במסגרת עבודת מחקר שלי שהחלה בשנת 1997 לצורך קבלת תואר שלישי, בדקתי כיצד ניתן לעודד יצירתיות בסביבת האינטרנט.אני מציגה כאן את ממצאי המחקר באנגלית ובהמשך אפרסם כאן מאמר שהתפרסם בנושא.קריאה מהנה, ד"ר רוז בראוןRose Braun PhD
Learning Communities: how Does the Internet environment enhance creativity in school-based learning communities?
A Dissertation in partial fulfillment of the requirements of Anglia Polytechnic University for the degree of Doctor Of Philosophy. Submitted: August 2001
Abstract
The explosion of knowledge due to the information revolution requires that the focus of the curriculum and teaching be transferred from imparting knowledge to developing skills that will enable students to cope with a rapidly changing world. One very important skill is creativity, the eternal source of mankind’s intellectual and physical treasures.
The central question of this research is: can the Internet environment be exploited as a means of enhancing creativity, in teaching, learning and the processes that mediate between them? The research rests on the assumption that creativity can be nurtured and enhanced. The conceptual framework supporting this assumption includes taxonomy of future abilities and skills, and the components of intelligence essential for success in studies, work and other aspects of life.
The research presents a space covering 10 hypotheses, and the findings were striking in the case of 4 of them. The hypotheses supported by the research form the basis for a theoretical model of enhancing creativity in an Internet environment.
The research methodology is based on extensive reading in these two areas – creativity and the Internet – and on the Virtual Museum of Fashion Design and Costume, a project involving a broad network of schools. The information was collected and evaluated in real time, in parallel with the construction of the Museum web site. The research sample constituted a virtual learning community, which does not pretend to represent more than it self. In other words, the research is based on case studies and triangulation of information collected using a variety of tools. At each stage of the research, different means were brought into play.
To sum up, this is a qualitative research, which does not involve statistical analysis of findings, but rather expresses a holistic approach. Its validity derives from the use of a range of tools: observations, interviews, analysis of site content and other documents.
The findings strongly confirm 4 basic hypotheses linked to the enhancement of creativity in the Internet environment: cooperation versus individualism, constructivism, flexibility and multi culturalism. According to the model that emerges from these hypotheses, entry to the Internet provides immediate contact with people engaged in the same activities. The surfer collects ideas from them in a serendipitous process, and combines them with his own ideas, thus constructing a world picture. This picture is not rigid in the deductive sense, it is branching and flexible. Thus, cooperation with others and exposure to cultural variety, of encouraging the Internet surfer to create new combinations, that is, it stimulates his creativity.
Conclusions
The conclusions of this research support the theory arising from the findings and can be applied to the model described below. The research hypotheses and questions that were derived from the findings, in their last definition, indicate the central topics that emerged from the research, including additional secondary topics.
The first question concerned teaching and learning processes that enhance creativity in the Internet environment. The second question concerns the processes mediating between teaching and learning that enhance creativity in this environment. The secondary topics arising from field work deal with how characteristics and learning environment of the creative student, and how a learning community that shares information on a common subject, enhances this creativity. There is a discussion of the question of whether creativity can be taught, and other topics arising from the findings, such as teaching and learning methods that enhance creativity, the taxonomy that enhances creativity, ways of assessing creativity, and of minimising factors that hamper it in the Internet environment.
The process of constructing a theory based on findings
During analysis of the qualitative findings and construction of the theory, use was made of analytical inductive tools, continual comparison, and analytical typology.
The process of analytical induction is not compatible with statistical analysis methods. The first stage of the process included a review of the findings, in order to extract initial categories and phenomena, with reference to the internal links between them, and thus arrive at the preliminary hypotheses. At this stage three top-level categories were defined. During the second stage findings were collected with reference to these categories, and there was greater clarification of phenomena.
At all stages of the research, categories and phenomena were compared using a range of research tools – observation, interviews, analysis of documents and web pages. Phenomena could thus be triangulated and examined across categories, facilitating redefinitions, the addition of categories and phenomena, and the merging of categories with more general phenomena. Collection of data for the construction of categories ended with saturation of the findings, and the definition of two top level categories that were formulated as two general questions, each including secondary topics, defined as sub-questions.
Use was also made of analytical typology, to enable classification of the taxonomy that enhances creativity, and division of the features of the creative student into cognitive, affective and practical characteristics.
These processes facilitated construction of a theory encompassing the findings that support the research hypotheses regarding enhancement of creativity in the Internet environment.
Main findings
The purpose of the discussion of hypotheses is to confirm or refute the assumptions underlying the proposed theory. Since the research methodology is qualitative, hypotheses cannot be proven statistically, and at most it is possible to state that certain phenomena are broadly conspicuous and to demonstrate this with a quantitative presentation of supporting data. The central question is, therefore, how do the findings, as expressed in the research questions, support the ten hypotheses.
Prominent research hypotheses
All the research hypotheses were supported by the findings, but the greatest degree of support was for: cooperation versus individuality, constructivism, flexibility and multiculturalism. The findings indicate internal links between the hypotheses, which expand our understanding of how the Internet environment enhances creativity.
Conclusion regarding Cooperation versus Individuality
This hypothesis presents the creative person as an individualist, who often rebels against conventions, but at the same time, for his ideas to grow, he needs constant contact with and feedback from others. The findings show that the Internet environment can indeed respond to these two opposing extremes.
The hypothesis received its greatest support in question 5, dealing with teaching and learning strategies. This support can be explained with reference to constructivist teaching strategies, which encourage cooperation and interaction between students and others, connectivity, and forums that promote creativity.
Characteristics of the hypothesis: access to information that allows cooperation in the sense of distributed cognition, cooperation made possible by exposure to creative people, although there is also a need for social consent regarding the creative outcome, adopting and adapting existing ideas, tinkering, and dialogue through forums. The medium must be transparent and cooperative to facilitate comparing ideas, asking questions, with a bridging sheet for reflection. Cooperation is required to create a supportive classroom climate.
Other findings supporting this hypothesis are those arising from question 2, indicating cooperation in a learning community for the purpose of: uniting around a common theme, support for emotional needs, unity that rests on the strength of individuals, high attributed status, personal and collective responsibility, freedom to be together as well as apart, flexibility, cooperation, social interaction, accepting socially based meaning, independence of judgement, freedom of expression, supportive criticism, mutual feedback, tolerance, value criteria for assessment, and openness.
The findings of question 3 indicate that the following characteristics of the learning environment enhance creativity: a transparent, participatory environment, that promotes opportunism, improvisation, randomness, exposure to creative people who provide opportunities for new combinations, a flexible environment allowing users to make contact or withdraw, adapted for both individual and cooperative work.
The taxonomy also shows the necessity of cooperation for enhancing creativity: it is needed for thinking with others, in order to add patches, adapt, compare and combine.
Question 7 deals with the necessity of cooperation for presenting ideas to others and having the outcomes evaluated by them.
Question 8, which is concerned with minimizing factors that hinder creativity, stresses the need to build tools for cooperation and highlights the importance of moral aspects such as ethics, intellectual property and integrity.
Conclusion regarding constructivism
The crystallisation of the final creative product from the initial idea relies on constructing the knowledge and means inherent in the idea. This hypothesis was confirmed by the links made by students between their work and other work and sites on the Internet. The connectivity of the Internet may also encourage the process of producing the creative result.
The main support for this hypothesis was in the findings dealing with teaching and learning strategies. The explanation may be that connectivity and bridging pages are perceived as shared cognitive activity, in which the student constructs meaning from the bridges and links he builds from different items of information found in various places.
Connectivity contains dimensions of cooperation, flexibility, multiculturalism and exposure to creative people, all of which create opportunities and learning situations that encourage experimentation, in the transition from the idea to the product.
Conclusion regarding flexibility
An environment backed by flexibility helps to actualise potential creativity. This hypothesis was confirmed since the findings showed that teaching in the Internet environment, which permits far greater flexibility, is preferable to conventional teaching.
The hypothesis was strongly supported by the findings of questions 3 and 5. The findings from question 3 show that creative students move freely in the Internet environment between the extremes of individuality and cooperation: they work together and alone, give and receive feedback on ideas, serendipitously adjust and adopt ideas from others, copy in order to improve their own products, know how to combine and transfer knowledge, previous experience and skills depending on changing situations, in order to realise their ideas.
Additional striking support emerged from the findings of question 5. Learning situations, teaching means and learning activities in the Internet environment provide a wide variety of presentations of content that meet the need of different thinking styles, which influence the variety and flexibility of evaluation measures. And finally, teaching strategies in the Internet environment offer support for positioned learning.
Conclusion relating to multiculturalism
According to this hypothesis, the broader the student’s intellectual and cultural horizons, and the greater his potential for creativity. The findings show that the Internet environment facilitates links with an enormous variety of cultures, offering combinations that stimulate creativity.
The hypothesis is strongly supported by the findings of question 5. The transparency and accessibility of the Internet to so many cultures and individuals (Collis, 1997) as well as to the social and cultural context of the subject under study, expose teachers and learners to vast possibilities, expand their viewpoint, reveal different cultural values, enable research in varied cultural environments, develop positive and tolerant thinking about unknown and different societies, encourage disciplinary and interdisciplinary links, assist with meaningful learning anchored in a context and an interface, to expand learning into new areas. This is the recommended learning environment that allows students to build their own world picture through creative combinations.
We see that there are internal links between the hypotheses, which broaden our understanding of the Internet environment as enhancing creativity.
Discussion of hypotheses that were less strongly supported
Two hypotheses that were not satisfactorily confirmed were: anonymity and virtuality.
Anonymity
The research hypothesis concerning anonymity was that students’ creativity is often not expressed in class because of psychological and social barriers. The findings do indeed show that the Internet helps to overcome these barriers by maintaining absolute anonymity for surfers, but support of the hypothesis was not strong.
This may be explained by stating that while anonymity is opposed to cooperation, it is possible that other stronger forces are at work in the Internet. The advantage of the Internet lies in cooperation, and for a community of learners, personal interactions are important. As the findings show, for some people such interaction would be impossible without anonymity, so for these people anonymity is an essential condition for cooperation.
It is interesting that a withdrawn person, who has difficulty building partnerships in daily life, can do so on the Internet, thanks to the anonymity it provides. The presence of anonymity is not particularly striking in itself, but it shows through cooperation. The fact that it does not appear at the extremes of other hypotheses is not accidental, since the literature (Amabile, 1985) indicates the importance of anonymity in creativity, although in this research, its importance is shown in the support for hypothesis 3, cooperation versus individuality.
Virtuality
Creativity, particularly in areas of art and design, is closely tied to exposure to a variety of audio-visual means, which promote the development of imagination. Perhaps this hypothesis has some support in the findings showing that the Internet environment is likely to enhance creativity because of the multifaceted means it offers (sound, picture, movie, animation, text, etc.).
Breaking down technical barriers
Here the hypothesis was that help with technical means would enable creative outcomes to be achieved more quickly. (For example: the option to change colours quickly.) The findings supported this hypothesis slightly, showing that the technical abilities offered by the Internet can indeed accelerate the process of achieving creative products.
Why was the support for these hypotheses weak? Perhaps the questions dealing with these hypotheses were not sufficiently distinguishable in the eyes of the research subjects. Breaking through technical barriers is a necessary condition for exploiting the multifaceted opportunities of the Internet.
So how can creativity be enhanced in the Internet environment?
According to the research findings, the Internet offers immediate and serendipitous contact with people dealing with the same field. They are a source of ideas, with which the learner can construct his own world picture. This is not a deductively rigid picture, but one that branches flexibly. Thus partnership with others and the exposure to the multicultural environment stimulates the construction of new combinations, and thereby enhances the learner’s creativity.
These topics are in the Internet environment, and the contact points between them are those that enhance creativity to burst out.
Enhance creativity in the Internet
Cooperation versuse Individualizem
Constructivism
Flexibility
Multiculturalism
Conceptual Conclusion
The conceptual framework of the theory emerge from the findings rests on three focuses that enhance creativity in the Internet environment.
One is represented by aspects of intelligence for success, according to Sternberg’s theory, which is discussed in the introduction to this research. To be creative, one must find the balance between the analytical, the creative and the practical aspects of intelligence.
Another focus is represented by the taxonomy defining future abilities and skills, as Bloom and as expanded by Pessig, as Krathwohl and Kibler. The taxonomy that enhances creativity in the Internet environment is expressed by the balanced interaction between cognitive, affective and psycho-motor traits that the student makes in his work. The taxonomy is less linear, more associative, less thinking alone, more with partners. For a description of this, refer to the discussion of the findings of question 6, which deals with the taxonomy that enhances creativity in the Internet environment.
The third focus emerge from the research findings concerns the enhancement of creativity in the Internet environment, illustrated through the four most prominent research hypotheses: cooperation versus individualism, flexibility, constructivism and multiculturalism, which are discussed at length in this section of the summary.
The three components of the conceptual framework enhancing creativity :
1. Intelligence for Success
2. Cooperation versus Individuality, Flexibility & Constructivism
3. Taxonomy defining future abilities and skills
This framework defined the boundaries of the research and enabled definition of research questions that would deal with teaching and learning methods that enhance creativity in the Internet environment. This framework was also the basis for the growth of a theory, grounded in the field and presented in the research.
The model
The theory that emerged from the research framework suggested 4 topics for the model of enhancing creativity in the Internet environment. The model describes the interaction between these elements and shows how their joint influence on creativity is greater than their individual influence. The model suggests an increase in the quantity and quality of outcomes due to the interaction with the Internet environment.
Limitations of the research
In my opinion, the main fault of this research is that its context is derived from a virtual museum dealing with a very defined topic, while I believe that the conclusions are also applicable to other areas of arts and creativity. It may be possible to formulate and support these more general conclusions in further research into creativity in other fields.
It was impossible to plan the research process in detail in such an innovative environment, and the pace of development of the research (its timetable) in terms of methodology had to be adapted to the development of the Museum. This included searching for research tools suitable for each stage in the construction process. Precise planning of the research process was impossible in such a new environment, and it was necessary to adjust the pace of the research (the timetable) in terms of methodology to the pace of development of the museum. This adjustment included searching for suitable research tools for each stage in the process of construction.
A belief in the necessity of studying a cultural and social environment in its natural state, without the researcher’s intervention, and the wish to complete the research with findings relating to the process of embarking on the evaluation project, both extended the time required to collect data and study the research cases.
One-off events collected for the research had to be immediately documented and analysed, creating an overload of visual, verbal and textual material, that could only be sorted and slotted into the research at a later date.
The fact that I, an inspector in the subject of fashion, am studying teachers in the same subject, may be a source of bias. I have tried as far as possible to remain aware of this risk and to isolate my personal views. On the other hand, I had a better understanding of the teachers and was able to give a better explanation for their statements, and the documents and events I observed.
Recommendation for the future
At first, the research appeared to focus on the Virtual Museum, but the outcomes of the findings were more significant, and dealt with artistic creativity in general. Therefore, I would recommend similar research, using the same hypotheses regarding creativity, but with a broader context, covering other areas of design and art, such as architecture, music and the plastic arts. With a broader context it will be possible to expand the model and thus prepare a general guide for teachers, showing them how to enhance creativity.
Another suggestion is to choose outstanding creators and designers from various fields of art and design, show them the results of the research, and examine their reactions.
The model suggests a further direction for study: an examination of the quality and quantity of the outcomes derived from an interaction with the Internet environment.
Research questions all answered
The findings obtained from the research questions and secondary questions all supported the research hypotheses. One central question concerns teaching and learning methods that enhance creativity in the Internet environment, and the second central question concerns the processes that mediate between teaching and learning in this environment. The most prominent responses to these two questions indicate that it is possible to enhance creativity in the Internet environment, mainly through cooperation and cognitive, affective and practical flexibility, using the constructivist approach to teaching and learning, and through the multi culturalism which expands the student’s intellectual horizons.
Research statement – explained
This research deals with creativity in the Internet environment. The findings confirm the declaration that this environment enhances creativity, and teachers and students alike are doing their utmost to minimize the factors that hinder the process. The ability of teachers and students to overcome these obstacles, a typical character trait of people considered creative, encourages them to find unconventional solutions to the problems posed by the Internet environment.
Contribution to knowledge
Construction of the model: The contribution of this research to knowledge is consistent with a global need of everyone who uses the Internet. In this sense, the research is innovative as a means of enhancing creativity, from the viewpoint of teachers and students engaged in creating an original learning environment, such as the Virtual Museum of Fashion Design and Costume. For the first time, this research studied a group of teachers in Israeli high schools who are learning how to use the Internet while simultaneously constructing the Virtual Museum.
The research offers an explanation enabling construction of a theoretical model that describes the possibilities for enhancing creativity inherent in the Internet. The model can be used to plan, develop and disseminate guidelines for teaching and learning strategies and auto-instructional materials that enhance creativity in the Internet environment, as well as future skills and abilities in the direction of situated learning.
The proposed model can also serve as a basis for preparing taxonomy of use of the Internet for creativity, graded according to the prominence of the hypotheses.
The theory grounded in the research findings contributes new knowledge, providing a basis for additional research, assisting in planning educational policy for the studied context, and in designing flexible models of teaching for enhancing creativity in the Internet environment.
The research also provides a glimpse of the emergence of a unique phenomenon, and as the researcher, I had the opportunity, in the course of the research, to construct a curriculum for a chain of schools in Israel, relying on the unique theoretical basis suggested by the research.
Epilogue
Thoughts and deeds: This research began with a personal search for learning models to enhance creativity in fashion design. Recent developments in learning materials, distributed on CD, have not sufficiently stimulated their target audience of teachers and students to progress in this direction. The latest interactive CD, containing links to designer and museum web sites, was enthusiastically received. Some of the 400 teachers who reviewed it participated in a 4-hour meeting, including experiences, while others participated in a longer training course of 28 hours. Identifying the factors behind its success shed a strong light on the phenomenon, and urged me to study it more deeply.
At the same time as the interactive CD was issued, the department of fashion in one of the schools I inspect developed a model for Internet-based teaching, described in the introduction to this paper.
The post-modern philosophical approach and the constructivist educational view harmonise with my educational attitudes, and formed the soft pillow on which I rested in my support for the proposed teaching model. Intuitively I felt that this model contained the seeds of a breakthrough. The turning point came in December 1998, when I invited teachers from the schools to take part in the process.
My personal curiosity, a desire to delve deeply into things, strong pleasure at finding original ways of enhancing creativity in teachers and pupils, and belief in the idea, drove me to start the research process. Then the “madness” began. On one hand I didn’t want to miss any activity relating to the construction process, and I began documenting every encounter on video; on the other hand, I was busy organising a research framework, reading methodological literature and literature supporting the pedagogic aspects of the research topic, as well as other studies shedding light on the subject of the Internet.
My reading enabled me to look at the subject from different angles, and from different educational and social points of view. It formed the basis for construction of the conceptual framework of the research.
I was flexible in adapting my research tools, so that they would not interfere with the process while allowing me to collect a wide variety of data. I conducted an internal dialogue, examining myself after each stage of the research.
My wish not to interfere, but to study things in their natural state, led me to stand aside, and this aroused numerous questions regarding my professional activities. The main question concerned the place of the discipline in this new learning environment.
During the past decade, the educational system in Israel, including myself, has been concerned with the question of a compulsory core curriculum. This curriculum is intended to relate to those elements characteristic of the desirable graduate of the system, and to create links between general cultural and disciplinary content and the skills and abilities necessary for an educated person to find his or her place in Israeli society and be a full citizen of the civilised world. On one hand, there is the need for a core curriculum as an organising and guiding basis, and on the other, the desire to allow freedom of thought.
The idea is to select a certain core of all educational activity and define it as expressing the essence of the educational process and the essential outcomes, which students should strive to achieve and take with them into adult life.
The findings of this research point us in the direction of situated learning, in the sense of preparing learners for a full life in society, to make a civic, public, national and professional contribution. Schools are a living environment that provide experiences and create various learning opportunities, which nurture desirable personal qualities and values, and equip students with life skills, while taking account of the unique nature of each individual, and of the social pluralism that characterises our reality. Of course, without content it is impossible to foster abilities and skills.
According to the approach proposed in this research, disciplinary content is a means for developing the abilities and skills that learners need now and in the future, and both the skills and the content are subject to re-evaluation and review in accordance with the changing reality. Thus we must reassess the content of each discipline in the light of the skills, abilities and personal qualities defined in the core, and apply the results to a new curriculum.
This research contributed to my professional development, gave me a deeper understanding of the skills and abilities that future society will require, and provided me with a basis for questioning the place of the discipline in this context. Contact with the research subjects helped me to appreciate the micro phenomena; as it has been said, “God is in the details”. These understandings allowed me to prepare a curriculum in the spirit of the findings at macro level. I hope that the ideas, suggestions and considerations appearing in this research will indeed contribute to deep and constructive thinking on the subject it deals with.
