Lakeland Students Learn Innovation Leadership Through Play

Students in Dr. Adrienne Levay’s Innovation Leadership course in Lakeland College were challenged to “paint an animal, vegetable, or mineral while incorporating your face.” Photo Caylie Gnyra

A few months ago, I had a dream that I got to return to 4-H camp—my most-loved summer activity in adolescence—as an adult. Sitting in on Dr. Adrienne Levay’s Innovation Leadership course for first-year Bachelor of Agriculture Technology (B.Ag.Tech.) students felt like my dream had come true.

The course ran weekly for the winter semester with a classroom lecture component complemented by a six-week lab component. It was the lab component that was really the star of the course. With the support of a grant from the Royal Bank of Canada’s Future Launch program, Dr. Levay devised a series of challenges for the students, delivered through an adaptation of the British game show Taskmaster.

In her preface to the game, Dr. Levay had shared the following passage from Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire’s book Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind. “As adults, cultivating a childlike sense of play can revolutionize the way we work. We tend to think of work—even when it is creative in nature—as being serious and difficult. And of course, successful creative people tend to be very serious about their field and put hours of hard work into what they do. But the most eminent creative minds learn to balance seriousness with fun and enjoyment in one’s work. Playing with work gives us a certain lightness and flexibility when generating new ideas and also helps motivate us to continue to work long hours without becoming too stressed or depleted. When it comes to creative work, there is a time for seriousness and a time for play, and very often, the best work arises as a result of combining the effort and ease

As many of us know well, we tend to lose the spirit of play and fun as we grow older, as our lives become dominated by work and seriousness. In the words of George Bernard Shaw, ‘We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.’ But that doesn’t mean we can’t infuse playfulness back into our adult lives. One experiment asked college students to imagine either that their classes had been canceled for the day or to envision being their seven-year-old selves in the same situation. The students who imagined themselves as excited children gave more creative responses on a subsequent test of divergent thinking. It just goes to show that playful curiosity can help us break free from conventional ways of thinking.”

Each week, five or six students were pitted against each other in a series of challenges while the rest of the class formed the audience. The first task to be completed each week was called the Prize Task, in which students were asked to bring a particular item from home. The student with the best item had the good fortune of taking all the other Prize Task prizes home. Examples of the Prize Task included “Bring in the best hairy thing that is not alive,” which resulted in offerings of a fox pelt, a dinosaur pinata, a kiwi, sheep wool, purple eyelashes, and a fuzzy worm, and “Bring in the weirdest wooden thing,” which brought in, amongst other things, a used wooden toothpick. Many students made the case for their offering by claiming they were thinking laterally, a key concept in the classroom that the Interaction Design Foundation describes as using “indirect and creative methods to think outside the box and see problems from radically new angles, gaining insights to help find innovative solutions.” The Taskmaster, Dr. Levay, awarded one to five points to each person based on how well they met the outlined task.

The second task given each week was called the Long-Term Task, in which students had two weeks to prepare something following the directions they were given. Such tasks included “Write and illustrate a bedtime story for adults” and “Use the Kinder egg provided and put in the most surprising thing for the Taskmaster to find.” Taskmaster Levay was visibly surprised to find that one student had hidden soup in the Kinder egg. Again, students were awarded one to five points.

The third task each week was an Individual Task. One week, students raced against each other to set up a pop-up tent, change into the onesie found in the backpack that had been provided, jump out of the tent, and salute the Taskmaster. Another week challenged them to toss mini stuffed rabbits into the hole cut through the top of a plastic top hat on the top of their heads while holding their hands behind their backs. Some students opted to work together, taking turns filling each other’s hats. When queried whether students could bend the rules, the Taskmaster would reply, “All the information is in the task.” Students often took this statement to mean that anything that wasn’t explicitly written in the task could be worked around, and in several cases, worked together with a competitor to increase their chances of success.

The fourth task each week was a Team Task, where participants were divided into teams to compete against each other. One week, one team member had a minute to write out as many obscure animals as they could think of, and then had to play charades to try to get their teammates to guess which animal they were acting out. Another week, teams were challenged to have the front person in a line draw out the picture their teammates had drawn on their back.

The final two tasks each week were Individual Tasks, where again, students tried to earn up to five points. In the first week, students were challenged to complete the most detailed and accurate rendering of the Taskmaster on a balloon in 100 seconds. In one of the most challenging tasks, participants were tasked with picking up mini rubber ducks and dropping them into a bucket using a reach extender while wearing goggles that flipped their vision upside down. In another task, one participant in particular masterfully applied the concept of thinking laterally: when given the challenge of getting as many green Skittles out of a bowl of mixed Skittles and into an empty bowl while wearing boxing gloves, the student wrapped the boxing glove strap around his wrist with the fist part dangling to the side, leaving his hands free to expediently sort. Other students solved the problem by using their mouths to pick up and drop Skittles, while others tried their best to manoeuvre using the cumbersome boxing gloves. Upon realizing the successful student’s technique, the class agreed that he had been thinking laterally, and conceded that he deserved the highest points.

Each week, students assessed each other’s participation levels, which will be integrated into their final grades.

On March 21, Dr. Levay’s Taskmaster challenge had its final face-off, with the winners from each of the previous weeks competing for a coveted prize. The finalists provided their reflections on the efficacy of the course. “It really teaches a person to pick their brain to complete a task,” said Ashten Form. “It challenged you to look at your surroundings and see value in what you wouldn’t normally think of. Being aware of your surroundings and how they can help you,” said Travis Lundgren. “You’re encouraged to think outside the box, but sometimes the simplest answer is the right one,” countered Sebastian Bradley.

Ava Moller, who was declared the winner of the game, said, “It was really fun to try the new tasks and try them under pressure. It’s fun to try to think around a task.”