Brainstorming is the group practice of ideating and applying thoughts to produce a result or analyse a given data. The active learning method involves students to the core and makes learning even more engaging. As different people have different ideas, sitting together and discussing something can bring a lot of creativity and alignment to produce great ideas and solutions to problems.
The term was used by the American advertising executive and author Alex Faickney Osborn in his book Applied Imagination in 1953. In his book, he also suggested that the groups involved in brainstorming must have clear problem statements. He used the concept of using the power of the human brain to storm problems.
There are three main types of brainstorming practices-
1. Verbal brainstorming – Where the entire brainstorming is done verbally, and the ideas are discussed orally with each other
2. Nominal group technique – In this method, evaluation and voting is done on the brainstormed ideas that have been developed.
3. Electronic brainstorming – As many people are remotely connected, such brainstorming techniques refer to the use of an online medium for discussing and producing ideas.
The process has helped create many innovative and newer ideas for educational institutes and business units.
