Author, educator and artist Robert Kelly is an associate professor at the University of Calgary where he is academic coordinator of the Collaborative Creativity for Social Innovation & Strategic Design graduate program in the Werklund School of Education and an associate professor in the Faculty of Arts in the Department of Art and Art History. His pioneering work in the area of collaborative creativity, creativity development, design thinking for innovation in education and educational transformation has been recognized nationally and internationally. Robert has developed and prototyped several courses and programs in these fields in teacher education at his home institution and as an invited visiting scholar at several universities across Canada.
His most recent volumes entitled Collaborative Creativity: Educating for Creative Development, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship and its accompanying resource book The Collaborative Creativity Idea Book for Educators: Activities, Tactics, and Strategies for Building a Collaborative Culture of Creativity make the case for the educational imperative of the development of collaborative cultures in education and across diverse organizations to maximize the innovation potentials of design and creative practice in both physical and virtual collaborative innovation networks.
This work was preceded by his volume entitled Creative Development: Transforming Education through Design Thinking, Innovation and Invention (2016) that makes the argument for systematic creative development as an essential pillar of educational practice. This book focuses on how systematic creative practice is operationalized across the educational spectrum to enable a culture of innovation and invention.
Robert’s ongoing, principal research focus has been on the concept of creativity development in educational practice. This involves how to operationalize the growth in creativity capacity of learners and educators from early childhood to higher education around the central guiding question of”How does one create educational environments that are conducive to longitudinal creativity development?” This encompasses detailed examination of a variety of educational perspectives: pedagogical approaches, curriculum theory and design, instructional design, assessment design for creativity development, educator education and training, educational physical plant and delivery mode design. His research further encompasses the interrelated developmental strands that contribute to comprehensive creativity development in education: collaborative and communicative development, intrinsic motivation development, research/investigative development, ideation development, experimentational development (prototyping), discipline competency development, critical thinking development, and creativity sustain development.
Robert is profiled on the University of Calgary’s Great Teachers website and has received numerous teaching excellence awards. He has been a featured national and international keynote speaker on the topics of collaborative creativity, creative development, design thinking for innovation and educational transformation and across public and private sector organizations.
Robert lives in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains in Western Canada not far from the gates of Banff National Park. His favourite past times often revolve around cycling, kayaking, and guitars…not necessarily in that order.