The present contribution tackles the issue of creativity in educational contexts and in particular in online collaborative learning environments. The contribution proposes a model to evaluate collaborative learning activities oriented to the development of skills and attitudes underpinning the creative expression. The model is used in this study to evaluate two real online activities, based on two different collaborative techniques (namely the Role Play and the Discussion), so that it is possible to make some considerations about the two techniques and their ability to foster those skills and attitudes underpinning creativity.
The debate around the concept of creativity is quite recent and has even recently
received a new impulse given the fact that 2009 has been declared Year of
Creativity1. Usually, when one considers the “creative act”, one thinks at ideas or
discoveries which have had an impact on the human history.
Shneiderman (2000)
refers to such kinds of episodes by defining them as “revolutionary” and in doing
this he stresses the extemporaneousness of the creative act, as well as the
unpredictability of the innovative discovery. Nonetheless, Shneiderman refers also to
another kind of creativity, namely an “evolutionary” act resulting from the
rielaboration of existing parts/data into a new, coherent whole. Obviously, this latter
kind of creativity may spring out of a single mind, but – even more frequently –
may stems out from interactions among people while working together, sharing
paradigms and know-how
(Fischer, 2005; Fischer et al., 2005)
. Thus, nowadays
there is a growing tendency to consider creativity also as a result of a social
activity, by recognizing that the creative process may well take place thanks to the
interactions of an individual with the environment and with others as well. Thus the
complex concept of creativity can be placed in between evolutionary and
revolutionary creativity, individual and social creativity, where all these terms should not
1 http://www.create2009.europa.eu/
be considered dichotomies, but rather they are components of a multi-facet
system, where one component may support and strengthen the other ones.
Sternberg
(2005)
even argues that there is not only one creativity, but rather we should talk
of a number of “creativities”.
While on the one hand such a debate on creativity definition is still ongoing, on
the other one the concept is very often associated with that of innovation
(Markkula, 2006)
. Innovation, as it is defined by the Council of the European Parliament2,
is the follow up of the creative process, something which stems from the
application of new, creative ideas into concrete and specific contexts and which is
explicitly recognized as valuable by the society
(Fischer, 2005)
.
Starting from these considerations and thanks to some research studies
(Nickerson, 1999; Csikszentmihalyi, 1997; Torrance et al., 1989)
, creativity has started
been increasingly looked at as something that can be potentially stimulated
through adequate learning tools and methods
(UNESCO, 1972)
; at the same time
– if one assumes that creativity is something that must have an impact on society
and brings some kind of innovation - it is evident that it would be a non-sense to
try to evaluate creativity in an educational context, as here - while it may well
happen that students produce original artifacts – it is far less probable that they are
able to create something which will impact on our society. What might
alternatively be pursued (and thus evaluated) is the ability of students to combine ideas,
links concepts, their curiosity and positive attitude towards new solutions and
finally their capacity to look at what they are doing, judge it and find out suitable
(re)actions. In other terms, in order to understand whether and to what extent an
educational activity is able to cultivate students’ creativity, one should look at the
process along the learning activity itself
(Burleson, 2005; Edmonds & Candy,
2002)
and keep under control the development of a set of skills and attitudes that
might lead to the creative expression.
This paper, after proposing a model for the evaluation of learning activities
oriented to creativity, illustrates the results obtained by the application of such a
model in two real online collaborative activities, based respectively on a Role Play
and a Discussion, with the aim of reflecting on the ability of each of the two
collaborative techniques to develop those abilities and attitudes that may constitute the
background of creativity.
2 Towards a model to evaluate learning activities oriented to creativity
In order to tackle the issue of evaluating TEL experiences aimed at developing
skills and attitudes oriented to creativity, one should start from the substantial
2http://db.formez.it/FontiNor.nsf/b3f0568a004094c0c1256f57003b7fa1/F18BCC24BAECCE91C1
25742C004A61B2/$file/Anno%20europeo%202009.pdf
agreement that seems to exist among researchers
(Amabile, 1996; Sternberg,
1999; Torrance et al., 1989)
that creativity is grounded on cognitive capacities
(understanding and building knowledge), on meta-cognitive abilities (i.e. the
capacity of perceiving and elaborating weaknesses and strengths of own reasoning
and/or actions), and also on an affective involvement in the tasks to be performed
(which implies positively accepting the task and actively work to reach the
intended goal).
As to the cognitive aspects, three fundamental indicators have been identified
by referring to the New Taxonomy of the Educational Objectives proposed by
Krathwohl (2002)
, where creativity (defined as the ability of “putting elements
together to form a novel coherent whole or make an original product”) is considered
the top educational objective to be met. Following the arguments put forward by
these authors, in fact, the three cognitive indicators of creativity are:
o Generating, a process which involves the mental representation of the
problem at hand (whatever it could be), in all its aspects and details, possibly
making comparison with other problems/situations (instantiated by actions such as:
combine, estimate, compare, state…).
o Planning, namely the process of figuring out and mentally designing
problem solutions or even defining methods and plans to achieve a goal
(instantiated by actions such as: predict, infer, hypothesize, design, define…).
o Producing, that is the process which deals with the actual enactment of
what was generated and then planned and that may give rise to the creative act or
product (instantiated by actions such as: build, enact, apply, test, verify…).
As to the affective aspects, by referring to the existing research in the affective
domain field
(Bloom et al., 1956; Rovai et al. 2009)
, two indicators have been
adopted, able to account for students’ attitudes towards:
o Receiving, or paying attention to stimuli. This is denoted by involvement
and immersion in learning activities and includes being curious, motivated, trying
over and over…
o Responding, or reacting to stimuli. This refers to the actual expression of
positive/negative feelings: satisfaction, joy, disappointment, excitement,
depression, fear….
As to the meta-cognitive aspects, following the recent works of both
Kim et al.
(2009)
and Murphy (2008), three main indicators have been considered, namely
those related to the students capabilities of:
o Monitoring the enacted learning process, which implies the attitude and
the ability of recalling and evaluating one’s own cognitive process, by also
evidencing strengths and weaknesses.
o Regulating one’s own behavior on the basis of the
perception/understanding of previously performed actions (which also means reviewing,
controlling and tuning the activities by carrying out possible improvements, etc.).
o Evaluating one’s own activities/performance from the viewpoint of the
final outcome; this implies acquiring the awareness of what has been done by
criticizing single actions in the light of a comprehensive estimation / judgment of the
results obtained.
3 Context and method of research
In recent years the Istituto Tecnologie Didattiche (ITD) – CNR has designed and
run several editions of a blended course for the “SSIS”, which is the Italian
institution providing initial training to secondary teachers. The courses commissioned to
ITD are on the topic “Educational Technology” and their main educational goal is
promoting the development of instructional design competence, with special focus
on the evaluation and selection of learning strategies, techniques and tools and on
the implementation of educational technology in the school context. The courses
proposed by ITD are based on a CSCL (Computer Supported Collaborative
Learning) approach. During online activities students are usually subdivided in groups
(typically 20-25 persons per group) and they are engaged in tasks (discussing a
topic, solving a problem, studying a case, etc.) with concrete outputs to produce,
which act as catalysts of interaction and collaboration among peers. This paper
reports on a particular edition of the course, namely the one run by ITD in Veneto in
2008. During that particular edition of the course students were 21 and were
coordinated by a tutor. Interactions among students and with the tutor occurred within
Moodle. During the course students were proposed, among the others, two online
activities, lasting 3 weeks each, the former being based on a Role Play, the latter
being based on a simple Discussion among peers. The total number of messages
exchanged during the examined activities is 439 (209 messages exchanged during
the Role Play, 230 exchanged during the Discussion).
In order to gather data within this study, content analysis techniques have been
used to analyze the messages exchanged among students. The unit of analysis
chosen was the “unit of meaning”
(Henri, 1992)
and a total of 1517 units were
found in the selected messages (each unit could be assigned one indicator only)3.
4
Results and Discussion
The following Figure illustrates the main results obtained by the content analysis
of the messages exchanged by the students during the two activities. In particular
the Figure shows the number of units detected by the coders for each indicator of
the model during the Role Play and the Discussion.
3 The inter-rater reliability between the two coders (i.e. the agreement between the two) was
calculated on a sample of 140 messages (30% of the total messages), and resulted 0,87 (Holsti coefficient)
and 0,82 (percent agreement).
300
250
200
150
50
0
META
COGNITIVE
123
87
As one may note in Figure 1, indicators follow a similar trend during the two
activities and the differences in values are not so evident. This may suggest that
none of the two techniques is in principle better than the other as far as developing
skills and attitudes oriented to creativity (at least not in our study). Still, some
differences exist when looking at the various indicators of the model singularly. For
example, the Role Play shows a better capacity to develop both Generating and
Planning indicators (cognitive aspects), while the Producing indicator is rather low
in both the activities. This can found a reason in the fact that none of the two
techniques explicitly envisaged a phase of “application” of the solution negotiated by
the students.
The Discussion reports higher values in the affective dimension (both for
Receiving and Responding indicators) and this may be explained by the fact that,
while during the Discussion students were let free to express themselves, during
the Role Play students were instead asked to pretend a certain role and thus they
may have not felt the need to express their feelings, attitudes or behaviors, that
consequently remained tacit.
Finally, the meta-cognitive aspects are more triggered during the Role Play
(Monitoring, Regulating and Evaluating indicators) than during the Discussion.
All in all, as one may expect, our data indicate the Role Play as more able to
foster the cognitive and meta-cognitive skills, while the Discussion seems to be
more effective as far as the affective sphere is concerned. This should be taken
into account by the designer/teacher of the learning process, who may choose a
technique or another depending on which creative-oriented skills and attitudes s/he
wants to foster more.
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