Brain-Writing Vs. Brainstorming Case Study For Power Engineering Education

Brain-writing is an alternative method to brainstorming. It is particularly useful with a group of people who are somewhat reticent and would be unlikely to offer many ideas in an open group session such as brainstorming. 6-3-5 Brain-writing (also known as the 6-3-5 method or Method 635) is a group creativity technique used in marketing, advertising, design, writing and product development. The technique involves 6 participants who sit in a group being supervised by a moderator. Each participant thinks up to 3 ideas every 5 minutes. The ideas are written down on a worksheet and passed on to the next participant. The participant reads the ideas and uses them as inspiration for more ideas. Participants are encouraged to draw on others’ ideas for inspiration, thus stimulating the creative process. After 6 rounds in 30 minutes the group has thought up a total of 108 ideas. Brain-writing involves silently sharing written ideas in groups. Relative to brainstorming, brain-writing, potentially, minimizes the effect of status differentials, dysfunctional interpersonal conflicts, domination by one or two group members, pressure to conform to group norms, and digressions from the focal topic. It might also eliminate production blocking, reduce social loafing, and encourage careful processing of shared ideas. The authors think that this method would help in the energy sector, with fast resolution of small failures in the system. To study the effectiveness of this method, 30 students were divided into groups of six persons. The results will be presented in this paper.