Students´ working strategies and outcomes in a creativity-supporting learning environment

This paper describes results from a teaching experiment at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Helsinki, in which we studied students´ different working strategies and tried to find patterns between these strategies and the creativity of the students´ work. In a typical computer science course in Finland, the teaching is quite strictly structured and the support structures (e.g. lectures, lab sessions) are highly teacher-driven. In contrast, our intention was to create a learning environment where the support structures would focus on supporting creativity to bring forth new ideas and innovation. We were especially interested in the working strategies that students would use outside our learning sessions, the students´ outcomes with regards to creativity, and the interplay between working strategies and the creativity of the outcomes. To put our ideas into practice, we designed a pilot course utilizing practices from research into creativity and intrinsic motivation. To answer our research questions we interviewed all course attendees (n=33) twice, at the beginning and at the end of the course. We chose LEGO^® Mindstorms robots as the platform for the project. While further studies are needed, our preliminary results suggest that there is a pattern between working strategy and creativity.