3 Ways to Make Students More Original

When we are training as creatives, we are inside a vast playground of possibilities.
And not only in creative education: in any formative stage, but especially in creative ones, the core activity should be play, exploration, and experimentation — not results.

Results will come later.
The professional world will demand them, often excessively.

Understanding education as a long playground — an open laboratory for testing ideas without fear — doesn’t make weaker professionals. It makes stronger ones.

Here are three ways to cultivate originality in students without adding workload.

1. Assess Risk, Not Precision

Most educational systems reward correctness.
Creativity needs something else: risk.

When students know they are evaluated for precision, they learn to play safe.
When they are evaluated for risk, they learn to explore.

This doesn’t mean ignoring rigor — it means shifting the signal.
The message becomes:

“Dare first. We’ll refine later.”

Students who are rewarded for attempting something bold develop a different creative muscle: courage.
And courage is the raw material of originality.

2. Daily Micro-Exercises of Remote Connection

Originality doesn’t come from big assignments.
It comes from frequent small collisions.

A daily micro-exercise — 3 to 5 minutes — asking students to connect distant ideas trains their associative thinking without adding pressure.

Examples:

• Connect today’s topic with an object in your backpack.

• Relate this concept to a movie scene, a smell, or a childhood memory.

These tiny practices accumulate silently.
Over time, they rewire how students see relationships between things.

3. The Two-Version System (Emotional Draft + Rational Version)

Most students are taught to filter ideas too early.

The two-version system separates creation from evaluation:

1. First version: fast, emotional, intuitive, imperfect.

2. Second version: structured, reasoned, refined.

This protects the fragile moment where originality appears.
Students learn that emotion is not the enemy of intelligence — it’s its ignition.