Creative Thinking in eXtreme Programming

Agile methods such as eXtreme Programming have achieved an explosive interest in the software development community. They can be seen as a reaction to the more traditional and control-oriented methods, agile methods handle changes in design and requirements and they open up for creativity during the whole project lifecycle. The knowledge management in agile methods is also agile, it means that knowledge creation and sharing processes are simplified in comparison with other more comprehensive development methodologies. This paper is developed under the idea that agile software development can be enhanced by a better understanding of knowledge management and creativity. eXtreme Programming is analyzed from the perspective of the creativity, we believe that concepts related to creative teams (roles, structure, performance and purposes) are important insights about the use of agile methods in general and eXtreme Programming in particular.Keywords/Index Terms: Knowledge Management; Creativity; Software Engineering; Agile Methods; User-centered innovation

Understanding the Role and Importance of Design Problems in Creativity Research

The overall objective of this research is to address the need for using similar conceptual design problems in experiments in engineering design creativity. This is accomplished by addressing three sub-objectives i) to identify the pattern of design problem usage, ii) to enable comparison between two conceptual design problems based on their natural language representations and iii) to analyze the impact of design problems on effectiveness of example interventions used in user studies in engineering design creativity. Design problems are an essential component of experiments in creativity research.The requirements of experiment’s design sometimes limit problem sharing between researchers or studies conducted by them. For understanding and identifying the design problem usage pattern, two network representations of design problems, connected to each other by authors and papers using them has been used. Both networks indicate that several problems have been used for creativity experiments and suggest the need for using same or ‘similar’ design problems to reduce between-study differences in design problem usage.This addresses the first objective of identifying pattern of design problem usage in creativity research. Problem similarity is assessed using two methods. The first method is based on identification of five structural elements of a design problem namely goals of a problem, functional requirements, non – functional requirements, reference to an existing product and information about end user. The protocol for identifying these elements in problem statement and then comparing design problems is illustrated through two examples. The second method for similarity assessment is based on Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) of problem statements. LSA provides an objective method to compare semantic similarity of problem statements. Both methods help address the research objective of comparing problems based on their representation but fail to evaluate problem solvability. For understanding whether design problems influence the effectiveness of examples used as interventions, a meta-regression model between effect size and problem size has been used. Regression models suggest that problem size might have a linear relationship with effectiveness of examples for quantity of ideas produced by treatment group participants but enough evidence did not exist to suggest similar relationship for metrics quality and novelty. This addresses the sub-objective of design problems affecting the effectiveness of methods tested in experiments and overall objective of the need for using similar problems in creativity research

Teaching principles of network and agent-based models to architecture students

Architectural design is necessarily a situated learning process that continues to be a subject of interest in architectural education. Whether designers should give preference to a functional design product or whether the focus should be centered on creative output are issues that need to be questioned. Given the typically vague descriptions of creativity it is even harder to determine whether design functionality and design creativity should be treated as separate entities. The implications of any preferences made on the methods of assessment are crucial. While teaching is necessarily aligned to design as an experiential learning process, it also requires careful understanding of how knowledge can inform rather than constrain creativity. In evaluating the creativity or even the functionality of a design there are challenges present in accounting for a comprehensive and yet practical framework for assessment. In teaching practices the challenge is to ensure that the assessment process is sufficiently specified without limiting creative explorations. It is argued that through exposing design propositions to internal and external criticism, assessing progress becomes less of a challenge. In this course of development 'creativity' is revealed not as value-neutral but as a product of a social process that is practiced through experiential learning

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

Teaching the YouTube generation: exploring the benefits of an interactive teaching approach in sustainable product design

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. Specifically exploring, how to foster a holistic understanding of the social aspects of sustainable product design amongst undergraduate and postgraduate students, through design thinking. Perceived relevance is considered as a fundamental aspect in enabling students to engage deeply with sustainability [1]. Authors [2;3;4] note that 'Net Generation' learners have specific learning preferences that can be targeted in order to improve the students learning experience. Through the careful design of materials which build upon the students tendency towards visual learning and seeking increase relevance and motivation, by offering opportunities for collaborative learning and learning through discovery. Three 'Rethinking Design' workshops were designed and developed as part of a doctoral study to introduce students to the wider social aspects of sustainability and these were conducted in five universities in Britain and Ireland. The workshops featured visually rich audio visual introductions followed by collaborative group based mind mapping activities, which were successful in fostering deep learning by facilitating learning through discovery, critical reflection, peer learning and creativity leading to an exploration of design thinking solutions

Effective Assessment in Art and Design : writing learning outcomes and assessment criteria in art and design

This document has been written to help teachers in art and design who are writing project briefs or unit outlines in learning outcomes form for the first time. It is not meant to be prescriptive but rather a general guide that attempts to clarify the purposes of outcome-led learning and identify some of the pitfalls you might encounter. You will find that the most successful examples of outcome-led learning come from competency-based learning where it is relatively straightforward for students to provide evidence of their learning because the outcomes are almost always skills oriented. Increasingly, universities are adopting the learning outcomes approach (student-centred) in preference to the aims and objectives approach (teacher-centred). Many examples now exist of text-based subjects working with learning outcomes. One of the major challenges for them is to take the term 'understanding' and redefine it in terms of more specific measurable cognitive (thinking) outcomes. In art and design our challenge is greater because we work with rather more ambiguous terms such as 'creativity', 'imagination', 'originality' etc as well as 'understanding'. A significant challenge for you then will be to articulate learning outcomes in a way which promotes these important cognitive attributes but at the same time provides some useful methods of measuring their achievement

Unlocking Creative Potential: Catholic Elementary School Principal Perceptions of Creativity

Church documents and scholars affirm that traditional pedagogies are ineffective in preparing students for the demands of the 21st century (CCE, 2014, p. 13, Darling-Hammond, 2010; Hartley, 2003; Kampylis, 2010; Skiba, Tan, Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2010). A review of the literature revealed that a gap in research on the Catholic elementary school principal’s understanding of and commitment to creativity exists. Even teachers who value creativity cannot fully support its development in the classroom without proper training. Continuing education coordinated by principals is one of the few opportunities for teachers to identify and confront their creativity misconceptions. The purpose of this study was to identify the beliefs that Catholic elementary school principals hold about creativity, creative students, instructional practices promoting creativity, and the degree of responsibility they feel for supporting their teachers’ creativity training. Understanding the principal perception was selected for this study because their perspectives determine the resources invested in teacher professional development. The study was a descriptive, mixed-methods, convergent parallel design. The researcher received permission from Dr. Kampylis to utilize and modify the Teachers’ Conception of Creativity questionnaire to focus on principals instead of teachers. Twenty-nine principals participated in this study, representing sixty-two percent of the elementary principals in the diocese. The theoretical framework guiding this research was the Investment Theory of Creativity (Sternberg & Lubart, 1995). This theory supposes that one must choose to be creative by selectively engaging six resources including: (a) intellectual skills, (b) knowledge skills, (c) thinking skills, (d) personality, (e) motivation, and (f) environment (Sternberg, 2006). Overall findings of this study suggest that principals have a basic understanding of creativity in alignment with research, a willingness to support it, but need additional scaffolds at the diocesan level in order to accomplish this task. Principals acknowledge they feel responsible to support creativity development within their faculty, but do not identify the school environment as the most conducive place for creativity development. Principals need assistance in learning how to articulate and align rigorous curriculum with 21st Century skills including creativity development

Pengembangan Perangkat Perkuliahan Eksperimen Fisika Untuk Meningkatkan Kreativitas Mahasiswa Calon Guru Dalam Mendesain Kegiatan Praktikum Fisika Di SMA

This study aimed to develop the lectures instrument of physics experiment to improve the creativity of preservice teachers in designing a high school physics lab activities. Mixed methods research through the embedded experimental models with embedded strategy, was used as a method of research, a stage of quantitative and qualitative data collection at a time, involving students of Physical Education courses one LPTK in Maluku. The developed lectures instrument adapted from creative learning pattern was referred to as Creative Thinking Skills aspect (CTSA), while student activity in the design of practical activities were directed at Activity Indicator In Experiment (SIEI). Understanding the concept of physics students was measured based on the revised Bloom\u27s taxonomy. The results showed an increase in students CTSA for each SIEI on the criteria of being; as well as an improve understanding of the basic concepts of physics students to cite, classify, and explain indicators. It was concluded that the developed lectures instrument of physics experiment can enhance student creativity in the design of physics experiment activities based on the coverage of the measured material

LiveMache: Supporting Collaborative Design Ideation, Curation, Learning and Evaluation in Creative Contexts

This project investigates how we can computationally support phases of the design process in solving creative problems, as well as the methods that arise in its educational context. Prior work addresses foundational topics, such as free-form web curation and creativity, which are necessary to ground the motivations in designing a system to provide this kind of context. Combining this background understanding and ongoing discussions with design instructors clarifies what a tool must include to viably support individuals involved in creative processes. What arises is a need for a system that implements real-time collaboration, as design projects are often collaborative, whose space and functionality does not limit a designer’s creativity. Our solution is LiveMache, a web application that provides live, collaborative capabilities for collecting and organizing content, along with writing sketching, chat, and live streaming video. Although the user interface design is just as important in creating this application, my research particularly focuses on how to make the user experience as expected, which depends on the database, the client/server architecture, and role-based access control. This paper addresses the reasoning behind the design of these three components for LiveMache, and discusses how their functions serve to make LiveMache successful as a creativity tool