Prof. Sandra Dingli and Dr Leonie Baldacchino, resident academics at the Edward de Bono Institute at University of Malta recently presented a paper at the International Conference on Creativity and Innovation (ICCI) in Osaka, Japan.

In this paper, they argued that students need to develop their creative thinking and digital literacy skills in order to adapt to the changing requirements of the future labour market. “A key role of educators is to prepare students for the future, but due to the exponential rate of change which we constantly experience, it is difficult to predict which jobs or professions will still be around when today’s young people leave school,” they said.

The Maltese academics’ visit to Japan was an opportunity to share ideas with leading international scholars in the field of creativity and innovation

In their paper on future skills, the academics argued that since most young people today are digital natives who spend hours daily on their digital devices, educators could capitalise on this by using technology to foster creativity skills that are transferable to other domains and real-life situations. During the conference also conducted an interactive ‘foresight’ workshop where participants learned how to use an idea generation technique to envision future scenarios for creativity education.

The conference participants showed a great deal of interest in the work of the Edward de Bono Institute, including in its part-time evening Diploma in Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and its Master in Creativity and Innovation.

During their visit Prof. Dingli and Dr Baldacchino also attended a board meeting of the Japan Creativity Society, attended the launch of the new International Association of Creativity and Innovation, and visited the Idea Marathon Institute in Tokyo.

The academics’ visit to Japan was an opportunity to share ideas with leading international scholars in the field of creativity and innovation, including Prof. Gerard Puccio, Prof. Ikujiro Nonaka and Prof. Fangqi Xu.

www.um.edu.mt/create

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