eliminate/Minimize – As the name suggests, this concept is about removing any inefficient process. This also helps in streamlining the process.
- Rearrange/Reverse – Sometimes, reversing the original working process, the direction of the process, or the orientation helps to observe things from a new perspective. For instance, teaching in one particular manner for an extended period might not be fruitful, and reversing the order might be beneficial.
SCAMPER Technique in Teaching
The goal of any teacher is not just to make students learn their school lessons but also to enhance their thinking capacity and help them become critical and creative thinkers. The SCAMPER technique provides a practical and organized way to enhance creative thinking, intuition, imagination, and original ideas.
Robert Eberle developed this technique, and it was initially applied as springboards for problem-solving and brainstorming sessions. It was an outcome of a checklist created by Osborne where creative skills were organized in this method. Over the years, it has helped students develop new ideas and amend and transform those ideas. This technique has been considered a great tool in building awareness, flexibility, originality, and flexibility.
Benefits of the SCAMPER technique in Teaching
It has been widely appreciated that the SCAMPER technique is hugely successful in several fields, including teaching. Let us delve deep and analyze how it has been beneficial in the field of education.
- Firstly, the SCAMPER technique has helped students achieve their science learning goals and grow their interest in science, technology, and engineering. By incorporating more classroom activities and creative and practical lessons, more students now love science and math instead of being afraid of them. Instead of memorizing content without good understanding, students now can choose from several creative science activities from different grades.
- Secondly, inventive thinking and problem-solving capabilities developed among junior high students with the help of this method of teaching. Younger students find it easier to understand and comprehend ideas and concepts of physics or math or programming. It is always observed that children’s potentials are better discovered when thrown into circumstances where they are inventive.
- Thirdly, the research process has observed significant improvement with this method as this technique provides the opportunity to incorporate collaborative activities, new concepts on research, critical analysis, and creative examinations.
- Finally, the SCAMPER technique also helps in teaching kids more imaginatively. The concept would include taking an existing idea and then manipulating and implementing it in a new manner. When a kid’s imagination goes blank, introducing this technique would help recreate and reinvent objects helping them understand lessons better.
- From 2nd graders to 4th – 5th graders, most teachers use different games and utilize this SCAMPER technique to bring out the best among children. Further, teachers who work for specially-abled or gifted students find this technique even more helpful as it helps them interact with them in a far better manner.
Implementing the SCAMPER technique
Implementing the SCAMPER Technique in the field of teaching is not a very difficult job. This can be done in between lessons by giving them SCAMPER-related homework or playing games with the students. In each of these cases, what is required primarily is to take a particular lesson or subject as the starting point. Then start asking questions following the step-by-step SCAMPER technique. Apply your questions to the values, benefits, critical thinking, and analysis so that you can cover most of the areas of the lesson. Look out for the answers that you receive from all the students. Keep the good ideas in mind to explore the ideas further. The rest of the answers may be silly, but that is fine as long as you can generate more and more ideas and some brilliant ideas come out of these sessions.
Conclusion
In recent times, problem-solving, critical thinking, and creative thinking are hugely applicable abilities that are implemented in online and classroom teaching. They help a lot in contributing to the innovative and developing strategies, which will help improve the teaching and the learning process and help elevate the students’ learning experience to a higher level. The reach of this technique is so well-received that it is used across all disciplines, starting from research to services to experimentation to product manufacturing.
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