=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-536/paper-5
|storemode=property
|title=Knowledge Sharing Strategies for Collaborative Creativity
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-536/paper5.pdf
|volume=Vol-536
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ectel/SieBSR09
}}
==Knowledge Sharing Strategies for Collaborative Creativity==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-536/paper5.pdf
Knowledge Sharing Strategies for Collaborative
Creativity
Rory L.L. Sie1, Marlies Bitter-Rijpkema1, Peter B. Sloep1, Simeon Retalis2
1
Open University of the Netherlands, Centre for Learning Science and Technologies,
Valkenburgerweg 177, 6419 AT Heerlen, The Netherlands
2
University of Piraeus, Department of Technology Education and Digital Systems, 80
Karaoli & Dimitriou, 185 34 Piraeus, Greece
{Rory.Sie, Marlies.Bitter, Peter.Sloep}@ou.nl, {retal}@unipi.gr
Abstract. This paper proposes the use of Knowledge Sharing Strategies for
Collaborative Creativity (KSS4CC). These KSS4CC are a combination of
learning and collaboration flow patterns and creative techniques. This approach
allows for collaborative learning, whereas using creative techniques merely
focuses on the generation of ideas. By formalising them in XML documents,
they may be used to support moderators and users during the collaborative idea
generation process. Future work may include the formalisation of KSS4CC
using RDF, OWL or IMS Learning Design.
Keywords: idSpace, creativity, learning, collaboration, knowledge sharing
strategies, NPD, workflow.
1 Introduction
In new product development (NPD), people work together to arrive at new and
innovative products and solutions. This requires teams to be creative. Creativity may
be seen as a way of collaborative learning and thus needs support appropriate to that.
To support dispersed teams working in the context of NPD, the idSpace project
develops an integrated, web-based environment in which context-sensitive tools and
techniques together with pedagogy-based recommendations enhance a team’s
learning and collaborative creativity during the creative phases of NPD. Creative
techniques merely aim at fostering creativity, whereas pedagogical strategies promote
collaborative learning. We propose a merger of pedagogical strategies and creative
techniques into something we call Knowledge Sharing Strategies for Collaborative
Creativity (KSS4CC).
For many European firms, being innovative is crucial to sustain their market share.
To keep up with today’s dynamically changing global economy, they need innovative
solutions and effective product-to-market cycles. They do however face a number of
challenges, ranging from idea generation failures, transformation from concept to
product shortcomings, managerial issues and marketing problems. Structural
limitations in creative team performance include (1) ineffective learning in the project
team and (2) a lack of effective tooling to support collaborative creativity [1].
The missing link, in our view, is the use of pedagogical strategies that foster
knowledge sharing and development in collaborative learning settings. These
strategies include Progressive Inquiry, Think Pair Share and Jigsaw. They provide
predefined workflows that foster the co-creation and sharing of knowledge through,
for instance, a series of inquiry or structured knowledge sharing activities. This is
complementary to the use of creative techniques in the sense that pedagogical
strategies focus on fostering collaborative learning, whereas creative techniques focus
merely on the generation of ideas.
The KSS4CC will be used to generate recommendations on the workflow to be
used during a collaborative creativity session. Such recommendations may be divided
into three categories [2]:
1. Higher order recommendations, which will help a practitioner to choose
among the most suitable creativity strategy for a specific scenario/case. This
choice will be based on elements such as the type of learning objectives that
need to be accomplished, the complexity of implementing a whole strategy
and its constituent activities.
2. Organisational recommendations, that will involve decisions about the
formation of groups, leadership schema, etc.
3. Technological recommendations, that will concern the use of specific tools,
features for the implementation of the strategy into a real specific
scenario/case.
In this paper, we will only focus on the first recommendation type, the higher order
recommendations.
The structure of this document is as follows. In section 2 we will elaborate on the
concept of Knowledge Sharing Strategies for Collaborative Creativity. KSS4CCs
consist of higher order recommendations, which focus on the workflow during
ideation sessions. Section 3 we provide a way of formalisation of the KSS4CCs
described in section 2. In section 4 we envisage the output to the users of the system.
We draw our conclusions in section 5 and propose future directions of research.
2 Knowledge Sharing Strategies for Collaborative Creativity
(KSS4CC)
As discussed, we propose to combine pedagogical strategies and creative techniques
in order to support dispersed teams in being creative collaboratively. When combined,
they form workflows we call Knowledge Sharing Strategies for Collaborative
Creativity (KSS4CC). The KSS4CC aid the moderator, who in our view should
always be available to guide collaborative creative processes, in choosing the right
actions to present to the user. In other words, they provide workflows for
collaborative creation of knowledge (collaborative learning), whereas the creative
techniques and creative flow patterns (CreaFP) such as Six Hats Thinking [3] provide
strategies for collaborative creativity, that is, a specific type of collaborative learning
[1]. The KSS4CC may thus be regarded a superset of the creativity techniques. This is
shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: an overview of the relation between Knowledge Sharing Strategies for Collaborative
Creativity (KSS4CC) and Creative Flow Patterns (CreaFP)
2.1 Higher order recommendations
As already discussed, in our view, the KSS4CC is a specific type of support that is on
a high order (macro level) rather than support aimed at fostering the generation of
ideas, which is on the micro level [4]. KSS4CCs occur in the form of
recommendations to the ideation session’s participants and moderator. After thorough
examination of the characteristics of both pedagogical strategies and creative flow
patterns, we suggest to combine the following strategies and techniques into
KSS4CCs.
Table 1. Matrix overview of pedagogical strategies and creative flow patterns compatibility.
CreaFP / Progressive Inquiry Jigsaw Pyramid Think Pair Share
ped.
strategies
5W1H X
SCAMPER X
Disney X X X X
Six Hats X X
Thinking
Table 1 is based on characteristics of patterns and techniques defined by Grube et
al. [5]. They include operation types, such as the Boden creativity types exploration,
combination, transformation and evaluation [6]. Besides, the characteristics include
whether or not they focus on the problem and use question lists to facilitate the co-
creative process. Lack of space prevents us from detailing our arguments for each and
every combination. Details may be found in deliverable 1.3 of the idSpace project [2].
However, our choice for the combination of Progressive Inquiry and the Six Thinking
Hats strategy may for instance be justified by pointing out that both take into account
the problem definition and use different views for critical evaluation of ideas.
3 Implementation
We laid down our suggested combinations of strategies and techniques into
KSS4CCs informal XML documents. Other ways of formalising this knowledge
include the use of RDF, OWL(2) and IMS Learning Design . The reasons for not
choosing such languages are:
• There is a time constraint in building the current system prototype,
which is the first version of the system. We therefore choose to test the
use of KSS4CC by the participants of an ideation session first, before
investing time in more complex representations of our knowledge.
• The amount of relational data is not large enough such that it pays off to
use RDF or OWL(2)
These XML specifications mention several characteristics, such as the problem
complexity, how well the problem is defined or whether or not a problem is divisible
into sub problems. Below we provide an XML snippet containing such characteristics
for Progressive Inquiry.
pi
open
ill-defined
medium
yes
…
The workflow of Progressive Inquiry is modelled in an XML document that
consists of states and transitions between these states. These states are mapped to
processes or functions of the idSpace platform [7]. For instance, the state (action)
“Create Working Theories” may contain a link to the idSpace prototype process
number 10 (“Individually Generate Ideas”), which is denoted by the bold XML text
shown below.
create_working_theories
no
no
no
yes
yes
yes
10
By comparing the XML specifications with characteristics of the actual context
given, we will able to distinguish which KSS4CC to use. This will be explained in the
next section.
4 Exemplification of use
There still exists a gap in the formalisation of the knowledge and the actual use of this
knowledge by the users of the idSpace system. Therefore, we distinguish two ways of
presenting the user with information on the knowledge we formalised. Firstly, we
define user-directed support to be support provide to the user in the form of textual
explanations of the KSS4CC we would like them to work with. Secondly, we
distinguish workflow-oriented support, which is directed at the moderator of a
session. This type of support is aimed at recommending the moderator with an
appropriate workflow, given a certain problem.
4.1 User-directed support
When the system user would like to know about Progressive Inquiry, the idSpace
system switches to the appropriate XML specification and extracts the description of
the strategy Progressive Inquiry, which is:
Progressive inquiry relies on an idea of facilitating the same kind of good and
productive practices of working with knowledge -- progressive inquiry -- that
characterize scientific research communities in education. By imitating the practices
of scientific research communities, students are encouraged to engage in extended
processes of question- and explanation-driven inquiry. Accordingly, an important
aspect of progressive inquiry is to guide users in setting up their own research
questions and working theories. In practice, this means that users are making their
conceptions public and working together for improving shared ideas and
explanations. It is also essential to constrain emerging ideas by searching for new
information. Participation in progressive inquiry, in the present case, is usually
embedded in computer-supported collaborative learning environments that provide
sophisticated tools for supporting the inquiry process as well as sharing of knowledge
and expertise.
Similarly, the ideation session’s participant may be presented an explanation of the
actions that need to be performed within a KSS4CC. Below, we include such an
explanation for the Progressive Inquiry action “Create working theories”. Whenever
this action has to be taken, the idea generation participant will be shown the following
text:
“Think about /Write down your own working theories how to solve the problem.
Explore and combine steps from other problem solving meetings.”
4.2 Workflow-oriented support
We envisage the following use of the KSS4CC workflows. For example, when a
project starts, the moderator has several choices: (1) the moderator assigns
participants to the session or not, (2) the moderator defines the problem or not, (3) the
moderator chooses an appropriate technique. The first two choices are kept in
memory and the system subsequently analyses which of the KSS4CCs is most
suitable to assist the session’s participants. For instance, an ideation participant may
be facing a problem that is open, but ill-defined. If one looks at the specification of
the KSS4CC shown earlier, one sees that Progressive Inquiry is especially useful to
support ill-defined and open problems. The moderator may thus choose Progressive
Inquiry to be the main workflow for the ideation session. The system recommends a
combination of Progressive Inquiry and the Six Hats Thinking method to be the most
suited type of KSS4CC. The moderator is presented with the workflow of Progressive
Inquiry and he or she subsequently instructs the ideation process participants
accordingly.
5 Conclusions and Future work
We proposed the application of collaborative learning strategies to the domain of
creativity. Combined with the creative techniques they form workflows that we have
called Knowledge Sharing Strategies for Collaborative Creativity (KSS4CC). The
added value of KSS4CC lies in their combining of pedagogical strategies and creative
techniques. We exemplified the formalisation and implementation of our knowledge
in the idSpace platform. Besides, we indicated how the formalised knowledge can be
used within the idSpace platform that is currently being developed.
We envisage a number of directions for future research. First, we think that support
for the reuse of knowledge and expertise should be combined with the creative
process. For example, when teams are in an ideation session, and run into a problem
that is out of their scope, they need additional knowledge. This additional knowledge
may be provided by a person who participated in a previous project. During the
previous project, that person entered his or her knowledge and expertise in a profile
that was saved to the system’s database. The use of public profiles on networking
websites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Myspace to foster social interaction in
Learning Networks has already been argued by Berlanga et al. [8].
Second, we think that formalising the knowledge we have at this moment by
means of an ontology language such as OWL(2) may provide us with a more
elaborate picture of our knowledge. Another option may be the use of IMS Learning
Design [9] that allows for reuse. Both result in more reasoning power for the system
about the workflow and thus better support for the higher order recommendations.
Similar work has been done by Villasclaras-Fernández et al. [4], who modelled CSCL
scripts in an ontology to assist moderators in creating pedagogically sound
collaboration scripts. They do not, however, use problem characteristics to determine
which script to use. By formalising our knowledge, we will take this a step further by
recommending the moderator which script to use, depending on the problem
characteristics.
Third, we think a focus on the interactions between people in an ideation session
would help improve the KSS4CC recommendations. When people support each
other’s ideas by either consciously supporting them, or unconsciously through
building on someone’s idea, they form sub groups, or coalitions [9]. Various factors
influence the way people form such coalitions during the idea generation process.
Hierarchy, for example, could severely hinder the process of generating ideas, as
people necessarily tend to follow their boss’ idea that is of low quality, while other
people may have generated ideas that are of higher quality. Hence, people need to be
made aware of the value of their interactions in order to develop intrinsic motivation
for group behaviour [9].
Acknowledgments. We would like to thank Kees Pannekeet, Marjo Rutjens and
Petros Georgiakis. They contributed to this paper through their participation in the
idSpace project, in which this paper was written. The idSpace project is partially
supported/co-funded by the European Union under the Information and
Communication Technologies (ICT) theme of the 7th Framework Programme for
R&D. This document does not represent the opinion of the European Union, and the
European Union is not responsible for any use that might be made of its content.
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