Creative freedom in new course yields unexpected student engagement


Photo by Mike Welchhans

When Kevin Mullinix, an associate professor and undergraduate director in Political Science, decided to change things up for a new course in the Fall of 2022, he had no idea how powerful it could be to give students creative freedom to express course concepts.

The new course focused on conspiracy theories and misinformation, and it fit perfectly into Mullinix’s research and teaching about how people form their attitudes and why they believe what they believe.

In other courses, Mullinix uses traditional assignment approaches such as research papers or summaries.  In the new course, he challenged students to demonstrate their understanding of a particular concept or idea in a creative, engaging way. They responded by turning in everything from videos to a children’s book.

“It blew me away,” Mullinix said. “It was astonishing. They went above and beyond anything I thought they were going to do in terms of their creativity, but also the amount of effort they put into it.”

The idea to use a creative approach to demonstrate an understanding of a course concept took Mullinix out of his comfort zone. The assignment idea was something he had heard was being used by other political scientists and decided to put his spin on it. He asked students to explain concepts from the course to a broader, non-expert audience in a non-traditional way. Students were allowed to communicate what they had learned in the class any way they wanted – almost.

“I told students, ‘I don't want a research paper, and I don't want anything akin to PowerPoint-like slide presentations,’ ” Mullinix said.

He provided students a short list of potential creative options. Some of the formats on the list were familiar topics ranging from podcasts to videos. Students could work on the assignment individually or in a group. Along with the creative portion of the assignment, they submitted a memo explaining the concept they were exploring. He also required them to use peer-reviewed research to describe the concept.

“The memo was pretty short,” Mullinix said. “I wanted the bulk of their time to be focused on this creative demonstration, and they were encouraged to make it as creative as possible.”

In the end, the students submitted projects ranging from a children's book to a scripted podcast to magazine-style articles, songs, poems, and even a website.

“I think it gave students an opportunity to demonstrate that they knew a concept that they might not have been able to show in another mode,” Mullinix said.

He used a rubric for grading, focusing mainly on the academic memos. Using a rubric freed Mullinix from grading the creative content and allowed him to focus on the accuracy with which student discussed a particular concept.

With a new semester underway, Mullinix plans to take his experience using creative approaches to student learning and engagement to larger classes.

If you would like to find out more from Mullinix, you can reach him at kmullinix@ku.edu