=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2524/paper3
|storemode=property
|title=Between creative process and creative product: DoCENT mooc for the integration of technology, creativity and learning
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2524/paper3.pdf
|volume=Vol-2524
|authors=Luigia Simona Sica,Michela Ponticorvo,Orazio Miglino,Franco Rubinacci
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/psychobit/SicaPMR19
}}
==Between creative process and creative product: DoCENT mooc for the integration of technology, creativity and learning==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2524/paper3.pdf
Between creative process and creative product: DoCENT
Mooc for the integration of technology, creativity and
learning
Luigia Simona Sica[0000-0001-5587-8097]1, Michela Ponticorvo[0000-0003-2451-9539]1 Orazio
Miglino[0000-0002-7331-6175]1,2 and Franco Rubinacci1
1 University of Naples Federico II, Via Porta di Massa 1, 80133 Naples, Italy
2 ISTC-CNR, via San Martino della Battaglia, 44, 00185 Rome, Italy
lusisica@unina.it
Abstract. In this paper, we describe an approach that integrates in an
educational tool, namely a MOOC, creativity and digital aspects. Starting from
a brief introduction on the attributes that such an approach must have: creative,
digital and “open”, this paper describes how these aspects can find their place in
educational contexts, giving birth to creatively digital and digitally creative
learning environment.
Keywords: Mooc, Creativity, Technology, Learning
Introduction
Creative, digital and “open” are three key-words to describe socio-cognitive
challenges of our era, pervasive in every aspect of our daily life. Educational research,
mirroring this twist, has generated many methodologies, tools and practices exploiting
the potential of technology in education. However, the effort to bridge technologies
and open resources with creativity in a learning process remains quite low. This paper
describes how creative, open and technological can become the core attributes of new
training approaches and tools.
Creative, digital and open
Creative. Creativity is a term that indicates the cognitive ability to create and invent
something new and valuable. A wide definition describes creativity as the ability to
generate ideas, insights and solutions that possess the feature to be original and
flexible [1, 4, 6] or original and effective [5]. Thus, the term “creativity” refers to
Copyright © 2019 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
different dimensions about which there is not a shared consensus [18]. Anyway,
according to Rhodes four Ps model [17], we can identify four relevant dimensions,
different sides of this complex concept: a. Process; b. Product; c. Press; d. Person. The
first dimension, process, is connected with the cognitive dimension of creativity that
leads to new ideas. In a schematic representation this process can be divided in
different steps: first of all, the problem or the task is identified, thus triggering the
subsequent steps that include preparation, response generation and validation, the
communication to others, at the end, the outcome. Creativity consists in following
these steps in an unforeseen and unusual way, anyway leading to a new product.
Product is indeed the second dimension of creativity and includes material elements
such as artefacts, artworks, innovative tools, as well as immaterial elements including
theoretical perspective, new frame of reference, etc. Also, the external environment,
press, where creative process takes place, plays a relevant role. The fourth dimension
is person and refers to personality and cognitive traits that define a creative person.
They include broad interests, independence of judgement, openness, intrinsic
motivation, creative self-concept [2, 7,10, 11, 20].
Creativity is therefore important, at individual level, as an individual resource [21], a
way to adapt and as a latent power. In fact, literature highlighted that creativity could
be interpreted as an individual resource, mostly in terms of adjustment. Indeed,
creativity was considered one of the main personality traits useful both for adaptation
and maladjustment of individuals to environment [10].
Digital. Technology is pervasive in many fields, including education where it has
produced the so-called Technology Enhanced Learning approach (TEL, learning
boosted by technology), a broader and more far-reaching idea than concerns the
impact on learning and teaching. Recent international studies [22] have in fact
highlighted how the use of tools in digital mode is now part not only of people habits,
but directly affects the cognitive, affective and relational development of individual
from the early stages of life. Moreover, from a socio-relational point of view, it is
evident how the use of new digital technologies (transposed online, see social
networks) is configured as a real form of social activity [14]. Recently, some research
approaches have proposed to join the digital side to the physical ones [8, 9, 16, 25,
26], giving an idea of how much is relevant the digital in the present days.
Open. "Open" has become a crucial word in the last decade [12, 13]. The "open"
philosophy has inspired one of the most important educational movements in the last
decade (Open Access) whose basic idea is to promote shared values and principles in
the way of thinking about creation, organization and sharing of knowledge,
conceptualized as a common good [24].
Teaching/learning contexts have hosted "digital" and "open" idea: the first principle
of the open philosophy in education is that the sharing of "knowledge is a good thing
to do" and the sixth declares: “open sharing will speed up the development of new
learning resources, stimulate internal improvement, innovation and reuse” [15].
3
The DoCENT MOOC
MOOC is an open access type of online course (Open Access), which provides for
extensive participation via the web (Massive) based on the use of open educational
materials (OERs) that can be produced by the institutions themselves that organize
these courses, or even taken freely from OER communities. The term MOOC,
acronym of Massive Open Online Course, coined by David Cormier [3] now refers to
a variety of online and blended courses.
The DoCENT Mooc hosts the first attribute, creative, as well. Indeed, Online modules
in the MOOC focus on how to use the technologies suggested by the project and how
to apply them in educational contexts to promote digital creativity. Following a
sandbox approach, teacher educators will be able to choose among the available
modules, according to their teaching interests, objectives and contexts.
The Docent MOOC covers the main issue of the DoCENT project, Digital Creativity
ENhanced in Teacher education, funded under ERASMUS + framework. It will be
made up of 8 lessons, with textual material and introductory videos. The goal of the
MOOC is to give teachers and teachers' educators some indications to make their
lesson more digitally creative and creatively digital and to describe some tools that
can be included in their teaching routines [19, 23].
Moreover, each lesson is enriched by relevant additional materials. The on-line
modules focus on how to prepare teacher educators to teach creatively through digital
technologies. They include the MOOC and the OER.
According to the project, the curriculum includes the following topics:
Table 1. DoCENT Mooc main topics
- Main concepts and pedagogical approaches around digital creativity
- Introduction to the model of digital creative teaching competences for ITE
- Pedagogical approaches and associated technologies to foster digital creativity, i.e.
GBL (Minecraft, Game Maker, etc.), robotics (e.g. Lego Mindstorm and Wedo), manipulative
and tangible technologies (e.g. Blockmagic)
- Design and application of digital creative learning scenarios, based on teachers’ interests
and areas of expertise
Following this structure, the MOOC index is the following:
Lesson 1: Digital creativity in education
UNIT 1 - Defining creativity
UNIT 2 - Creative education
Lesson 2: Digital creativity in education: the DoCENT approach
UNIT 1 - DoCENT competence framework for digital creative teaching
UNIT 2 - Digital creative pedagogies: GBL, tangible interfaces, educational robotics and
STEM education.
Lesson 3: Approaches and tools for integrating digital creativity in Teacher Education
UNIT 1: Game-based learning, gamification and serious games
UNIT 2: DoCENT approach to GBL
Lesson 4: Digital creativity through tangibles interface
UNIT 1: theoretical introduction,
UNIT 2: application and examples
Lesson 5: Digital creativity through educational robotics
UNIT 1: theoretical introduction,
UNIT 2: application and examples
Lesson 6: Digital creativity for STEM education
UNIT 1: theoretical introduction
UNIT 2: application and examples
Lesson 7: Inquiry-based learning
UNIT 1: theoretical introduction
UNIT 2: application and examples
Lesson 8: Evaluation about Digital creativity
UNIT 1: evaluation models and framework,
UNIT 2: evaluation tools
The DoCENT MOOC is hosted by the Federica platform, that provides:
- a learning space: the platform will host the learning activities of the MOOC on-
line modules, the serious game and the OERs.
- a collaboration space: the platform will offer a wide range of social networking
tools to facilitate communication (either synchronous or asynchronous) and
collaboration, e.g. forum, wiki, blog, chat, online videoconferencing. These
5
functionalities will facilitate the development of partnerships among teacher educators
and EdTech stakeholders, as well as the creation of a sustainable CoP. Furthermore,
users will be able to upload their own resources (user generated content).
Conclusion and future directions
In the challenge that education is called to meet, a relevant role is played by
teachers, as they are, together with students, the leading characters on the education
stage. In education, creativity can stimulate imaginative activity generating outcomes
that are original and valuable in relation to the learner and digital technologies can be
the medium to promote creativity, under the guidance of teachers that promote
creative expression by the means of digital tools, teach how to use digital tools in a
creative way, design, implement and propose to learners creative learning scenarios.
The DoCENT Mooc represents an open digital source, theoretically based and
psycho-pedagogically validated course to explore and boost up teachers’ creativity
processes in order to implement creative educational products, that in turn promote
students creative learning.
Acknowledgment
The DoCENT project (Digital Creativity ENhanced in Teacher education) is co-
funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union, in the call Key Activity 2
– Strategic Partnership and runs between October 2017 and September 2019.
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