Metastable Coordination Dynamics of Collaborative Creativity in Educational Settings

Educational systems consider fostering creativity and cooperation as two essential aims to nurture future sustainable citizens. The cooperative learning approach proposes different pedagogical strategies for developing creativity in students. In this paper, we conceptualize collaborative creativity under the framework of coordination dynamics and, specifically, we base it on the formation of spontaneous multiscale synergies emerging in complex living systems when interacting with cooperative/competitive environments. This conception of educational agents (students, teachers, institutions) changes the understanding of the teaching/learning process and the traditional roles assigned to each agent. Under such an understanding, the design and co-design of challenging and meaningful learning environments is a key aspect to promote the spontaneous emergence of multiscale functional synergies and teams (of students, students and teachers, teachers, institutions, etc.). According to coordination dynamics, cooperative and competitive processes (within and between systems and their environments) are seen not as opposites but as complementary pairs, needed to develop collaborative creativity and increase the functional diversity potential of teams. Adequate manipulation of environmental and personal constraints, nested in different level and time scales, and the knowledge of their critical (tipping) points are key aspects for an adequate design of learning environments to develop synergistic creativity.This work was supported by the National Institute of Physical Education of Catalonia (INEFC), Generalitat de Catalunya. M.A. is supported by the project “Towards an embodied and transdisciplinary education” granted by the Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional of the Spanish government (FPU19/05693). J.A.S.K. is supported by NIMH Grant MH MH080838, the Davimos Family Endowment for Excellence in Science, and the Florida Atlantic University Foundation

Teacher 2020. On the Road to Entrepreneurial Fluency in Teacher Education

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Teachers as designers of GBL scenarios: Fostering creativity in the educational settings

This paper presents a research started in 2010 with the aim of fostering the creativity of teachers through the design of Game-Based Learning scenarios. The research has been carried out involving teachers and trainers in the co-design and implementation of digital games as educational resources. Based on the results grained from the research, this paper highlights successful factors of GBL, as well as constraints and boundaries that the introduction of innovative teaching and learning practices faces within educational settings

Creativity Training for Future Engineers: Preliminary Results from an Educative Experience

Due in part to the increased pace of cultural and environmental change, as well as increased competition due to globalization, innovation is become one of the primary concerns of the 21st century. We present an academic course designed to develop cognitive abilities related to creativity within an engineering education context, based on a conceptual framework rooted in cognitive sciences. The course was held at \'Ecole Polytechnique de Montr\'eal (\'EPM), a world renowned engineering school and a pillar in Canada's engineering community. The course was offered twice in the 2014-2015 academic year and more than 30 students from the graduate and undergraduate programs participated. The course incorporated ten pedagogical strategies, including serious games, an observation book, individual and group projects, etc., that were expected to facilitate the development of cognitive abilities related to creativity such as encoding, and associative analytical thinking. The CEDA (Creative Engineering Design Assessment) test was used to measure the students' creativity at the beginning and at the end of the course. Field notes were taken after each of the 15 three-hour sessions to qualitatively document the educative intervention along the semester and students gave anonymous written feedback after completing the last session. Quantitative and qualitative results suggest that an increase in creativity is possible to obtain with a course designed to development cognitive abilities related to creativity. Also, students appreciated the course, found it relevant, and made important, meaningful learnings regarding the creative process, its cognitive mechanism and the approaches available to increase it.Comment: 10 page

Towards an understanding of the social aspects of sustainability in product design: teaching HE students in the UK and Ireland through reflection and peer learning

This paper presents findings from a doctoral study, which investigated effective methods for teaching social sustainability within product design courses in British and Irish universities. This paper explores approaches for encouraging students to explore the social aspects of sustainable product design through workshops specifically designed to foster deep learning through collaboration, discovery and critical reflection. The importance of deep learning is reflected in both the sustainable design education (O’Rafferty et al., 2008, Griffith and Bamford, 2007) and education for sustainability literature (Warburton, 2003) as important to an understanding of the holistic and complex nature of sustainability. Three 'Rethinking Design' workshops were designed and developed as part of the doctoral main study to introduce students to the wider social aspects of sustainability and these were conducted in five universities in Britain and Ireland. The workshops were developed to foster principles that encourage students to adopt deep learning methods, taking into account the specific learning preferences of the current generation of students to enhance motivational factors such as relevance, appropriate teaching materials and opportunities for collaborative learning. The workshops were tested amongst 150 undergraduate and postgraduate students and found to be successful in fostering deep learning by facilitating learning through discovery, critical reflection, peer learning and creativity leading to an exploration of design thinking solutions

Fostering oral interaction and self-regulation through problem-based learning

145 páginasEl propósito del presente estudio fue analizar la incidencia del aprendizaje basado en resolución de problemas (ABP) para promover la interacción oral y la autorregulación. Cuarenta y cinco estudiantes matriculados en el cuarto nivel de inglés de una universidad pública en Pasto, participaron de este estudio. El proyecto se llevó a cabo con el fin de identificar las estrategias que fortalecen las habilidades lingüísticas de los estudiantes y su capacidad para auto-regular su aprendizaje y autoeficacia, mientras discuten temas actuales relevantes, solucionando problemas creativamente. La intervención pedagógica consistió de diez lecciones, aplicadas a 30 participantes del grupo 1 y replicadas con 15 participantes del grupo 2. Durante este periodo, se utilizaron varios instrumentos para recolectar los datos, tales como un pre-examen, un post-examen, diarios de campo, un formato de autoevaluación, y entrevistas. Los resultados revelaron que el PBL promueve la práctica oral, la interacción, el desarrollo de habilidades transferibles y de autoevaluación, fomentando un modelo educativo centrado en el estudiante. Sin embargo, la mayoría de participantes concordaron en que esta metodología es más adecuada en ambientes de aprendizaje controlados o semi-controlados, que dentro de contextos totalmente independientes

The Making of a Social Object: Collaboration between Nike and Centre for Sustainable Fashion

Introduction: The Centre for Sustainable Fashion (CSF) is a group of researchers, designers and communicators, brought together through shared ambitions around the possibility of fashion: a means to connect us to each other and with nature, and a means to make real our adaptability to time and place. It seeks ways for osmosis between human, ecological and technological elements to create a mixture that makes for better balance and a life well lived, as applied through fashion’s personal and collective practices. The centre’s work is situated in the cross referencing of research projects (often working with others outside of fashion), the development of innovative commercial practices (with large and small businesses), and the teaching and learning of design for sustainability (with undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD students). We seek ways and places to connect and be adaptable as individuals, evolving a unique sense of who we are in the world, as communities, whether location or interest based, and in our governance and political identities and actions. For this reason, we find ourselves sometimes in the House of Lords, at other times in remote villages, and always looking for space to be reflexive in our work. Sustainability can be distinguished by its multidimensional, non-conformist, not readily acceptable range of change processes and practices. It can lead us to consider fundamental qualities and characteristics of life and challenge our current habits and practices in their respect. It can question us as individuals, communities, and organisations, and can seek in us the qualities of imagination, interaction and sensitivity, along with practical skills of creation and communication. Sustainability is about who we are and what we do and make. This framing means a radical shift in how we experience life, quite different from many of the more easily palatable forms of sustainability within current practices, where efficiencies in existing systems form the visible changes that take place. Designers are well placed to explore these questions and habits, especially when placed in the cross-frame of research, education and current practice. What might be deemed risk in one area can become experimentation opportunity in another. Just such a stretching was tested when Nike’s Sustainable Business Innovation team approached us with a question, charged with possibility, whilst challenged by current infrastructures of global business. ..