digital tools that promote innovation problem solving and creativity

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Home Learning Schedules For Young Children: Everything You Need to Know

Why is the internet starting spooky season early, a beluga whale accused of spying for russia with a mounted camera has been found dead near norway’s coast, luxbox boards religious drama ‘marie & jolie,’ starring aïssa maïga, laetitia ky (exclusive), the date night rules gordon ramsay and his wife live by to keep the spark in their 27-year marriage, parsing awk is tricky, amazing’ viking-age treasure travelled half the world to scotland, texas is arming mexico’s gunmen, china box office: ‘alien: romulus’ chinese haul overtakes north american total, 38 amazing edtech tools for student creation and innovation.

Are you looking for edtech tools that will allow your students to tap into their creativity? We got you covered. In this article, we will profile 38 amazing edtech tools for student creation and innovation.

• Guess the Code : While this app is presented as a game, it is actually a great way for children to look at patterns and sequences, and try to figure them out. The app generates different color combinations, and it is up to the user to decipher the pattern and enter the next color.
• SimplePhysics : Physics can be a daunting subject, but the new way of approaching it makes physics more of a hands-on subject that gets students to engage in problem-solving actively. SimplePhysics provides games and puzzles that test the limits of students’ critical thinking skills.
• A Clockwork Brain : This app has a range of games in such categories as memory, attention, language, reasoning, and dexterity. Critical thinking is strengthened as children must work quickly to solve the problems before moving on to more challenging puzzles.
• Civilization VI : Now in its sixth iteration, this modern computer game is not just fun; it’s actually a place for children (and adults) to use the full extent of their imagination and critical thinking skills. The game starts with the dawn of humans, and it is up to the player to help them achieve civilization through each time period. Users must decide what it takes for a culture to evolve and this is no easy task.
• Whooo’s Reading : One of the most important steps in the journey towards critical thinking is the ability to read and interact with books. Reading is more than just memorizing letter combinations. It is about understanding the motive behind characters and the importance of setting. It is about connecting plot developments with real life and making connections between the two. To help students engage more when reading, Whooo’s Reading is a program that works to connect books at a deeper level. As a result of this program, students often increase their love of reading and as a bonus, do better on reading exams.
• Edmodo : Social media has become pervasive in today’s culture, and while platforms like Twitter and Instagram can lead to more harm than good for most youth, social media can be used to an educator’s advantage. Edmodo provides a platform for students and teachers to engage in collaborative projects that help to foster creative thinking skills. It is a tool that can be used to bring students’ ideas together.
• Highlights Every Day : This app is a nostalgic treat for anyone that eagerly awaited their monthly Highlights magazine subscription. Updated for today’s technological world, Highlights Every Day is an app that features engaging puzzles, stories, and videos.
• Feedly : The first step of challenge-based learning is to locate a real-world problem. Feedly aggregates all of your preferred media outlets into one place so students can quickly sift through the latest headlines and digital trends. This means newspapers, magazines, blogs, YouTube channels, social media accounts and anything else that publishes original content and newsworthy articles. Feedly is connected to more than 40 million feeds allowing users to find content specific to any research-based need. Having information outlets and news alerts bundled together and organized by issue helps students fly through sources and find modern, real-world challenges to tackle.
• Mindnote : After a challenge is selected, students must collaborate with others to begin brainstorming. Mindnote allows users to create mind maps as a visual representation of, not just key ideas, but tactics and strategies related to those thoughts. The app allows multiple people on one page so students can work together and explicitly connect mental dots. Mindnote also organizes maps by rearranging thoughts and enabling users to highlight key words. With everything in one place, students can see how everyone’s ideas are connected – an essential step in any collaborative process.
• Instapaper : It’s easy for anyone beginning large projects to get lost in a sea of conflicting information, relevant articles, and usable quotes. Instapaper allows students to save and store articles for on-the-go reading that’s perfectly formatted with no ads and no mess. Users are able to conveniently sort saved content by popularity, date, and length even without internet access. Kids on-the-go meet research on-the-go.
• Socrative : Often students need input from people outside of their own group to move projects along. Socrative allows students to distribute multiple ideas and quizzes via iPhone to collect class-wide results. This way project members can gather input about milestones and ideas mid-project. Halfway point evaluations help students fix errors or narrow ideas before it’s time for project management and final presentations.
• gTasks : One of the hardest parts of a challenge-based project is time management and organization, especially for students who haven’t practiced those skills in a project of this magnitude. gTasks remind students of deadlines they’ve set for themselves by syncing tasks with Google Tasks and integrating reminders into users’ Google Calendars. With apps like gTasks, there’s no excuse for late work or sloppy timelines.
• Roambi Analytics : Another aspect of a challenge-based project that’s probably new for young learners, is transforming information and data into spreadsheets. Roambi Analytics allows students to create spreadsheets on their iPhone and iPad without risking a slow-moving device that feels minutes from crashing. Once again, users don’t need internet access as the app transforms imported information into clear executive reports, charts, tables, and other analytic visuals.
• Prezi : Prezi is a great tool for students who want to end the boring and repetitive PowerPoint cycle that so often accompanies class presentations. Prezi includes templates that make every presentation beautiful, customized, and original, even for students with no design background. Aside from aesthetic, Prezi smoothly incorporates video, audio, and other interactive research components for a presentation that keeps everyone’s attention.
• Scribble Press : After everything is said and done, students need a way to share the work that they’ve done with others while reflecting on the experience as a whole. Accomplish both with Scribble Press, an app that allows students to write and illustrate their own books. With Scribble Press, students can retell the story of their challenge-based experience, include final project results, and reflect on moments of personal growth.
• Educurious : Educurious is a website with supplemental apps that aims to turn students into “developing experts” by connecting them with real-world mentors. The site includes Common Core aligned curriculum that works to include 21 st century technology, problem based learning skills, and connections with experts.
• NewsELA : Newsela is an incredible website that offers news articles from several major publications in several different reading levels. It works well with encouraging students to think critically and ask meaningful questions about the world around them. Plus, it features articles on all different subjects, such as science, math, and history.
• Padlet : When students are engaged in collaborative work, Padlet is a great tool for the classroom. It works as an online bulletin board where students can post ideas, images, videos, and more. With problem based learning, Padlet works as an excellent starting point where students can post research questions and post the answers they find as they research.
• Problem Based Learning Experience : This unique app features a collection of starter questions to help students and teachers begin problem based learning activities. Each starter question also contains links to other resources to help students work to solve the problem in a real-world way.
• Project Foundry : Project Foundry is a popular learning tool that enables students to plan their own learning and track their progress. It also makes organizing student projects much easier for students and teachers. Schools also love that Project Foundry gives students the chance to build digital portfolios – a necessary skill in today’s evolving technological culture.
• TED Ed : TED Ed is a fantastic resource for helping students gain insights into real-world problems. The site’s collection of engaging videos works well to inspire students to want to learn more and take the initiative – both are components necessary for problem based learning.
• The Knowledge Compass : The Knowledge Compass is a wonderful way to help students formulate questions and begin the research process. The website provides several different types of questions to help students ask the right questions to guide their research.
• Brain Sparker : Having a creative block is something that happens to everyone. Brain Sparker provides random, creative prompts that will inspire writing, art or just brainstorming session. With more than 150,000 users, there is no doubt that the prompts are inspiring people every day.
• Oflow : Oflow is a collection of techniques that help the creative brain. There are words of encouragement, prompts as well as features to collect and collate work in one app.
• Tayasui Sketches : While this may just seem a simple sketchpad, the possibilities are endless. There are options to paint in watercolors, acyclic or create complex, layered art. Artists have already put this app to the test, and the gallery is full of examples of what can be accomplished. Great for art classes and personal use.
• Ideament : This app is made to facilitate planning and the presentation of ideas. Draw flow charts, diagraphs, mind maps or store pictures and text in one convenient space. Perfect for the classroom and workplace.
• Magic Piano : Music has long been linked to the creative parts of the brain, and this app pushes composition and musical play. Learn to play classical and pop songs or simply play around and play around and let the music inspire you.
• Paper : Writing on paper is still a favorite of many creatives, and this app allows just that. Take pictures of important writings, pictures and other scraps of paper and save them all in one space. This virtual scrapbook is perfect for the disorganized creative.
• Trello : Working creatively as a group is difficult to manage. Trello makes this easy by providing a place where teammates can see their assignments, upload documents and pictures and ensure that everyone is on track.
• Quik : Editing videos should not be complicated. This app makes the process easy and allows for the addition of music and still images. It also works on GoPro videos and is a must have for anyone putting together videos for social media or personal use.
• Sync Space : This interactive “whiteboard” allows for collaborative creating. This is not a file sharing app but rather a space where creative minds can meld together and work in the same space. This is great for collaborative efforts and project brainstorming.
• Moleskine :   Evernote and Moleskine have teamed up to bring this amazing app. Convert written notes into digital ones though the use Evernote’s camera feature. This great team up ensure that all those scribbled in the sidelines of your Moleskine journal make it into a formal format.
• 123 Catch : Turn any imagine into a virtual 3D creation with 123 Catch. Pictures of things and people can be converted into 3D images that can be used to study, explore or print with a 3D printer. This creative tool can be used in any academic sphere or simply to create art.
• Moment Diary : Keeping a diary is a must for any creative thinker. Moment Diary is a great way to contain all these thoughts and ideas. The writings are time stamped, and users have praised the flexibility and privacy of this app.
• Loop : Animation has very been this easy. This app turns hand drawn pictures into animated features that can be shared and used in projects. The simplicity of this app makes it a winner and users have praised it for its minimalist quality and its all-around ability to make simple drawings come alive.
• iThoughts : Available both on Apple products as well as Windows, this mind mapping app is a great way to visualize concepts and organize ideas. Easy to use and simplistic in design this app gets the job done.
• Behance : Being inspired by others is an important creative tool, and with Behance, it is a click away. This space brings innovators, inventors and creative minds together and encourages users to upload portfolios of their work, in the hopes of finding investors and collaborating.
• MindTools : Creativity and business skills come together in this app. There are sections that teach problem-solving and push its users to think of business in a creative light. There are over 100 skill lessons included in this app.

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20 Digital Tools for Classroom for Innovative Teachers & Students

Digital tools for making infographics, presentations, videos, animations, as well as tools for assessments, quizzes, and more.

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By Iveta Pavlova

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Updated April 21, 2022

In the world we live in, technology is literally everywhere and the kids adapt to it more than anyone else. Unlike teachers, students are being raised in a digital world. It is absolutely natural for students of all ages to use technology in every aspect of their lives. This is why digital tools in classroom are becoming more and more crucial. Traditional methods for teaching are already going through a transformation to adapt to the needs of 21st-century students and to enhance the professional practice of teachers. The digital future is literally happening now.

Using technology for education provokes students’ curiosity, boosts their engagement, and leads to better learning and comprehension. These factors are a priority for every effective teacher and today they can be easily achieved by using digital tools in classroom. We’ve selected 20 innovative digital tools for classroom which foster responsibility, relationships, and respect, and can be used by educators and students.

Do you want to check out The Best Online Learning Platforms in 2022 ?

Article overview:

• suitable for students of all ages
• suitable for teachers

Prezi is a digital software for creating interactive presentations. According to their research, the innovative way Prezi helps you make presentations – by zooming, leads to more effective, more persuasive, more effective, and more engaging presentations than presentations made with PowerPoint. If you are still unaware of what you can do with the software, we strongly recommend that you check it out and present it to your students. Who knows, maybe this would be one of the digital tools for classroom that would help you keep the attention of the kids.

Here is a useful tutorial that will help you get the hang of the software:

2. Haiku Deck

• suitable for students and teachers

A digital tool with whose help you can easily make presentations on your iPad, iPhone, and the web. The tool works online and offers a huge database of stock photos with which you can create image-based slides. Haiku Deck makes it easy to create presentations on the go and literally carry them in your pocket. Haiku Deck can be also integrated into Google Classroom which has been very popular lately. See a quick video of how Haiku Deck makes presentations fun and easy:

• for students primarily between 8 and 16 years old

Although mainly purposed for students, Scratch can be used by people of all ages. This digital tool lets students create engaging projects like games, animations, interactive art, stories and more. If your students have an interest in making programs, Scratch is definitely one of the digital tools for classroom you have to introduce them to. This program would give the little ones a brilliant start to make them think in an innovative and creative way. If you wonder how to help them start, here is a video tutorial “Make Your First Program” with Scratch:

Video is one of the most engaging mediums of the modern-da society which is why you should definitely incorporate it into your classroom. Animoto is one of the digital tools for classroom that can be used by both teachers and students for educational purposes. Animoto helps you create animated videos easily. You can create photo slideshows, stitch various videos together, and add text and more images to come up with a truly engaging video in the end. Check out this video tutorial before starting your first Animoto video:

Why make students write a story when they can draw it for a change? Digital tools for classroom like Pixton boost the children’s visual thinking and creativity while it engages them to the fullest. This tool allows little and big students to make comics and storyboards. This activity can be both educational and fun. If you are an educator, you can try Pixton for free before introducing it to your kids. A perfect tool to boost the students’ imagination! See how it works:

6. BoomWriter

7. Explain Everything

• suitable for educators and upper-class students

Explain Everything is all about interaction in a virtual environment. This digital tool allows students and teachers to collaborate on an interactive whiteboard thus encouraging group activities. This software can also be integrated with Schoolwork, Dropbox, Evernote, GDrive, OneDrive, and more useful apps. With the drag-and-drop options, Explain Everything is super easy and intuitive to work with. See how you can get started and how collaboration works via the following video:

You may also be interested in GraphicMama’s Free Coloring Book: 60+ Coloring Pages (Free Printable PDF)

8. Educreations

9. Glogster

Glogster is one of the amazing digital tools for classroom which helps children learn by using visual content. This app allows you to create multimedia posters by combining text information, photos, and videos. The creations are called glogs and stored in a special library called Glogpedia. Containing over 40 thousand different glogs on various subjects and topics, this tool can become one of your most trusted tools for teaching children effectively. Learn more in the video below.

10. Flipsnack

• suitable for students and educators

• suitable for the whole class to use

Padlet is a digital pinboard that allows participants (students and teachers) contribute by pinning different images, videos, text files, links, and more. Digital tools for classroom like Padlet motivate students to work together and brainstorm like a team. You can customize the background to a corkboard, blackboard, wood, sand, and many more options, the layout to a grid, stream, or freeform, as well as control who has access to the board. Here is a tutorial you can check out:

12. VoiceThread

• suitable for K-12 students

13. StoryJumper

14. Storybird

• suitable for K-9 students

15. Quizlet

16. Socrative

• for educators

• for students, teachers, and parents

Edmodo is an Education Network that teachers, students, and parents can join. Edmodo provides a digital classroom environment and gives you access to many resources. At first sight, it pretty much looks like the social media networks we know, so you will intuitively understand what, where, and how to join groups and communities, and collaborate with other users in the network. Edmodo gives you the opportunity to create a digital classroom where you can invite your students and even start sending digital assignments. Check out this explainer video to learn more about the Edmodo education network:

18. Schoology

Schoology is a learning management system that is free to use and it allows teachers to create and distribute materials, give assessments, track progress, etc. Basically, with Schoology, you can do everything that you do in Google Classroom , plus more features. You can organize content much more easily, embed multimedia within the assignment description, record audio or video within the platform, have a grade book, set completing rules, and many more. Check out an introduction video below.

19. Piktochart

One of the great digital tools for classroom which provides educators and students with tools to create infographics, presentations, reports, and more visual content materials. Visme provides all kinds of templates and graphic resources to help visualize any kind of data or assignment. You can insert videos, make animations, insert links, etc. Check out the following to see what you can do with Visme.

     

Technology is a friend of education and there is no reason to fight this trend. Right on the contrary, by incorporating digital tools in classroom, you become an effective school leader who fosters innovation.

Here, at GraphicMama, we support educators with innovative thinking who encourage students to learn and develop. This is why we create cartoon characters that are great for educational purposes and can be used in many ways: in digital tools for making infographics, creating presentations, video making, and animations, as well as all kinds of tools for conveying visual concepts and ideas.

We hope we’ve been helpful. If you can think of other useful digital tools for classroom or more ways to use cartoon characters for digital education, we can’t wait to see your thoughts in the comments below. See ya!

You may also be interested in these related articles:

• The Best Online Graphic Makers with School-Related Design Templates
• 5 Great Ways to Teach Creativity & Make Learning Effective

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Iveta Pavlova

Iveta is a passionate writer at GraphicMama who has been writing for the brand ever since the blog was launched. She keeps her focus on inspiring people and giving insight on topics like graphic design, illustrations, education, business, marketing, and more.

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Digital tools to spark creativity

Is it possible to support or spark creativity with digital tools? 

Of course it is. Any resource that challenges, encourages and fosters a sense of enthusiasm in the classroom can have an impact. However, the same could be said for a wild animal running into a learning space.

It is crucial to focus on the purpose of digital tools and their ability to add value in a learning environment. This blog post looks at three examples of online tools that I feel any teacher or learner can use to spark their creativity.

About the learning

We should consider digital tools as part of a plethora of resources available to teachers and learners. Used appropriately they can have significant impact. Used without planning or careful consideration they can be an utter waste of time. It isn’t about the technology, it is about the learning. If there is no clear identifiable additional value in using technology to support learning it should not be used.

Effective digital tools are those that provide learners with the opportunity to be innovative, to approach challenges from different perspectives, and to develop their own creative solutions. In recent years a justification for using digital tools is that they enthuse and energise learners. These can no longer be the only reasons. There has to be a tangible benefit to the learning process.

Whilst teachers can be creative in using digital tools to enhance their presentation of lesson materials, this doesn’t necessarily spark learners’ creativity. The real impact can be identified when learners take ownership, are asked to justify and explain their digital choices, and are encouraged to deliver on the higher potential of such tools.

Socrative is a quiz, survey and feedback tool. It can be used to deliver a quiz during a lesson and then shared with the entire class to identify progress. However, it becomes far more powerful when learners are challenged to create their own activities.

This tool can spark creativity by encouraging learners to construct their own digital reflection. They can gather feedback on their latest work, test understanding and evaluate the impact of their work. They can also share their proposals with the rest of their class, gather feedback and then ask for votes on that feedback. This is straightforward within Socrative and enables an effective collaborative and creative process.

Classtools.net

Classtools.net is a splendid online collection of tools to spark creativity. It allows anyone to create their own learning and reflection activities. Again, this is most powerful when learners are challenged to create their own versions. There are 40 freely available tools and frequent new additions.

One of the best examples is ‘Fakebook’. Learners can create their own Facebook-like page for an individual or topic that they are studying.  For example, they can create profiles that track the impact of an important event, reflections on a political debate or a stream of creativity that led to a musical masterpiece. This is precisely the additional value that a digital tool offers that simply isn’t possible via a more traditional medium. It isn’t a replacement for other resources but rather an extension or catalyst for creativity.

Kahoot is my personal favourite digital tool for learning. It allows anyone to create their own quizzes for classroom competition. These quizzes, or ‘Kahoots’, can be shared with a whole class who answer using any device from mobile phones to desktops. There are multiple layers to this. When first used it seems like an entertaining plenary exercise. A scoreboard based on response time appears and a whole additional layer of competition reveals itself. It becomes both an intellectual and timed response challenge. Do learners try to press the answer buttons as rapidly as possible or should they take time to read the question carefully?

As with Socrative, the greatest impact is when teachers transfer ownership to students. This sparks learners’ creativity by asking them to create their own learning activities. They have to decide which aspect of a topic to focus on, design their own challenging assessment and take ownership of the learning process. When a ‘Kahoot’ is shared across multiple classes, regardless of geographic location, it enables a far deeper learning process which empowers learners.

Enhancing the learning process

Every day new educational resources become available. It is important that both teachers and learners become discerning users and don’t immediately see the latest flashy tool as being some form of digital silver bullet.

The above examples add considerable value to the learning process. Approaching such tools with critical enthusiasm enables teachers and learners to deliver on their creative potential and embed digital tools within their learning.

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20 Of The Best Tools For Creativity In The Classroom

Because students necessarily create things with digital tools and images, the resulting creative expression is inherently student-centered.

What Are The Best Tools For Creativity In Learning?

contributed by Mike Acedo

In my last article, I discussed the inherent benefits of and ways of using digital images in the classroom , including strategies in which teachers can use them to promote student thought and performance.

With technological revolution infiltrating classrooms across the country, teachers must be on top of their game when faced with students whose attention spans are limited to the length of a twitter update or Instagram post.

Fortunately for those beleaguered teachers, hope is not lost. There happens to be a plentiful bounty of tools and resources that teachers can utilize to reign in wandering minds. Many of these tools are free and easy to use, making it even more convenient for teachers to close the digital gap.

As discussed in my previous article, images can be a very useful tool in promoting student growth and achievement. By using images in the classrooms, students and teachers have the opportunity to use visual representations of class materials, insight thoughtful discussions, and enable digital story telling.

See also 10 Essential Tools For Better Project-Based Learning

Truth be told, images can be used in an infinite amount of ways that allow students to exercise their creativity and critical thinking skills. And because students necessarily  create  things with digital tools and images, the resulting creative expression is inherently student-centered. Unless you muck it up with an overly-rigid rubric that strangles the creativity right back out of it. : )

Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, And Photoshop Express

VSCO: Photo and Video Editor

The aim of Procreate is to recreate the natural feel of physical drawing while utilizing the practical advantages of a digital platform. It offers over 130 customizable brush presets, multiple layers, blend modes, masks, 4K resolution export of process videos, autosave, and many other digital art tools.

Developer Description: Exclusive artistically created brushes, from real-world art mediums through to the purely digital for all styles of artwork. Watch fluid Watercolor flow and run as you paint. Express your strokes in 3D giving thick gloopy paint you can even etch back into.

Infinite Arcade

Developer Description: Infinite Arcade is a game construction kit. It’s the fourth app in Tinybop’s Digital Toys series which includes the iPad App of the Year, The Robot Factory. Digital Toys apps are designed to let kids create anything they can imagine.

codeSpark Academy: Kids Coding

Also consider Hopscotch and Tynker.

Pico Virtual Reality Set

Glogster EDU is a global education platform that allows students and educators to create interactive online posters that include text, photos, videos, graphics, sounds and much more.

Students and teachers have the opportunity to use Glogster as a vessel for creative thought, critical thinking, and problem solving by using images and other media to initiate student participation.

Students can tap into their inherent innovation and collaboration skills, all while having fun though this easy to use platform.

Everything Machine

Assemblr EDU

Autodesk Sketchbook

Prezi is a fantastic tool that uses a visually stimulating, moving canvas that spices up any classroom presentation.

Students and teachers can implement images into presentations using Prezi’s easy-to-use platform, as they combine all the standard components of a normal presentation with visually stunning effects.

The variations of presentations are endless, encouraging students and teachers to customize presentations and find creative ways to highlight and use images.

Storybird is a fantastic site whose mission is to help students improve their reading, writing, and creative skills. Storybird gathers visually stunning artwork and images from artists and illustrators around world and invites students to turn those images into creative stories.

Additionally, Storyboard offers a number of features that incite student participation and creativity. Students can instantly receive and give feedback regarding their stories, and can even publish them on the site to be shared with thousands of other students.

Badges and rewards are also issued to recognize accomplishments and encourage students to continue to advance their writing and reading skills.

Tiki-Toki is a free web-based software that allows anyone to create interactive and visually stimulating timelines.

Students and teachers can implement images and other effects to customize either personal timelines, or ones that focus on educational subject matter.

This tool gives students the opportunity to use images as a way to tell a story of their own history or of a historical event. Students can use their resourcefulness to find appropriate images and add complimenting captions.

By using an innovative click-n-drag technology, Pixton gives students the opportunity to create amazing comic strips with just a few clicks of the mouse.

Students can create characters, comic panels, props, speech bubbles, and every other aspect of a comic strip to create a customized and fun-to-read story.

This is a great way to draw out the creative ability of students and makes it easy to create and share customized stories.

Picsart is a free mobile app that enables anyone to find, edit, and create images via a mobile art studio.

Students are able to take pictures, draw them, or use images in the Picsart library. Images can be edited and shared with the Picsart community and can be a good way for students to exercise their image editing skill, shape their creative eye, and showcase work they have created.

BigHugeLabs

Big Huge Labs is a fantastic resource for students and teachers to create a number of cool items with images.

A number of activities and how-to instructions are provided through the site that can be easily implemented in the classroom.

Some activities include: creating movie posters, pop art, magazine covers, jigsaw puzzles, maps, calendars, name badges, CD covers, trading/flash cards, and much more.

Additionally, teachers can request a free Educator account that will allow them to sign up their students without requiring their email addresses. It also allows teachers and students to review content created by students and provide instant feedback.

Better yet, ThinkLink allows students to transform those images into interactive and educational stories by allowing students to add music, videos, and text to the images they select.

ThinkLink not only encourages students to explore beautiful images on the web, but also allows them to utilize those images to educate peers in an engaging and entertaining way.

Tools For Student-Centered Creative Expression

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How to Be a More Creative Problem-Solver at Work: 8 Tips

• 01 Mar 2022

The importance of creativity in the workplace—particularly when problem-solving—is undeniable. Business leaders can’t approach new problems with old solutions and expect the same result.

This is where innovation-based processes need to guide problem-solving. Here’s an overview of what creative problem-solving is, along with tips on how to use it in conjunction with design thinking.

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What Is Creative Problem-Solving?

Encountering problems with no clear cause can be frustrating. This occurs when there’s disagreement around a defined problem or research yields unclear results. In such situations, creative problem-solving helps develop solutions, despite a lack of clarity.

While creative problem-solving is less structured than other forms of innovation, it encourages exploring open-ended ideas and shifting perspectives—thereby fostering innovation and easier adaptation in the workplace. It also works best when paired with other innovation-based processes, such as design thinking .

Creative Problem-Solving and Design Thinking

Design thinking is a solutions-based mentality that encourages innovation and problem-solving. It’s guided by an iterative process that Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar outlines in four stages in the online course Design Thinking and Innovation :

• Clarify: This stage involves researching a problem through empathic observation and insights.
• Ideate: This stage focuses on generating ideas and asking open-ended questions based on observations made during the clarification stage.
• Develop: The development stage involves exploring possible solutions based on the ideas you generate. Experimentation and prototyping are both encouraged.
• Implement: The final stage is a culmination of the previous three. It involves finalizing a solution’s development and communicating its value to stakeholders.

Although user research is an essential first step in the design thinking process, there are times when it can’t identify a problem’s root cause. Creative problem-solving addresses this challenge by promoting the development of new perspectives.

Leveraging tools like design thinking and creativity at work can further your problem-solving abilities. Here are eight tips for doing so.

8 Creative Problem-Solving Tips

1. empathize with your audience.

A fundamental practice of design thinking’s clarify stage is empathy. Understanding your target audience can help you find creative and relevant solutions for their pain points through observing them and asking questions.

Practice empathy by paying attention to others’ needs and avoiding personal comparisons. The more you understand your audience, the more effective your solutions will be.

2. Reframe Problems as Questions

If a problem is difficult to define, reframe it as a question rather than a statement. For example, instead of saying, "The problem is," try framing around a question like, "How might we?" Think creatively by shifting your focus from the problem to potential solutions.

Consider this hypothetical case study: You’re the owner of a local coffee shop trying to fill your tip jar. Approaching the situation with a problem-focused mindset frames this as: "We need to find a way to get customers to tip more." If you reframe this as a question, however, you can explore: "How might we make it easier for customers to tip?" When you shift your focus from the shop to the customer, you empathize with your audience. You can take this train of thought one step further and consider questions such as: "How might we provide a tipping method for customers who don't carry cash?"

Whether you work at a coffee shop, a startup, or a Fortune 500 company, reframing can help surface creative solutions to problems that are difficult to define.

3. Defer Judgment of Ideas

If you encounter an idea that seems outlandish or unreasonable, a natural response would be to reject it. This instant judgment impedes creativity. Even if ideas seem implausible, they can play a huge part in ideation. It's important to permit the exploration of original ideas.

While judgment can be perceived as negative, it’s crucial to avoid accepting ideas too quickly. If you love an idea, don’t immediately pursue it. Give equal consideration to each proposal and build on different concepts instead of acting on them immediately.

4. Overcome Cognitive Fixedness

Cognitive fixedness is a state of mind that prevents you from recognizing a situation’s alternative solutions or interpretations instead of considering every situation through the lens of past experiences.

Although it's efficient in the short-term, cognitive fixedness interferes with creative thinking because it prevents you from approaching situations unbiased. It's important to be aware of this tendency so you can avoid it.

5. Balance Divergent and Convergent Thinking

One of the key principles of creative problem-solving is the balance of divergent and convergent thinking. Divergent thinking is the process of brainstorming multiple ideas without limitation; open-ended creativity is encouraged. It’s an effective tool for generating ideas, but not every idea can be explored. Divergent thinking eventually needs to be grounded in reality.

Convergent thinking, on the other hand, is the process of narrowing ideas down into a few options. While converging ideas too quickly stifles creativity, it’s an important step that bridges the gap between ideation and development. It's important to strike a healthy balance between both to allow for the ideation and exploration of creative ideas.

6. Use Creative Tools

Using creative tools is another way to foster innovation. Without a clear cause for a problem, such tools can help you avoid cognitive fixedness and abrupt decision-making. Here are several examples:

Problem Stories

Creating a problem story requires identifying undesired phenomena (UDP) and taking note of events that precede and result from them. The goal is to reframe the situations to visualize their cause and effect.

To start, identify a UDP. Then, discover what events led to it. Observe and ask questions of your consumer base to determine the UDP’s cause.

Next, identify why the UDP is a problem. What effect does the UDP have that necessitates changing the status quo? It's helpful to visualize each event in boxes adjacent to one another when answering such questions.

The problem story can be extended in either direction, as long as there are additional cause-and-effect relationships. Once complete, focus on breaking the chains connecting two subsequent events by disrupting the cause-and-effect relationship between them.

Alternate Worlds

The alternate worlds tool encourages you to consider how people from different backgrounds would approach similar situations. For instance, how would someone in hospitality versus manufacturing approach the same problem? This tool isn't intended to instantly solve problems but, rather, to encourage idea generation and creativity.

7. Use Positive Language

It's vital to maintain a positive mindset when problem-solving and avoid negative words that interfere with creativity. Positive language prevents quick judgments and overcomes cognitive fixedness. Instead of "no, but," use words like "yes, and."

Positive language makes others feel heard and valued rather than shut down. This practice doesn’t necessitate agreeing with every idea but instead approaching each from a positive perspective.

Using “yes, and” as a tool for further idea exploration is also effective. If someone presents an idea, build upon it using “yes, and.” What additional features could improve it? How could it benefit consumers beyond its intended purpose?

While it may not seem essential, this small adjustment can make a big difference in encouraging creativity.

8. Practice Design Thinking

Practicing design thinking can make you a more creative problem-solver. While commonly associated with the workplace, adopting a design thinking mentality can also improve your everyday life. Here are several ways you can practice design thinking:

• Learn from others: There are many examples of design thinking in business . Review case studies to learn from others’ successes, research problems companies haven't addressed, and consider alternative solutions using the design thinking process.
• Approach everyday problems with a design thinking mentality: One of the best ways to practice design thinking is to apply it to your daily life. Approach everyday problems using design thinking’s four-stage framework to uncover what solutions it yields.
• Study design thinking: While learning design thinking independently is a great place to start, taking an online course can offer more insight and practical experience. The right course can teach you important skills , increase your marketability, and provide valuable networking opportunities.

Ready to Become a Creative Problem-Solver?

Though creativity comes naturally to some, it's an acquired skill for many. Regardless of which category you're in, improving your ability to innovate is a valuable endeavor. Whether you want to bolster your creativity or expand your professional skill set, taking an innovation-based course can enhance your problem-solving.

If you're ready to become a more creative problem-solver, explore Design Thinking and Innovation , one of our online entrepreneurship and innovation courses . If you aren't sure which course is the right fit, download our free course flowchart to determine which best aligns with your goals.

About the Author

7 Steps To Navigate Innovation And Creativity With Emerging Technology

The intersection of innovation and creativity with emerging technologies offers more than a glimpse ... [+] into the art of the possible, it propels us toward a future that is both exciting and uncertain.

The intersection of innovation and creativity with emerging technologies offers more than a glimpse into the art of the possible, it propels us toward a future that is both exciting and uncertain.

Human creativity has been the engine of progress. Innovation and creativity have been driving forces behind everything from the Mona Lisa to the moon landing. But as algorithms, automation, and digitization continue to advance, how can emerging technology further enhance creativity? And how can organizations be sure to benefit?

Emerging Technology

While emerging technologies like VR, AI, big data, and others often dominate headlines, their impact lies in their ability to solve problems, add value, and improve lives safely and securely. And rather than a creativity killer, emerging tech can be a powerful amplifier.

• AI-powered design tools: These tools can generate variations on existing ideas, helping designers explore a broader range of possibilities and identify optimal solutions. For example, an AI system might analyze social media conversations and news articles to identify a growing public interest in sustainable fashion, leading a clothing company to develop a line of eco-friendly apparel.
• Virtual reality (VR): VR allows designers, architects, filmmakers, and others to fully immerse themselves in their creations, fostering a deeper understanding and enabling more intuitive design possibilities. Imagine an architect using VR to walk through a building design before construction even begins, allowing for real-time adjustments and a more creative, collaborative design process.
• Augmented Reality (AR): AR overlays digital elements onto the real world, blurring the lines between imagination and reality. For example, an architect can use AR to virtually "place" a new building design onto a city landscape, allowing for real-time visualization and stakeholder feedback.
• Three-Dimensional Printing: 3D printing has revolutionized the prototyping process, allowing creators to materialize their ideas into physical objects in a matter of hours. This rapid prototyping facilitates faster iteration and experimentation, leading to quicker innovation cycles.
• The Internet of Things (IoT): The power and potential of IoT is a growing network of interconnected devices constantly generating data. This data can be harnessed to identify user needs and pain points, informing the development of increasingly creative and innovative user-centric offerings as well as expediting maintenance and repair.
• Big data analytics: The sheer volume of data available today holds untapped innovation potential. Big data analytics can uncover hidden patterns, consumer preferences, and emerging trends that can inform entirely new product or service ideas. For instance, a streaming service might analyze user viewing habits to identify unexpected correlations between seemingly disparate genres, leading to the creation of innovative, genre-bending content.

Important Considerations

AI excels at pattern recognition but struggles with true originality. Overreliance on AI-generated suggestions for example can lead to homogenization of ideas, stifling the spark of divergent thinking.

Organizations often face barriers such as resource constraints, risk aversion, and cultural resistance to change. Technology is a tool, and its effectiveness depends on the human employing it.

AI algorithms are only as good as the data they're trained on. Biases in data sets can lead to uninspired or even harmful outputs. Organizations must be vigilant about mitigating bias and ensuring the ethical use of emerging technology in creative processes.

Emerging technologies can streamline innovation, allowing companies to bring new ideas to market faster. AI and big data tools can make creativity more accessible by automating mundane tasks and providing insightful data analysis, emerging technologies free humans to focus more on creativity. Support safe spaces for experimentation. When ideas fall flat, celebrate the lessons learned and iterate.

Company Examples

Forbes tracks the world’s most innovative companies. And a few firms offer notable examples.

One of the world’s leading tech firms, Google , encourages employees to spend 20% of their work hours, or one day a week, working on personal projects of their choice. These projects are unconnected to their regular job duties, furthering a practice of innovation, creativity, engagement, and experimentation.

Pixar encourages cross-functional brainstorming and idea-building. Team members build on each other's ideas, cultivating a collaborative spirit that allows for the creation of more robust and imaginative concepts and leading technology practices. They strive for a playful and fun environment that is advantageous to creativity.

Zappos is well known for its fun workplace and integrates play and creativity into its regular routines. They welcome wild, fun ideas, both tech-driven and low-tech, and work intentionally to provide a safe space for employees to share and explore their creativity which also enhances team spirit and employee engagement.

Action Steps And Best Practices

How can organizations navigate this intersection and leverage creativity with emerging technologies to grow? Consider these action steps and best practices :

• Encourage and reward creative problem-solving at all levels of the organization. Provide opportunities for unconstrained creative thinking, experimentation, and cross-functional collaboration.
• Invest productively in innovation capabilities, including research and development, resourcing, and operational agility.
• Link innovation to growth aspirations and reinforce its importance in strategic and financial discussions.
• Pursue multiple pathways to growth, both in core businesses and when entering adjacent customer segments, industries, or geographies. Innovative growers also only enter markets where there are clear opportunities to create and capture value.
• Embrace a culture of experimentation with emerging technologies. Allocate resources for employees to explore and learn the potential of AI, VR, and other emerging tech.
• Invest in training programs that equip your workforce with the skills to leverage these new technologies effectively. Be intentional about bridging any skill gaps.
• Establish an external innovation pipeline. Partner with external stakeholders like universities and startups to tap into fresh perspectives and cutting-edge ideas and build strong M&A capabilities.

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Innovation translates into growth, and creativity is the most crucial skill of the future . 70% of employers list creative thinking as the skill most needed in 2024. Organizations that prioritize innovation and creativity coupled with emerging technologies are also better equipped to adapt to disruptions. By continuously pushing the boundaries of what's possible, these organizations will promote a culture of innovation and creativity needed for sustained success.

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Stanford Online

Creativity and innovation management: how to inspire original ideas.

Do you find it difficult to come up with new ideas? Or do you get caught in the same train of thought over and over again?

Perhaps the problem isn’t that you’re not creative 一 you may just be using the wrong methods to brainstorm and ideate.

Creativity and successful innovation tools can help you work through even the toughest of issues. By changing the way that you think about problem-solving, you can reinvent your framework and generate more solutions.

In this short guide, we’ll discuss what it means to practice creativity and innovation management 一 as well as methods that you can use to inspire original ideas for any obstacles that you might encounter.

If you want to learn even more and practice with others, consider taking our Creative and Design Thinking program. 

What is creativity and innovation management?

Put simply, creativity and innovation management is the act of balancing creativity and innovation in your workplace.

Fueling creative thinking can be a difficult endeavor, especially in a work environment. Creativity doesn’t always come naturally, and it’s not uncommon for staff to feel stuck at times, especially when there are approaching deadlines and additional stress factors. Solution ideation 一 another term for coming up with a new idea and solutions 一 and managing creativity can be difficult tasks.

That’s where innovation management comes in. Using tools designed to help foster creativity and encourage innovative ideas, the best innovation management techniques can help you solve  problems, including those that you’ve been putting off for ages.

A word about creativity and innovation: they may seem like similar concepts, but there is a significant difference between the two due to their focus. Creativity is typically centered around original thought and knowledge, which unleashes potential and is an integral part of idea generation. Innovation, on the other hand, is used to turn the creative idea that you come up with into a viable solution. Hand in hand, they are powerful ways to disrupt and adapt, and to create the next great idea, which is increasingly important in today’s ever-changing world. 

How do I brainstorm creative ideas?

If you’re looking to encourage new ideas from your team, try these methods to start:

• Rapid ideation: Everyone in a group writes down as many ideas as possible within a set time limit. Brainstormers won’t be able to self-censor as easily with the element of speed. None of these ideas have to be fleshed out or thought through 一 even scraps or fragments are fine. Generating the bad ideas can open the door for good ones. This can be done to get the juices flowing.
• Brainstorm using different mediums and settings: Some people find that they can brainstorm better when it’s on colorful sticky notes, and others find that they can get their ideas out better with a whiteboard and a handful of dry-erase markers. Encouraging the creative process collectively in different settings, using various tools. Brainstorm individually and with a group . Learn hands-on brainstorming techniques with Stanford’s Introduction to Design Thinking and Innovation at Work content and find out what works best for your team.
• Figure storming: Pick a famous person and try to guess how they would solve the problem that you’re facing. By doing so, you’ll be able to approach your problem from a different perspective.
• Starbursting: Identify who, what, when, where and why in regards to the problem. By understanding the problem inside and out, you’ll have a better time finding a solution for it.

How to create an innovation process

So your team has a bunch of new ideas, what’s next? There are a few steps that you can take to build a good problem-solving method and become a master of creativity . The following is an example of an innovation process step-by-step.

• Encounter a problem that needs to be resolved.
• Define the problem correctly.
• Choose a brainstorming activity to spark your creativity.
• Gather relevant material and work through it, considering different solutions and approaches that you can take to solve the problem.
• Discuss your idea with your teammates to gauge its viability.
• Walk away from the problem before returning to it.
• Start implementing your idea.

This is just one example of a creativity and innovation process. Practice it with your team to see what drives innovation for you. You can tweak the process, inserting different steps or designing a different process that works better. Design thinking , the experimental-based, solution-process , might work for you and your company. With time you’ll be able to start bringing your idea to fruition quickly and efficiently. 

Does innovation start with creativity?

Naturally, innovation cannot happen without creativity.

Only with creative ideas can one truly innovate and implement solutions that work. Coming up with creative innovation is a matter of actively finding this inspiration. Once you’re able to start coming up with creative solutions to your problem, many find that this skill quickly lends itself to leadership roles with ease.

Because of how linked entrepreneurship is with creativity and innovation management, a large number of people who practice design thinking go on to be entrepreneurs. Many students in our online Creativity and Design Program find that there’s a natural transition between it and the Leading People, Culture, and Innovation Program .

The Creativity and Design Thinking Program teaches you how to build a creative practice and grow your creativity via ideation, empathizing, prototyping and seeking inspiration. Logically, what follows is the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program, which teaches students how to lead using those innovations and collaborative teams. Students bring what they learn in those classes and implement them to drive those innovations as well.

The ability to think, create, and implement creative solutions takes practice. Sharpening the creative potential within your organizational innovation development can be led through implementation processes . Creativity can indeed spark innovation, and innovation can, in turn, motivate entrepreneurship.

Enroll today

You can learn more about concepts like creativity and innovation management by enrolling in our professional education programs. Both our Creativity and Design Thinking Program and our Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program can enhance the way you think about problems and execute meaningful solutions.

For more information about what online courses we have to offer, visit our website today.

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How Do Technological Tools Enhance Children’s Creativity?

Do Something Awesome; Share With A Friend Who May Benefit

By Jerry Kolber

The digital revolution is an unstoppable force sweeping across every facet of society, including the education sector. As part of this movement, EdTech has made its way into classrooms, changing the dynamic and contributing to a fulfilling learning process. For children today, often thought of as digital natives, these tools have brought many benefits to the learning experience, including enhancing creativity amongst students.

There are many facets to creativity. Innovation: flexible thought, exploration of ideas, divergent thinking. Students who can make cross-discipline connections demonstrate creativity.

According to Kampylis and Berki (2014, p. 6) : ‘Creative thinking is defined as the thinking that enables students to apply their imagination to generating ideas, questions, and hypotheses, experimenting with alternatives and to evaluating their own and their peers’ ideas, final products and processes.’

Digital learning tools allow children to engage and interact with content, forcing students to harness their creativity to overcome challenges, create content and personalize their own learning experience. Research shows that both students and teachers value having technology-based creativity-fostering approaches across the curriculum—new digital tools provide this platform.

An Interactive learning experience

A wide range of interactive learning platforms are  flooding the market and increasingly being adopted  in classrooms. These tools allow students to personalize their experiences and express themselves creatively and collaboratively.

So many of these tools facilitate a blended learning experience in classrooms. Glogster represents a great example, as it allows teachers to set up a dashboard where students can publish the “glogs” (web-based posters) they have created. Students can then harness many different media types, including videos, texts, and images to express their knowledge.

These glogs allow students to demonstrate creatively the knowledge they’ve obtained through their work. Students can express their creativity by carving out their own learning path, working at their own pace, and deciding which content to focus on, all the while being overseen by the teacher.

Facilitating content creation

Traditionally students have received pre-prepared learning content such as textbooks. However, one of the great perks of digital innovation is that it ushers in new content creation methods. Educators can harness technology in the classroom to bring the students themselves into the content-creating process.

Kahoot! Is a tool that is perfect for content creation as it allows students to create their learning material for their peers. It is an online interactive learning platform that allows students to create their own quizzes on any topic for their peers.

The introduction of this kind of class dynamic brings many benefits to the student experience and development. Being able to create content signifies a depth of knowledge about a topic and also reinforces that knowledge, enhancing student outcomes. Also, and most importantly, when students can take over the levers of content creation it instills creativity. Students must have a deep understanding of the material and harness creative thinking to be able to create fun content.

Problem-solving with video games

Video games can engage students by providing problem-finding and problem-solving situations. They can offer challenges with different levels of complexity according to the age group, establishing an interactive world where students have to make choices about how they complete tasks.

Video games have proven to be highly effective in an educational setting and foster creativity. For example, Minecraft Education, first introduced to classrooms over 5 years ago, has been steadily growing in the academic environment. Students enter a world where they are in  full control and can create anything they want , forcing them to use their creative skills. Students have to think critically to identify and solve problems that are not necessarily made evident.

Having less instructional and guided learning enhances key problem solving and decision-making skills in children. Video games are a very effective tool because the students can effectively play a game, while unwittingly learning new skills and gaining more knowledge, especially in STEM subjects.

Harnessing technology tools to instill creativity should lead to positive outcomes amongst students, as creativity leads to more innovative and critical thinking. All of these skills give students the best chance for their future careers. Given that we live in a more technology-driven economy, the next generation must be taught to think more dynamically and creatively.

About the Author

J erry Kolber  is an Executive Producer, writer, and the CEO of  ATOMIC ENTERTAINMENT GROUP  – creators of the hit science/edu-taintment shows BRAIN GAMES and BRAINCHILD. Kolber graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, with a degree in theater and a concentration in film. 

This  article  was originally published by  The Learning Counsel , a research institute and news media hub focused on providing context for the shift in education to digital curriculum.

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Digitally Enhanced Creativity: Augmenting Creativity Through Digital Technologies

• First Online: 24 October 2021

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Yuizono, T., Munemori, J., Nagasawa, Y.: GUNGEN: groupware for a new idea generation consistent support system. In: Proceedings. 3rd Asia Pacific Computer Human Interaction (Cat. No. 98EX110), pp. 357–362 (1998)

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Carmen Bruno

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Bruno, C. (2022). Digitally Enhanced Creativity: Augmenting Creativity Through Digital Technologies. In: Creativity in the Design Process. Springer Series in Design and Innovation , vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87258-8_6

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Distance Learning

Using technology to develop students’ critical thinking skills.

by Jessica Mansbach

What Is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking is a higher-order cognitive skill that is indispensable to students, readying them to respond to a variety of complex problems that are sure to arise in their personal and professional lives. The  cognitive skills at the foundation of critical thinking are  analysis, interpretation, evaluation, explanation, inference, and self-regulation.  

When students think critically, they actively engage in these processes:

• Communication
• Problem-solving

To create environments that engage students in these processes, instructors need to ask questions, encourage the expression of diverse opinions, and involve students in a variety of hands-on activities that force them to be involved in their learning.

Types of Critical Thinking Skills

Instructors should select activities based on the level of thinking they want students to do and the learning objectives for the course or assignment. The chart below describes questions to ask in order to show that students can demonstrate different levels of critical thinking.

*Adapted from Brown University’s Harriet W Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning

Using Online Tools to Teach Critical Thinking Skills

Online instructors can use technology tools to create activities that help students develop both lower-level and higher-level critical thinking skills.

• Example: Use Google Doc, a collaboration feature in Canvas, and tell students to keep a journal in which they reflect on what they are learning, describe the progress they are making in the class, and cite course materials that have been most relevant to their progress. Students can share the Google Doc with you, and instructors can comment on their work.
• Example: Use the peer review assignment feature in Canvas and manually or automatically form peer review groups. These groups can be anonymous or display students’ names. Tell students to give feedback to two of their peers on the first draft of a research paper. Use the rubric feature in Canvas to create a rubric for students to use. Show students the rubric along with the assignment instructions so that students know what they will be evaluated on and how to evaluate their peers.
• Example: Use the discussions feature in Canvas and tell students to have a debate about a video they watched. Pose the debate questions in the discussion forum, and give students instructions to take a side of the debate and cite course readings to support their arguments.  
• Example: Us e goreact , a tool for creating and commenting on online presentations, and tell students to design a presentation that summarizes and raises questions about a reading. Tell students to comment on the strengths and weaknesses of the author’s argument. Students can post the links to their goreact presentations in a discussion forum or an assignment using the insert link feature in Canvas.
• Example:  Use goreact, a narrated Powerpoint, or a Google Doc and instruct students to tell a story that informs readers and listeners about how the course content they are learning is useful in their professional lives. In the story, tell students to offer specific examples of readings and class activities that they are finding most relevant to their professional work. Links to the goreact presentation and Google doc can be submitted via a discussion forum or an assignment in Canvas. The Powerpoint file can be submitted via a discussion or submitted in an assignment.

Pulling it All Together

Critical thinking is an invaluable skill that students need to be successful in their professional and personal lives. Instructors can be thoughtful and purposeful about creating learning objectives that promote lower and higher-level critical thinking skills, and about using technology to implement activities that support these learning objectives. Below are some additional resources about critical thinking.

Additional Resources

Carmichael, E., & Farrell, H. (2012). Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Online Resources in Developing Student Critical Thinking: Review of Literature and Case Study of a Critical Thinking Online Site.  Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice ,  9 (1), 4.

Lai, E. R. (2011). Critical thinking: A literature review.  Pearson’s Research Reports ,  6 , 40-41.

Landers, H (n.d.). Using Peer Teaching In The Classroom. Retrieved electronically from https://tilt.colostate.edu/TipsAndGuides/Tip/180

Lynch, C. L., & Wolcott, S. K. (2001). Helping your students develop critical thinking skills (IDEA Paper# 37. In  Manhattan, KS: The IDEA Center.

Mandernach, B. J. (2006). Thinking critically about critical thinking: Integrating online tools to Promote Critical Thinking. Insight: A collection of faculty scholarship , 1 , 41-50.

Yang, Y. T. C., & Wu, W. C. I. (2012). Digital storytelling for enhancing student academic achievement, critical thinking, and learning motivation: A year-long experimental study. Computers & Education , 59 (2), 339-352.

Insight Assessment: Measuring Thinking Worldwide

http://www.insightassessment.com/

Michigan State University’s Office of Faculty  & Organizational Development, Critical Thinking: http://fod.msu.edu/oir/critical-thinking

The Critical Thinking Community

http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766

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9 responses to “ Using Technology To Develop Students’ Critical Thinking Skills ”

This is a great site for my students to learn how to develop critical thinking skills, especially in the STEM fields.

Great tools to help all learners at all levels… not everyone learns at the same rate.

Thanks for sharing the article. Is there any way to find tools which help in developing critical thinking skills to students?

Technology needs to be advance to develop the below factors:

Understand the links between ideas. Determine the importance and relevance of arguments and ideas. Recognize, build and appraise arguments.

Excellent share! Can I know few tools which help in developing critical thinking skills to students? Any help will be appreciated. Thanks!

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Brilliant post. Will be sharing this on our Twitter (@refthinking). I would love to chat to you about our tool, the Thinking Kit. It has been specifically designed to help students develop critical thinking skills whilst they also learn about the topics they ‘need’ to.

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How Generative AI Can Augment Human Creativity

• Tojin T. Eapen,
• Daniel J. Finkenstadt,
• Lokesh Venkataswamy

There is tremendous apprehension about the potential of generative AI—technologies that can create new content such as text, images, and video—to replace people in many jobs. But one of the biggest opportunities generative AI offers is to augment human creativity and overcome the challenges of democratizing innovation.

In the past two decades, companies have used crowdsourcing and idea competitions to involve outsiders in the innovation process. But many businesses have struggled to capitalize on these contributions. They’ve lacked an efficient way to evaluate the ideas, for instance, or to synthesize different ideas.

Generative AI can help over­come those challenges, the authors say. It can supplement the creativity of employees and customers and help them produce and identify novel ideas—and improve the quality of raw ideas. Specifically, companies can use generative AI to promote divergent thinking, challenge expertise bias, assist in idea evaluation, support idea refinement, and facilitate collaboration among users.

Use it to promote divergent thinking.

Idea in Brief

The problem.

In the past two decades, companies’ efforts to involve outsiders in the process of coming up with new offerings have taken off. Crowdsourcing and idea competitions are two prime examples. But firms still struggle to make use of the plethora of ideas that are generated.

The Root Causes

A lack of an efficient way to evaluate the ideas, domain experts’ struggles in accepting novel ideas, the inability of contributors to provide details needed to make their ideas feasible, and the challenge of synthesizing different ideas are all factors.

The Solution

Generative AI can help overcome these challenges. It can augment the creativity of employees and customers and help them generate and identify novel ideas as well as improve the quality of raw ideas.

There is tremendous apprehension about the potential of generative AI—technologies that can create new content such as audio, text, images, and video—to replace people in many jobs. But one of the biggest opportunities generative AI offers to businesses and governments is to augment human creativity and overcome the challenges of democratizing innovation.

• Tojin T. Eapen is a senior fellow at the Conference Board and the founder of the Center for Creative Foresight.
• Daniel J. Finkenstadt is a principal at Wolf Stake Consulting, a military officer, and a former assistant professor at the Naval Postgraduate School. He is the coauthor of the book Supply Chain Immunity (Springer 2022).
• JF Josh Folk is the CEO and cofounder of StratRocket, an AI-native innovation SaaS platform.
• LV Lokesh Venkataswamy is the CEO and managing director of Innomantra, an innovation and intellectual-property consulting firm in Bengaluru, India.

Partner Center

Four Tools to Support Creativity and Innovation

By: Langdon Morris

There are four different types of innovation tools that we’ll describe here, including the design of the work place itself, practices that encourage and even enable effective collaboration, open innovation approach to connect inside innovation teams with outside partners and experts, and online tools that constitute the virtual work place. Separately and especially together, these can make a tremendous enhancement in the performance and the satisfaction of individuals, teams, and your entire organization.

The last element of the innovation formula is the tools that enable you, or support you, to produce better innovation outcomes more quickly. This is often a sensitive topic for small businesses, which generally don’t have the resources to provide innovation teams with big work spaces, generous travel budgets, and fancy prototyping tools.

What you do have is a lot of ingenuity, the willingness to work hard and achieve solid results through insightful thinking and persistence, and so the focus here is on supporting and enhancing the skills and commitment you have without spending much money.

And being able to spend a lot of money isn’t always such a good thing for innovation. We recently met with some of the leaders of a big, successful biotech company, and they toured us through their state-of-the-art lab facilities. The place was certainly gorgeous, shiny and bright and very new. Scientists in lab coats scurried around and the lab equipment were humming. We expressed our admiration for the great architecture and the great reputation of the firm.

As we were wrapping up the tour, however, one of the facilities leaders who had been our tour guide, and who had been with the company for decades, mentioned that while the new labs were certainly lovely, he noticed that something had been lost over the years. He remembered the early days of the company, which was started in left over Quonset huts from World War II.¹ These old buildings were on the funky side, not fancy and really not even all that nice, but they had a great spirit to them, and he remembered the labs as crowded and joyful. The company had done great work in those days, which became the foundation of its present success; and with success had come the bright, new labs.

And with the new labs had come a change in the culture, and the sense of teamwork, joy, and making do had been lost. He was worried that with this loss there was danger ahead.

In the aerospace industry in Southern California there is a similar story often told, of ad-hoc teams that were created to solve difficult problems, to do impossible things, and these teams weren’t the ones in the shiny labs either, they were out back, in the old part of the plant, working in improvised spaces that are still to this day called “skunkworks,” because they’re often crowded, dirty, smelly, and by the way, stupendously productive.

Your organization can create a bright and powerful future for itself in a Quonset hut or a skunkworks perhaps more readily in a neat, clean, “perfect” space. Our topic here is how to make that hut really hum.

The work place

The qualities and characteristics that make Quonset huts and skunkworks so useful is that they’re open, flexible, and no one is inhibited about messing around in them and trying something new.

The great qualities of this space are probably in dramatic contrast with the conference room in your office, the one that you’ve spent many hours in. And it’s probably very similar to conference rooms you’ve sat in at other companies, a rectangular room with a longish table surrounded by chairs.

The physical environment has tremendous influence on our behavior, yet it’s an unspoken assumption that meeting rooms have to fit this traditional shape, size, and layout. Unfortunately, the architecture profession and office furniture manufacturers have standardized on this utterly drab and uninspiring concept of what “the physical space” ought to be.

Unfortunately, the architecture profession and office furniture manufacturers have standardized on this utterly drab and uninspiring concept of what “the physical space” ought to be.

The prevailing style is derived from the corporate board room, which was in turn derived from the king’s chambers, and the single chair for the king, boss, CEO, or chairman at the head of the table conveys its primary social purpose, reinforcing hierarchical authority. Need I mention that this isn’t a very good environment for innovation or creativity? Yet in most organizations, it’s all there is.

Consultant and author Michael J. Gelb has studied this topic, and he makes the following observation. “For many years, psychologists have known that the quality of stimulation provided by the external environment is crucial to brain development in the early years of life. Recently, however, brain scientists have discovered that the quality of environmental stimulation affects the continuing development of the adult brain.” Gelb then goes on to lament the sterile office environments where most people work, and describes a project through which a team of people redesigned their own workplace. Among the changes that they made were removing photos of machines and replacing them with reproductions of favorite paintings, replacing fluorescent lights with full spectrum lights, bring in fresh flowers, and changing the coffee room into a “creative break room.” They also instituted the practice of a ten minute “brain break” every hour, and over the course of the following year their organization studied the work effectiveness of the people in the new environment. They found that productivity had improved by 90%.²

That’s an astounding difference, and it certainly affirms our experience that the work place is a pervasive influence, although its importance is often ignored. It’s the container.

Tom Allen and Gunter Henn address this issue in their lively book about the design of offices: “Most managers will likely acknowledge the critical role played by organizational structure in the innovation process, but few understand that physical space is equally important. It has tremendous influence on how and where communication takes place, on the quality of that communication, and on the movements – and hence, all interactions – of people within an organization. In fact, some of the most prevalent design elements of buildings nearly shut down the opportunities for the organizations that work within their walls to thrive and innovate. Hence, the implications of physical space for the innovation process are profound.”³

Imagine what it would have been like to work in the coolest labs where amazing stuff was being invented – Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park lab where the light bulb was perfected, or Ford’s workshop where he created the Model T, or the Wright Brothers’ airplane workshop, or Douglas Aircraft when the first DC-3 was built, or at Xerox PARC when the PC was being invented. You’d be surrounded by lots of brilliant, creative people solving difficult problems with astonishing levels of insight and inventiveness. You’d be having rich and provocative conversations, making sketches and designing and making models, arguing, laughing, and building, testing, learning with great enthusiasm and dedication.

This is exactly what a skunkworks is, and what that biotech company stumbled onto when they rented a bunch of old huts for their first office, because that was all they could afford. If you’re going to provide today’s innovators with the sort of work environment to help them succeed in today’s challenging world, this is exactly the kind of place you’ll create.

In Silicon Valley, it’s called “a garage,” and it’s where companies like HP, Apple, and Google got started. There’s something about a not-very-nice garage that inspires people to try new things; they are tools sitting there, just begging to be used, and dirty old benches to work on and no one will care if you make a bit of a mess, or even a big mess.

A few years ago we studied some great R&D labs about the US, and we found that the designers had focused on three main qualities that were most important:

Designing for interaction, spaces intended to increase the frequency of person-to-person interaction. As Allen and Henn note, “If you maximize the potential that people in an organization can and will communicate, you will vastly increase the likelihood of knowledge transfer, inspiration, and hence innovation. Organizational structure and physical space must be configured to encourage the very communication that spurs innovation. The success of the innovation process today depends on the employment of both tools.”⁴

This is the sand box for grownups, and the best ones contain lots of large vertical white boards that make it easy to collaborate.

Designing for flexibility, layouts and arrangements that enhance the flexibility of a building so that over time it’s easy to adapt it to changing requirements. Garages and skunkworks and Quonset huts do this automatically. They’re places where people bring their ideas, where they work to understand complex systems and create innovative solutions to problems. This is the sand box for grownups, and the best ones contain lots of large vertical white boards that make it easy to collaborate. Furniture is on wheels, making it easy to reconfigure to support lots of small teams that happen to be working at the same time, or one large one.

The third common feature is designing for beauty and intrigue, making buildings beautiful to enhance the joy of work. Colors, plants, books, graphics, and light can all be designed thoughtfully and even at little to no cost to enhance the environment, promote creativity, and support innovation teams.

How to Turn Crowdsourced Ideas Into Business Proposals

In October 2020, Pact launched AfrIdea, a regional innovation program supported by the U.S. Department of State. This was geared towards unlocking the potential of West African entrepreneurs, social activists, and developers in uncovering solutions to post-COVID challenges. Through a contest, training, idea-a-thon and follow-on funding, they sought to activate a network of young entrepreneurs and innovators from Guinea, Mali, Senegal, and Togo to source and grow innovative solutions. Learn their seven-stage process in the AfrIdea case study.

Get the Case Study

Effective collaboration.

A lot of the important work that will be done in your innovation space is collaboration, which as we have already discussed, is essential to success at innovation.

To create innovation requires that people engage in exploring new topics, understanding, diagnosing, analyzing, modeling, creating, inventing, solving, communicating, and implementing concepts, ideas, insights, and projects. These attributes are all facets of “learning,” and any organization that thrives in a rapidly changing environment has surely encouraged its members to learn and to apply active learning results to keep up with external changes. The link between learning and innovation is a strong one that has come up repeatedly in this book, and we also know that speed definitely matters. The faster people learn, the faster they can apply that learning to create the next generation of products, services, business models, and process improvements. By developing a positive and self-reinforcing feedback loop of accelerated learning to create innovation, organizations then obtain more learning, leading to more innovation. The benefits are multi-dimensional: shorter product life cycles, which leads to quicker learning; and then yet shorter product life cycles, better profits, etc., all contributing to competitive advantage. It is that supremely desirable, virtuous cycle that I described above.

Involving more people in this process, and doing so very effectively, is one of the best ways to accelerate the pace and improve the quality at the same time. Alan Mulally, formerly a senior manager of Boeing and then CEO of Ford put it this way when he described the development of the company’s new 777 aircraft: “We can’t make a better airplane unless we can figure how to get everybody’s knowledge included in the design.”⁵

As a small business leader you may not be designing new aircraft, but we’ve already talked about the importance of engaging a wide range of people. Innovation is a collaborative process, and it’s inevitable and necessary for people to work together to create and solve the problems that always arise across a wide range of disciplines and areas of expertise on the road from idea to innovation.

Ideas almost always get better as they are shared, discussed, and reworked, and then combined and recombined with other ideas on the way to becoming innovations. And this will be true regardless of the physical location where people are working, whether they’re in the same room or thousands of miles apart.

Most of the organizations that we admire for their innovation prowess are also noted for the quality of collaboration that they carefully and continuously promote. Toyota, for example, has developed a distinct environment where employees are not just welcome to put forth ideas, but expected to do so. Year after year, literally millions of ideas build on one another to add tremendous value for the company and its customers. In contrast, Toyota’s largest global competitor, GM, was well known not for the quality of collaboration that it evokes, but rather for the confrontational nature of its labor relations. Decades of conflict between labor and management resulted in a culture of discord, which made it perhaps inevitable that the company would have to go through the trauma of bankruptcy to restore its viability.

A happier story is that of the 777. Through the early years of its history, Boeing Corporation developed a company culture that was at times very adversarial. Conflict characterized the relationships between the company and its suppliers, and the company and its unions.

With the development of its new 777 aircraft during the late 1980s and early 1990s, Boeing’s leaders consciously chose to adopt a more collaborative approach. The goal was to enhance innovation to achieve a better result, and a milestone in commercial aviation. By reducing or eliminating the conflicts and choosing a win-win approach, Boeing achieved and perhaps even exceeded its goals, as the 777 team produced the new airplane in record time.

Developing new insights, testing new ideas, and developing them into innovations of value to the market are inevitably collaborative processes that may involve tens, hundreds, or even thousands of people. The 777 development team consisted of 5000 Boeing engineers, and many thousands more who worked in Boeing’s supplier companies.

The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred.

About their work together, Mulally commented, “The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred. We think when we express ourselves that, because we generally understand what we think, the person that we’re expressing it to generally understands it in the same way. When you’re creating something, you have to recognize that it’s the interaction that will allow everybody to come to a fundamental understanding of what it’s supposed to do, how it’s going to be made. We should always be striving to have an environment that allows those interactions to happen.”⁶

Such interactions reveal important nuances of tone, inflection, timing, cadence, body language, attention, smell, and facial expression, all richly present in every face to face encounter, and these nuances can be critical to successful communication, design and problem solving activities when we depend on people to integrate their unique knowledge and diverse vantage points to address complex problems.

The importance of these unspoken elements is one of the reasons that face to face interaction is so important for innovation, as the subtle nuances are captured only partially – if at all – in interactions via phones and computers.

This does not mean that phones and computers don’t have important uses, but we all know that there’s something unique and irreplaceable about working together in the same room. So while we can’t always work face to face, it is often preferable. Tom Allen and architect Gunter Henn help us understand that complexity is the root cause:

“Managers communicate by telephone far more than do engineers and scientists, and hence they tend to believe that the telephone (or email) will work as well for the engineers as it does for them. ‘Why do they need to travel?” managers often ask about engineers and scientists. Managers must remember that, on average, they deal with less complex information than do the engineers and scientists reporting to them. Compared with technical information, a much greater proportion of management information can be communicated by telephone. Notably, when managers face a complex issue, they too recognize the need to meet with the other parties in the same room.”⁷

And what about the very common experience, that interaction leads to new insights? As I’ve already mentioned, physiology and cognitive science tell us that the brain and the memory work by association,⁸ and that interactions between people stimulate new associations and new connections that can lead to breakthroughs. Face to face interactions also enable people to share experiences, through which they connect as they share tacit and explicit knowledge, and in the process create new knowledge. From this process we get the title of James Burke’s engaging study of innovation called Connections , which we also call “creativity.”⁹

We can summarize the subtle dimension of collaboration with a comment from Glaxo Wellcome chemist Dan Sternbach, who noted that, “Nothing replaces two people standing at the board and drawing things, which is the way we communicate a lot. It’s an interactive situation where, when somebody’s drawing something the other guy says, ‘Well that reminds me of this thing.’ As soon as you try to do that by email it takes more time. You can do some of it that way, but the same conversation would probably happen in a day versus 20 minutes because of the give and take that goes on.”¹⁰ Face to face interaction, that is, stimulates the associative powers of the mind that are essential to innovation.

In many situations, the effectiveness of collaborative efforts can be greatly improved through active facilitation, not only for small teams but also for groups. We discussed your role as a facilitator in the Leadership chapter , and new we will visit it again.

Facilitators, who are often innovation leaders or champions, guide groups of people through the creative process using a deep understanding of the creative process itself, as well as psychology, which helps them anticipate how individuals will participate throughout the process, group psychology which helps them understand and support the needs of large groups, and business knowledge, which of course provides the context in which many problems are to be solved.

There are many different collaboration techniques, ranging from tightly scripted and facilitated design sessions that are often used to address complex technical challenges, to more loosely structured or self-organizing processes.

Social tools

…the decline was due to the invention of the small coffee maker, and the change in corporate culture that it caused

Sometimes you don’t even have to be present to provide outstanding facilitation. I learned this one day not too long ago when I met with a retired former employee of HP Labs, the company’s R&D department. He lamented the sad decline in the Labs’ output, and the lack of esprit de corps he noticed there. This bothered him a great deal, and he had thought deeply about why it happened. He attributed some of the decline to the departure of Bill Hewlett, who had been a very effective leader of R&D, but he also said that the decline was due to the invention of the small coffee maker, and the change in corporate culture that it caused. I was frankly a bit skeptical about the coffee maker part, but I listened politely.

During the best days in the Labs, in the 1950s, 60s, and into the ‘70s, coffee was brewed in big pots in a basement kitchen. Twice a day the kitchen staff would bring up the pots on a cart, and everyone would fill their cups and stand around for ten or fifteen minutes to chat while enjoying their coffee.

What they’d chat about in addition to the weather, the favorite teams, or the news, was work. People often brought problems, asking for help where they were stuck, and sometimes their naturally-curious colleagues (this was an R&D group, after all) would help by brainstorming possible solutions to design and engineering problems right then and there.

And if today’s ideas didn’t work out, tomorrow’s coffee breaks were another opportunity to get creative input from some very smart people who were by now aware of what you were doing, and might even be thinking about it for you. A lot of tough problems got unstuck at the coffee break.

This is yet another version of the story we all know, the chance conversation that opens new insights that later proves to be important; HP Labs’ twice-a-day coffee break was an organizational tool that promoted this type of collaboration almost invisibly, and thus an elegant example of social design.

But when coffee makers became small and cheap (another industry’s innovations), the kitchen staff no longer brought the big pots around on a cart because all over R&D there were personal little pots that simmered all day. No more structured coffee breaks, no more spontaneous brainstorming, and as far as our friend was concerned, the beginning of the end of the great days of HP Labs.

As I mentioned, I was a bit skeptical about this, but a couple years later I happened to read Steve Wozniak’s autobiography, iWoz, and when I read the following comment about his days working at HP I found that my skepticism had been entirely misplaced:

“Every day at 10:00 am and 2:00 pm they wheeled in donuts and coffee. That was so nice. And smart, because the reason they did it was so everyone would gather in a common place and be able to talk, socialize and exchange ideas.”¹¹

So there it was, confirmation that the structured coffee break is indeed a tool to promote effective collaboration, the exchange of ideas, useful at HP and nearly everywhere else.

We subsequently applied this principle in the design of a new workplace for a team of 200 software engineers. In addition to giving them dynamic spaces for collaborative work, we included a café, and insisted that personal coffee makers be banned. This caused everyone to frequent the café, and thereby increased the frequency of the chance encounters that promote innovative thinking.

The new lab / skunkworks / hut / garage is a flexible and inspiring place, not a boring one. There is a significant productivity increase to be gained by supporting the essential activities that constitute effective innovation: thinking, creating, problem-solving, and collaborating.

And we know that the work place which best supports these activities is not a traditional conference room. In fact, conference rooms are proven creativity killers, deadly dull, inflexible, and made really just to support information exchange in a hierarchical setting. Avoid them at all costs if your goals have anything to do with innovation and creativity.

Open Innovation and the Innovation Ecosystem

As you know, an ecosystem is an environment in which there are many organisms interacting in the course of their normal process of living. They compete and cooperate to survive in a complex web of relationships, many of which are difficult to recognize or identify even though they’re critical to every creature’s and each plant’s survival.

Similarly, innovation happens in a market ecosystem that has countless influences, as it consists of a firm and its customers, along with competitors, suppliers, and all manner of stakeholders who have something to say about what could be done, what should be done, what should not be done, and why.

As complexity increases in society and in the marketplace, an important determinant of success is the capacity to actively engage with that ecosystem, to work effectively with people and organizations who are outside of our firm and to engage them in the innovation process that’s going on inside our firm. That’s what we mean by “open innovation.”

While in the past many organizations kept the innovation process as a closely guarded domain that stayed entirely in house and was shrouded in secrecy, and some such as Apple still do, many companies have switched their viewpoint and found that openly seeking new ideas from outside, from customers and non-customers, suppliers, partners, experts, community members, and pretty much everyone else, and opening up the innovation process, significantly improves the flow and quality of new ideas. “Open innovation” is a name for this new style of working that taps into other people, perspectives, ideas, critical thoughts, and advice.

An example of open innovation that is entirely transforming the telecommunications industry is Apple’s App Stores for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, through which Apple provides a semi-open platform, and individuals and organizations then develop applications for those devices using a standardized toolkit. Apps are sold or given away through the platform’s storefront, and as of summer 2014 there were more than a million apps in the Apple store, and a million more for android, and a stunning cumulative total of more than 75 billion downloads since Apple first opened its store in July 2008. The applications themselves range from the frivolous, such as Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D, to Google Earth and Facebook, and even serious tools such as a step by step lesson in CPR that has been credited as helping save the life of a young athlete who suffered cardiac arrest during a basketball practice; his coach had downloaded the CPR app only the day before, and put it to good use…¹²

By harnessing the creativity of people around the world in an open development environment, Apple has created tremendous momentum for the iPhone, and a new source of economic growth for the ecosystem that consists of the company, app authors, and app users.

The App Store is just one example of a new creative genre that’s become common to internet companies, all utilizing the principle that a company with a sufficiently large customer network can create a business platform that promotes an entire ecosystem so that other individuals and companies can then use it to create content and transact their own business.

The term “crowdsourcing” describes this new way that many people can participate as contributors of content. The resulting breadth and depth of content is what makes many of the highly successful internet businesses so compelling. Wikipedia, eBay, YouTube, and Google are examples.

Google is now the world’s largest advertising agency, but all the web sites that Google searches and indexes are created not by Google. In 2008 Google’s indexing system was sorting more than 1 trillion different URLs, all created not by Google, but by the crowd, namely, us. By 2014 that number had grown to about 30 trillion.

In Don Tapscott’s recent book Wikinomics , he makes a persuasive argument that these companies are examples of an emerging economic model that supports knowledge aggregation and social networking, which suggests that open innovation is not only a business practice, but a new style of economic activity.¹³

And it’s not just companies that have opened up their innovation thinking to the outside. New York City is looking for great ideas, too. “Have an Idea to Save NYC Money? The city is looking for innovative ways to save New York City money. If you have ideas for finding efficiencies in government, submit them today.” You can share yours through the city’s web site, nyc.gov

There are also tools to augment and help accelerate the open innovation process including open innovation software platforms such as Innocentive, 9 Sigma and Innoget, and they’re are all defining new ways to collect knowledge and make it more useful, and also create new knowledge through open innovation collaboration.

Most small companies will have modest open innovation efforts, but of course the point is to find ways to interact efficiently to gain important insights about the market, competition, and new technology that may inform or support ongoing or new innovation efforts.

Virtual tools

A lot of open innovation effort take places online, and as we spend more and more time working and collaborating via our computers, connecting with our colleagues and outside partners, customers, and vendors, the quality of our tools and our skill in using them can make a significant difference in the productivity of our innovation efforts, especially since the all of us are now tending now to address issues via email that are more and more complex.

The computer infrastructure needs of an organization tend to increase in complexity at a very high rate as the number of people in the organization increases, so even medium sized companies end up with dedicated IT staffs to help them keep the organization’s computing power operational. These firms will apply many different types of tools across a broad range of functions, including basic communications via email, chat, and conferencing applications, the servers that support them, plus the web services that manage the brand imaging on the internet, accounting and finance, operations and supply chain, sales, marketing, and distribution.

The innovation effort, meanwhile, can also benefit from some specific tools, including social networking, project management, idea collection, and creativity tools.

We are big advocates for the importance of visualizations, and you already know this because we started this book by talking about the importance of maps. We also think it’s important for you to visualize your innovation investments, and hence we recommend that even small organizations develop dashboards that track project selection and performance, and align the innovation portfolio with whatever is known about the driving forces that are most significant for your own organization. The innovation dashboard is an essential tool to help innovation champions, portfolio managers, and leaders to maintain a good overview of the process, the details, and the results.

For the smallest companies a lot of great modeling work can be done in Excel. So whether you’re using a general tool like Excel or a innovation management tool, it’s essential to have tools tool can support major changes in the direction of focus of innovation efforts, which we referred to in Chapter 4 as the pivot, the act of shift the focus of an entire portfolio to reflect changing external conditions which are proving to be significant for the firm. Without visibility of the portfolio, and the capacity to model it in real time, then pivots become difficult if not impossible to achieve.

Taking Action

These four innovation tools can work together nicely to support creative and innovative people through the many phases and iterations of their work in the innovation process. When these methods are combined effectively they can make a tremendous difference by helping individuals and teams achieve much better and much faster results.

So naturally you need to ask yourself if your organization should invest in these tools

If you have offices, you already have. Are they as good as they can be?

And if you have software tools, you also have. So given the productivity gains that can be achieved, it may be a very fruitful investment.

Innovation managers are often the ones who shepherd these tools, methods, and environments into reality, and thereby support the quest for high performance for their own organizations.

By Langdon Morris

Article series

The Innovation Formula: the guidebook to innovation for small business leaders and entrepreneurs

About the author:

References:

• Quonset huts were produced in mass during World War II. They were designed to enclose the most space with the least material, and were generally made of steel frames covered with corrugated steel sheets. The US Navy used more than 150,000 during the war, and then sold most of them afterwards. Many are still in use 75 years later throughout the US and in the Pacific.
• Michael J. Gelb. How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci. Dell, 1998. P. 138.
• Thomas J. Allen and Gunter W. Henn. The Organization and Architecture of Innovation: Managing the Flow of Technology. Elsevier, 2007. p. 14.
• Thomas J. Allen and Gunter W. Henn. The Organization and Architecture of Innovation. Elsevier, 2008. P. 2.
• Karl Sabbagh. Twenty-First-Century Jet: The Making and Marketing of the Boeing 777. Scribner, 1996. p. 70.
• Karl Sabbagh. Twenty-First-Century Jet: The Making and Marketing of the Boeing 777. Scribner, 1996. p. 36.
• Thomas J. Allen and Gunter W. Henn. The Organization and Architecture of Innovation. Elsevier, 2007. P. 63.
• William H. Calvin. The River that Flows Uphill: A Journey from the Big Bang to Big Brain. New York, MacMillan, 1986.
• James Burke. Connections. Simon & Schuster, 2007.
• Langdon Morris. “Social Design: The Link Between Facility Design,Organization Design, and Corporate Strategy.” An InnovationLabs White Paper, 1999. Downloadable at www.innovationlabs.com/publications
• Steve Wozniak & Gina Smith. iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon. Norton, 2006. p 122.
• http://rivals.yahoo.com/highschool/blog/prep_rally/post/Coach-uses- iPhone-app-to-help-save-collapsed-pla?urn=highschool-291472
• Don Tapscott, Wikinomics. Portfolio, 2010.

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The Role of Digital Technologies to Promote Collaborative Creativity in Language Education

Moisés selfa-sastre.

1 Department of Specific Didactics, Universitat de Lleida, Lleida, Spain

Manoli Pifarré

2 Department of Psychology, Universitat de Lleida, Lleida, Spain

Andreea Cujba

Laia cutillas, enric falguera, associated data.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

The importance of cultivating creativity in language education has been widely acknowledged in the academic literature. In this respect, digital technologies can play a key role in achieving this endeavour. The socio-cultural conceptualization of creativity stresses the role of communication, collaboration and dialogical interaction of creative expression in language education. The objective of this paper is to study the literature focusing on cases of collaborative creativity and technology embedded in language education. To this end, we carry out a systematic revision of state-of-the-art literature consisting of 26 blind peer-reviewed empirical studies selected from several databases that address our main research question, namely, which specific roles and forms of digital technology can be identified in the existing literature that support collaborative creativity in language education. Results show that the features of digital technology unfold a range of learning opportunities in language education and can play three different roles in promoting collaborative creativity: (1) as a tutoring device that guides the implementation of key co-creation skills; (2) as a tool that enables and shapes the development of co-creative thinking skills; and (3) as a medium that creates rich and resourceful environments to stimulate the emergence of collective creative processes. The paper also reveals that these three roles can be performed using a wide range of interactive technologies that encourage students to participate in a rich, co-creative language learning experience and equip learners with key competences to approach complex problems in a globalised and hyper-connected world. Finally, this paper may contribute to developing future language technology-enhanced learning projects capable of promoting key collaborative and creative processes.

Introduction

Creativity has been identified as the backbone of the skills needed to participate fully in the 21st century society, both in professional and everyday situations that require innovative responses. Also, creativity is regarded as one of the key competences to approach complex problems in a globalised and hyper-connected world ( Gretter and Yadav, 2016 ; Henriksen et al., 2016 ). Consequently, over the last decade and globally, educational policies have been implemented aimed at including in curricula competences and contents that promote creativity and innovation ( Van de Oudeweetering and Voogt, 2018 ).

Recent educational research agrees that creativity is the ability to generate novel, appropriate and valuable ideas that can lead to producing original and valuable products or learning outcomes ( Rojo, 2019 ). Therefore, the definition of creativity includes two characteristics: on the one hand originality refers to novelty, infrequency and uniqueness; on the other hand usefulness refers to utility, appropriateness, fitness or valuableness for the community ( Hernández-Torrano and Ibrayeva, 2020 ).

Recent trends consider creative acts to be socio-cultural in nature and origin. From this perspective, the actions aiming to generate original and valuable products are seen as a social, rather than as an individual phenomenon. Since cultural traditions, social practices and social artefacts regulate and transform the human mind ( Shweder and Sullivan, 1990 ; Glăveanu, 2018 ), there is a profound interdependence between individuals and their socio-cultural context. The transactions, interactions and activities between these two systems are at the root of creativity. According to Vygotsky et al. (1996) , context-mediated action is the socio-cultural genesis of mental functions. Thus, the socio-cultural conceptualisation of creativity emphasises the role of intersubjectivity, communication and dialogical interaction in creative expression ( Glăveanu, 2010 ). There is no doubt that creativity emerges from the close and binding relationship between language and thought.

The focus of educational research on socio-cultural aspects of creativity has led to the coinage of such concepts as collaborative creativity , collaborative creativity , group creativity or distributed creativity ( Sawyer, 2012 ; Glăveanu, 2014 ). Creativity has been defined as a social process ( Sawyer, 2012 ) that emerges and develops among group situations. Indeed, great innovations are often the result of group work, and social judgement and communication play an important role in developing creative products ( Glăveanu, 2018 ). In this respect, collaborative creativity can be considered as the emergence of shared ideas between two or more individuals ( Sakr, 2018 ). Also, Sun et al. (2022) highlight that group processes, such as sharing, negotiation, group communication and interaction processes, are decisive factors of collaborative creativity. Tanggaard (2020) claims that the situated, social nature of creative practices requires a basic dimension of togetherness because we create with the support and engagement of others, and the support of tools and artefacts created by former generations. Sakr (2018) claims the importance of taking into consideration the affective dimensions of collaborative creativity. In this paper, we aim to explore how collaborative creativity supported with technology is promoted in language education.

In the specific case of language education, creativity processes emerge when there is a requirement to meet the challenges posed by language teaching. In this article, collaborative creativity in language education is characterised as the collaborative construction of an original and valuable product that gives a creative answer to language learning challenges. The difference between solving these problems individually or collaboratively is abysmal. While in the former, there is a univocal and unidirectional dialogue, in the latter, i.e. when two or more subjects are involved in the creation of creative thinking, productivity and collaboration between equals is fostered. This results in rich communication of experiences in pursuit of a common good: in other words, ‘students are engaged in higher level thinking activities such as problem solving and discussion of complex ideas’ ( Shuler et al., 2010 , p. 11). There is, therefore, an engagement between people to solve what Montalvo (2011) calls linguistic enigmas . In this scoping review, we only take into consideration those pieces of research that promote creativity in collaborative environments.

Nowadays, we witness the rapid development of digital and interactive technologies connecting people in multiuser working spaces where users can interact, share and externalise their ideas in open spaces, interplaying with others’ voices in different and multiple multimodal channels. As a result of this active online dialogue, new, dynamic and co-created knowledge can emerge ( Pifarré, 2019 ). On this issue, Wegerif (2015) argues that technology shapes human thinking and impacts on how we think and interact with others. Therefore, technology can play an important role in mediating students’ creative actions as well as engaging them into meaning-making and collaborative knowledge creation ( Säljö, 1999 ). Also, Mercer et al. (2019) state that we think with and through artefacts that constitute mediational means endowed with affordances and constraints.

Previous research has characterised distinct features of interactive technology that can play a role in resourcing, promoting and shaping co-creative dialogues ( Major et al., 2018 ). Certainly, digital technologies open up new possibilities for creating and visualising the links between language and thought that allow for a multimodal representation of creative ideas. Ntelioglou et al. (2014) emphasise that the multimodal interaction of technologies facilitates 21st century education in that it promotes broader literacy beyond simple literacy skills by incorporating multiple modes of meaning-making and communication (e.g. auditory, visual, linguistic, spatial and body modes) on the one hand; on the other, the multimodal interaction of technologies provides pedagogical support for learners to optimise their language and literacy learning. For example, digital storytelling has been used to create collaborative storeys as well as to favour language learning specially, learning an L2 in multilingual learning ( Anderson et al., 2018 ; Andayani, 2019 ; Tyrou, 2021 ).

Technology can play a crucial role in solving language learning problems. In fact, there is a growing application of digital and interactive technologies to language education. Our interest focuses not only on learning what types of digital environments have been mostly used to stimulate collaborative creativity in language education, but also on reviewing how technology has been used to foster collaborative creativity processes and what results have been obtained from its use.

Our review paper aims to fill this research gap and provide new knowledge on how research in the field of language education has used technology to promote collaborative creativity processes. In this line, identifying the most salient features of existing research may provide an insight into further research on new pedagogies involving creativity in language education with the use of digital technologies.

Over the last decade, language education has gradually incorporated the use of a wide range of interactive mobile technology widely used in scientific research. The introduction of such technology in language classrooms has generated opportunities and challenges in the design of learning scenarios that promote collaborative creativity competences. Surprisingly, there are no review studies that analyse the role of technology in supporting and organising collaborative and creative processes in the teaching and learning of language content. Such studies could provide valuable knowledge for outlining theoretical frameworks and pedagogical guidelines to better design language teaching and learning projects that use technology to promote creativity.

To fill this research gap, this article offers a review of educational studies that combine the use of pedagogy and digital technologies to cultivate collaborative creativity competencies in language teaching and learning. This review focuses on research conducted at compulsory and post-compulsory education levels during 2008–2021, as will be seen in the Results and discussion sections.

Our research question is ‘Which specific roles and forms of digital technology can be identified in the existing literature that support collaborative creativity in language education?’

Materials and Methods

Bibliographical search and criteria for the selection of studies.

We carried out a scoping review to identify the most relevant studies on the development of collaborative creativity in language education by means of digital technology. This systematic review aims to gather evidence on the role of digital technology in promoting social creativity in language education and carry out a quantitative and qualitative analysis. Our analysis aims to identify and evaluate existing studies rather than use statistical techniques (e.g. metanalysis) that combine results of these studies to obtain global measuring parameters. Our methodological framework follows the PRISMA statement, a recent guide of systematic reviews launched by Page et al. (2021) . The databases consulted are Web of Science (WoS), Scopus and Google Scholar, as they are the most widely acknowledged sources of reference to obtain updated systematic reviews ( Codina, 2018 : 30–33). We carried out searches in these databases through the advanced search function entering the following keywords and phrases: ‘language education’, ‘creativ*’, ‘collab*’, ‘techno*’ and ‘learning’.

On the first search attempt, we realised that the word ‘technology’ could be restrictive as some articles used keywords, such as ‘computer’, ‘digital’ or ‘video’. In view of this, we decided to replace the word ‘technology’ with the keywords: ‘comput*’, ‘digital’, ‘Web’, ‘video’, ‘blog’, ‘Wiki’ and ‘podcast’. As a result, we managed to collect an appropriate selection of studies for our research. It should be noted that our search covered the last 13 years (from 2008 to 2021), as during these years, there has been an increased integration of technology in language teaching and learning classrooms. In this respect, creativity and collaboration among peers in teaching and learning flourish when learners need to give a novel and original reply to the group.

We established inclusion and exclusion source registers for the systematic review. They are indicated in Table 1 .

Inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Two independent reviewers conducted all stages of study selection for this review; discrepancies in papers that partially met the criteria were re-examined by a third reviewer and resolved by consensus. Our initial pool was 188 articles, of which 79 were duplicates as they appeared in all three databases consulted. Through the first screening, we discarded the following three types of documents: (a) studies from conferences and/or communications: only blind peer-reviewed articles were considered; (b) books and book chapters were discarded due to the difficulties of having open access to these documents; and (c) articles that were not written in English or Spanish. Figure 1 summarises the screening procedure and the inclusion and exclusion criteria for the paper review selection.

Screening procedure of the papers.

After this first search, 48 scientific articles were read and assessed for their suitability to achieve the objectives of our research. From these, 12 of them were discarded as they were not directly related to the domain of language teaching and learning. In addition, 10 more articles did not directly discuss research linked to the development of collaborative creativity in language teaching and learning processes. Finally, we narrowed down a selection of 26 relevant studies in line with the research question of this study. A description of all the selected papers is shown in Table 2 .

Summary of review studies reporting on collaborative creativity practices with technology in the teaching and learning of languages.

We then categorised the 26 studies as they constituted our research basis. After reading, checking and discussing the 26 selected papers, we agreed on the following: firstly, including the paper in one specific category or role of technology. Secondly, analysing how each type of technology was used in each paper to promote collaborative creativity. Thirdly, checking on the discrepancies solved using a consensus-based approach.

Table 2 provides an overview of the core data extracted from the selected studies. In order to identify the possible roles that technology could play in promoting students’ collaborative creativity in language education, we were inspired by the different ways of conceptualising the relationship between technology and teaching thinking and creativity developed by Loveless (2007) and Wegerif (2015) . For the purposes of this study, as many as three different roles of technology in promoting students’ collaborative creativity in language education were identified as: (1) technology as a tutor that induces and models the execution of key co-creative processes for solving language challenges; (2) technology as a tool whose utilisation and appropriation of its characteristics by the students becomes an instrument to think creatively and collaboratively during language learning; and (3) technology as a medium or an environment that prompts the development of key collaboration and creativity processes.

Figure 2 displays the results of the roles that technology plays in promoting students’ collaborative creativity in language education and the forms of technology used. As shown in Figure 2 , technology as a tool is the most frequent role among the studies reviewed ( n  = 12). This role was introduced using a wide range of digital technologies. In any case, audio and video platforms are the most common forms of technology used as instruments that facilitate thinking co-creatively. Out of these 26 studies, 11 of them promoted the use of technology in language education as a medium that provokes co-creation. Fewer studies were found with a tutor role technology ( n  = 3).

Form and role of the technology.

Six forms of digital technology were identified in the studies reviewed in order to promote collaborative creativity in language education for all students. The studies analysed used mainly audio and video platforms ( n  = 10). A few studies used Blog ( n  = 5) and web-based environments ( n  = 4) and fewer studies used wiki ( n  = 3) or mobile technology ( n  = 3). Finally, a limited number of studies introduced word processing ( n  = 1). Audio and video platforms were the most frequent ones. When digital technologies were implemented as a tutor, Blog ( n  = 2) was the main one.

Recent research has shown that interactive technologies provide a set of tools than can enrich the learning context and nurture collaborative creativity processes ( Henriksen et al., 2016 ). A specific technology imposes certain constraints, establishes preconditions for students’ behaviours and opens up a range of learning opportunities. Because of this, there is a need to analyse how technology is used to promote collaborative creativity in language education.

The qualitative analysis of the papers selected for this review identified three different roles of technology for promoting students’ collaborative creativity in language education, namely: tutor, tool and medium. In this section, we address the discussion of the results obtained in relation to these three different roles of technology.

Technology as a Tutor of Co-creative Thought

Digital technologies can be seen as gadgets selected to guide a creative activity on the teaching and learning of a given linguistic content. From this point of view, technology can act as a tutor that encourages creative thinking by following pre-established guidelines and the design of scripts or prompts that promote the performance of specific creative skills. An example of this use in language learning is developed by Cruz and Orange (2016) and applied to Master studies. For their study, they use the multimedia poster Gloster to support and improve oral communication on a topic. In this study, technology promotes the development of key creative processes as it can increase opportunities to explore and play with materials, information and ideas around oral communication in a given language. The teacher often plays an important role in the use of technology, as it is the teacher who introduces technology in the classroom to teach curricular content creatively. However, the content-related use of technology can help raise awareness of the ways in which creativity relates to learning curricular knowledge.

In the study by Contreras Salas (2012) , Web 2.0 tools are effective in creating information in collaboration with others, organising social networks, sharing videos and photos, and creating wikis, blogs, podcasts and folksonomies . The aim of their effective design was to offer a creative virtual world in which all the proposals related to the use of ICT were collected in a Methodology Guide as a tutorial guide for developing creative thinking. From this guide, teachers, in this case English ones, can draw different possibilities for the use of ICT which are not linear, but transversal and offer multiple possibilities of use and interaction. The result of this study showed that the inclusion of ICT in the teaching of English changed the dynamics of teaching in the learning of this language in 50% of the students. Indeed, students managed time asynchronously as participatory and collaborative work was necessary to carry out learning activities. On the other hand, teachers continuously reviewed the technological learning guidelines contained in the Methodology Guide . In this way, the learning process of the students was positively influenced by the methodological approaches of the language teacher.

Similarly, Montalvo (2011) focused on Peruan primary schoolchildren—years 4, 5 and 6. His study highlights the importance of collaborative learning in linguistic learning situations mediated by digital technologies. These technologies consist in audiovisual riddles which favour the exercise of creative thinking. Riddles represent a dialogical game between two or more people in which the riddle posed by the sender is tackled by the receivers, thereby establishing a dialogical game between the two. In order to ensure that audiovisual riddles are more widely accepted among new generations, the sender resorts to digital technology, giving them a digital treatment through YouTube. As Igarza (2009 : p. 214) points out ‘YouTube is perhaps the Google of the next generation’. In addition to this tool, a blog recorded the response to each of the five riddles posed. Each of the riddles was based on an animated image and a text related to the content of that image. The solution to the task was carried out in groups of two, three or four students, which made it possible to observe the dynamics established among group members when working on the answer to a riddle. The conclusions of the study show that collaborative learning is one of the most functional ways of working in education. It is also closely related to what Montalvo (2011 : p. 130) refers to as collective intelligence , today associated with Web 2.0 and social networks.

Creativity, peer collaboration and the use of technology have been, as shown above, the object of study, application and analysis in language teaching and learning environments, in which learners play an active role. However, as Contreras Salas (2012) points out in a study with Degree students of Elementary Education specialising in Humanities, Spanish and English of the Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia, based in Bucaramanga, it is necessary to encourage creativity using technology on teachers who have to teach language content. One of the technological avenues most widely explored in language teaching is Web 2.0, as it allows the teacher to share information and specific guides with the learner through the World Wide Web. Contreras Salas (2012) shows in his research how English teachers create Web 2.0 activities that offer different possibilities of working with ICT.

Technology as a Tool That Facilitates Thinking Co-creatively

Socioculturalism argues that subjects learn to think by internalising the use of cultural tools, such as language or technology, which later become cognitive or critical thinking tools ( Vygotsky, 1987 ). Instrumental genesis ( Rabardel and Bourmaud, 2003 ) addresses the connection of human agents and technical artefacts through the concept of instrument. An instrument is a heterogeneous entity, composed of a technical artefact and a human agent. The instrument arises from a double developmental movement, which connects the artefact and its scheme of use. From this instrument, the agents interact and develop a creative product ( Overdijk et al., 2012 ). Technology can thus be seen as a tool used to shape and develop an activity. Instrumentalization therefore changes the tool at the same time as it changes the subject using it.

Digital technologies offer different possibilities to solve language challenges creatively. Users can convert features of digital technologies into instruments for thinking that promote key collaborative and creative processes for solving a language activity.

The qualitative analysis of the papers selected for this review distinguished three different uses of digital technologies as instruments for promoting collaborative creativity actions in language education: (a) as a co-participation and engagement tool; (b) as a multimedia tool that enhances collaborative and creative writing strategies; and (c) a tool that supports linguistic thinking. Next, we will discuss these three uses of technology as a tool.

Technology as a Tool That Enhances Participation and Engagement of All Group Members to Jointly Create Knowledge

Engagement of all group members and being together is a basis of being creative ( Tanggaard, 2020 ). Technology makes it possible to create and narrate a storey collaboratively by means of such tools as iMovie, iPhoto or digital storyboard ( Stevenson et al., 2015 ). These are examples of the use of technology as a tool that facilitates creative linguistic activity of primary and secondary education students. This tool supports the participation of all group members to create joint knowledge and solve a complex creative task.

Kukulska-Hulme (2009) explores second language learning in playful digital environments that encourage peer interaction. This research shows the advantages of mobile learning to learn a second language. Taking the youngest generations as the basis of her research, the author shows how English as a second language (ESL) students develop peer-scaffolding strategies to communicate with each other and learn the meaning of new words with a mobile phone.

Multimedia Technology as a Tool That Supports and Generates Co-creative Writing Strategies

The process of writing a digital storey requires the implementation of new strategies related to generating, communicating and negotiating content in a meaningful way through multimedia information, which facilitates the development of literacy that includes aspects related to doing and being ( Sawyer, 2012 ). Moreover, these new strategies developed while using technology favour the learning of processes associated with creativity, such as generation of ideas, their development and improvement, selection of the best ideas and their representation ( Sun et al., 2022 ).

In a project with college English student teachers, Andayani (2019) describes the advantages of digital storytelling as a tool to promote collaborative learning skills when learning a second language. This study reports on the benefits in the learning of English of 31 pre-service students asked to create a digital fairy tale using multimedia and interactive technology.

The author concludes that the use of digital narratives has multiple benefits for future English teachers, such as the integration of technology, the implementation of pedagogical theories they had previously studied, the increase in motivation to finish the projects, the reduction of public speaking anxiety and, finally, the possibility of adding music and sound effects, which helped to better dramatise the storey. In post-project interviews, some of the study subjects state that the use of this tool fostered their creativity in designing English teaching and learning activities for their future students. They also point out the motivation and interest generated by the task, as well as the fact that visually supported storeys are easier for English learners to understand.

In another case study with a sample of 30 students from Kyrgyzstan aged between 12 and 16 years, Chubko et al. (2020) used digital storytelling in science with non-native English students. This study is an extension of a previous study, the Indigenous Sky Stories program, conducted with Australian primary school students aged 10–12 years ( Ruddell et al., 2016 ). The conclusions reached in Chubko et al. (2020) are that the creation of digital narratives promotes the literacy of scientific concepts, both in students who master the language of instruction, and in those who do not have this mastery, as demonstrated in an extensive case study, consisting of a sample of over 300 Australian and Kyrgyz students. The authors claim that the use of digital storytelling promoted creativity in constructing a digital narrative and the processes involved in this construction reduced the gap between native and non-native English students.

Naqvi and Al Mahrooqi (2016) discuss an experience with Omani university ESL students. These students were divided into two equal groups: one group of students collaboratively created a digital video showing an audiovisual message in English about a commercial product; a second group, based on this video, carried out a collaborative writing exercise in English on the form and content of the video. After carrying out this exercise in different work sessions, the researchers of this study designed a questionnaire to analyse the learners’ impressions of learning English as an L2 using digital videos and collaboratively written reports on these videos. The results obtained showed positive impressions of the group of learners related to the good use of digital tools in collaborative and creative environments for ESL students.

Comas-Quinn et al. (2009) carried out a study with a group of English college students of the Open University of how mobile phones favour spatial mobility for language learning. In this way, from a shared blog, the mobile device becomes a tool for capturing inputs of any kind related to linguistic and cultural structures of an L2 which can then be shared among peers in a blog. The way to share them is through the creation of digital texts and narratives.

Technology as a Tool That Develops Linguistic Thinking

Different studies claim that interactive technology features related with the co-presence, in one single space of multiple different perspectives, stimulates further thinking. In this space, students can make their ideas visible, externalise their thoughts and represent ideas using multimedia and multimodal facilities. These features of technology can support the generation of new ideas, the connection between seemingly disparate bits of information from divergent perspectives and the construction of a holistic view of the information involved. As a result, different studies claim that the use of technology to solve linguistic challenges co-creatively can develop variables related to linguistic thinking. This is related with the notion of thinking creatively in terms of ‘we’ and the cultural back as the central axis around which novel ideas are generated and a viable approach for addressing creativity as a culturally diverse capacity ( Tanggaard, 2020 ).

In this line, Ntelioglou et al. (2014) carried out a case study in an inner city elementary school with a large population of recently arrived and Canadian-born linguistically and culturally diverse students from Gambian, Indian, Mexican, Sri Lankan, Tibetan and Vietnamese backgrounds, as well as a recent wave of students from Hungary. The study reports how the use of creative digital tools, such as iMovie and iPhoto for writing descriptive texts, had a positive impact on the expression of personal identity. The texts written by the students included photographs of the selected spaces, descriptions, emotions and experiences of the students in these places. These authors also pointed out that the texts were of very good linguistic quality. Therefore, the students learnt a basic competence in language learning: the written expression of the language. Moreover, the use of technological tools changed the dynamics of learning in the classroom towards more participatory learning processes that included aspects of self-identity and emotions. Therefore, instead of promoting quickly installed functional thinking skills, uniformly defined across cultures, technology promoted creativity as it is a kind of agency in the world, differently defined in various contexts because these require us to act in different creative ways according to the circumstances ( Glăveanu et al., 2016 ).

Lee (2009) describes how through collaborative blogging and collaborative podcasting, university students, from America and Spain, developed their communication and cultural awareness. The blogs and podcasts created were exchanged between the two cultures with a view to offering and receiving feedback for language correctness. The students did not receive prompts on how they should offer feedback, but instead made their own decisions. At the end of the study, students highlighted that they would not have participated in interactive discussions on linguistic and cultural aspects if they had face-to-face meetings.

Tyrou’s (2021) involves 92 university students of Italian as a foreign language in a Wiki environment with a series of activities that encouraged creative thinking, such as visiting virtual museums, and then writing texts collaboratively. The study analysed collaborative writing using Wiki tools in second language teaching. The use of Web 2.0 tools promoted improved learning processes through participation, collaboration and teamwork. This type of collaborative writing mainly improved the process of text revision, favouring both self-correction and peer correction. After analysing student perceptions about web 2.0 technologies for language learning, Tyrou (2021) concludes that ‘online collaborative wikis tools can increase knowledge of culture and foreign language, promote teamwork and familiarise our students with new technologies and virtual museums’ (p. 53). These are recognised creative values capable to develop students’ creative capacity ( Tanggaard, 2020 ).

In this line of work, Mellati and Khademi (2015) explore the possibilities of the WhatsApp mobile application as a tool that favours the sense of belonging to a group. The experience was carried out among 68 Iranian students of English aged between 18 and 35, with an intermediate level of English in the context of a course called Online Mobile Language Learning Course. The experience, in terms of collaborative and creative writing, was very positive. The only drawback observed was that, as the course progressed, a more careless use of the language was observed.

Yang and Yeh (2021) proposed the use of YouTube for teaching and learning the socio-cultural component of the English language. The research was carried out among 71 university students who wanted to learn English. In addition to making videos that were later posted on YouTube, this activity was followed by a critical reflection on the audiovisual production made, in order to reflect with the class group on the socio-cultural component that they wanted to transmit.

Also related to writing texts, Mellati and Khademi (2014) reports on the impact of peer assessment in a technology-based language environment on the quality of creative writing and the development of writing skills. In this study, so-called E-collaboration emerges as a highly intrinsically motivated pathway, as cooperative tasks, specifically based in digital environments, lead to the development of group work and communal learning that positively redounds to individual learning. The results of this research showed that peer learning through Computer-Assisted Language Learning can not only facilitate the development of language skills related to writing texts but also enhance intercultural communicative competence and digital literacy, understood as the ability to locate, organise, understand, evaluate and analyse information using digital technology.

Technology as a Medium That Facilitates an Appropriate Context for Co-creation in Language Education

Dynamic and multimodal interaction within a technology environment affords unique opportunities for learners to co-create in language education. Digital technologies can create rich and resourceful environments capable of acting as a medium which stimulates, orchestrates and supports specific creative processes. Sun et al. (2022) claim that the features of digital technologies can enhance key creative processes, such as emerging of new ideas, identifying connections between seemingly disparate bits of information, fostering collaborations, elaborating the information and promoting imaginative expressions.

The qualitative analysis of the papers selected for this review distinguished three different uses of digital technologies as medium for co-creation: (a) building an immersive and creative experience by providing a wide range of technologies; (b) the use of dedicated technology for building a co-creative writing community and (c) orchestrate the collaborative creativity process. Next, we address the discussion of the results obtained in relation to these two uses of technology as a medium for co-creation.

Building an Immersive and Creative Experience by Providing a Wide Range of Technologies

Technology plays a crucial role when it comes to developing creativity and creative learning environments for second language acquisition. As Lorenzo et al. (2013 , p. 1615) state, such an environment ‘promotes an immersive, creative and collaborative experience in the process of learning a foreign language’. These virtual learning universes can change the nature of teaching by simultaneously providing a social, immersive and creative experience for second language learners ( Canfield, 2008 ; Chan, 2008 ; Cooke-Plagwitz, 2008 ; Jeffery and Collins, 2008 ).

The purpose of the study by Lorenzo et al. (2013) is the creation of a Massively Multiuser Online Learning (MMOL) in university classroom, a didactic strategy that makes use of ICT to improve learning processes in a group of students in face-to-face mode. This integrated platform for massively multiuser learning allows the creation, development and deployment of content and activities for teaching a language in a virtual world. The cooperative, collaborative and socially interactive nature of students as well as teachers is based on a 3D online education environment, which in turn is supported using microcontent immersed in collaborative virtual environments. In other words, the microcontent identified in one of the microformats recognised by the MMOL tool is the basic unit of these environments. The MMOL microformat may be the same as the one used in Web 2.0, but its meta-description requires further improvement so that it can be intensively reused in any virtualised scenario, or, failing that, adapted to the conditions of a specific context.

The results of this action research with the use of MMOL for second language learning show that the possibility to cooperate and collaborate in a 3D educational context, in combination with the use of communication tools (e.g., chat, video chat or VoIP) and intelligent assistants (chatbots or NPCs), help the learner to accept a role of acceptance and objective criticism for group learning, which has a positive effect on individual acquisition of second language linguistic content.

A specific use of audio and video platforms is the Xtranormal environment ( Kilickaya, 2010 ) which allows the creation of animated films with voice audio. The creation of digital products of this type, in an L2 teaching and learning university environment, favours the creation of 3D characters playing different roles for language learning. In this way, listening contexts are generated to improve writing, reading and, in particular, the pronunciation of a second language.

Olivier (2019) explored how the creation of videos can be used to motivate students to interact critically with digital content and participate collaboratively using new technologies in learning a language. The experience was carried out among 82 university students, who produced a total of 50 multimodal creations individually, in pairs or triads. Some of these creations consisted in animations created online, others were animations made with PowerPoint with voice-overs, although they referred to all of these with the umbrella term ‘video’. The recorded videos are short videos with the purpose of being open educational resources, on topics provided by the teacher, all related to language learning. No instructions were given to the students on how to plan, write the script or shoot the videos. The conclusions of this research show that the students had to face difficulties not so much related to the use of technology, but rather content selection and condensing information, since the videos were limited in duration. In the same way, the students became real actors in this teaching and learning process, and valued the use of technology as a means of encouraging creativity, as this methodology broke away from traditional practices in language teaching and learning.

Akinwamide and Adedara (2012) designed a platform that provided different digital tools to help teachers working at different levels of teaching and learning digitalize the teaching and learning of a language. Finally, the article by Anderson et al. (2018) presents the findings of a global literacy project based on digital storytelling. They work on multiliteracy through a methodology based collaborative and dialogic ways, allowing for the sharing of divergent thoughts in each community. This research demonstrates the importance of an integrated and inclusive approach to languages in the framework of multiliteracy. Authors conclude that multimodal storytelling develops creative and dialogic thinking.

Dedicated Technology for Building a Co-creative Writing Community

Mak and Coniam (2008) recommended the use of the wiki for language learning. In their study, they used the wiki as an online, co-creative and multimedia environment for writing in English (ESL) with 11-year-old students from Hong Kong, who were not used to working collaboratively. In groups of four students, they participated in a project aiming to describe the facilities and characteristics of their educational centre to create an advertising brochure for promoting the centre. As the project progressed, the text of the group under analysis improved its quality and complexity. In addition, by writing a collaborative text, the students learned to expand, reorganise and correct their own writing and their group mates’ writing. The study highlights that the brochure included creative and original multimedia information.

Lund and Rasmussen (2008) also highlight the use of the wiki as a collaborative and creative technology with high school students from a Norwegian institute who participated in a collaborative writing project to describe a typical English city, within the framework of the subject of ESL. The creative component of this activity was found in the invention of a city based on the real characteristics of British cities using both textual description and images. The students undertook the presentation of their wiki, making use of their imagination. During the development of the project, the students interpreted, constructed and reconstructed writing processes. They went through each process as a result of the following actions: reviewing the wikis of the other groups and becoming aware of the global work of all their colleagues; adapting their texts; and coordinating with the members of their own groups to divide their workload. This led them to create a group task identity and commit them to the task.

Armstrong and Retterer (2008) investigated how the use of the Blog influences foreign language learning (in this case, students of Spanish, of unspecified ages, with an intermediate level of Spanish). Two different activities were planned as: (1) writing a storey among the whole group-class; (2) writing several personal blog posts for each small group. For the first activity, the students created a storey together, over the course of 3 weeks. The teacher started the storey and the different groups of students continued to build it on the basis of the following instruction: each group had to add information to the storey twice a week, but not on the same day, so they had to read the contributions of their peers. In the end, they recorded the storey as if it were a movie. As a result of the study, students who wrote on the blog using a significant number of words, improved their oral expression in terms of accuracy of verb tenses and also increased the complexity of their sentences. An anonymous questionnaire to the students about their blog writing experience showed that 100% of students felt more comfortable writing in Spanish at the end of that experience.

Rojas-Drummond et al. (2008) focused on 6–9-year-old students in Mexico City and how they learned collaboratively in creative writing projects through the use of ICTs. They started from a working context that adopted the model of a learning community. This promoted the social construction of knowledge among all participants. The construction of texts and multimedia products of storeys created by groups of children from fourth to sixth grade, through the innovative educational programme Learning Together , revealed the dynamic functioning in educational environments of some central socio-cultural concepts. Thus, collaborative creativity came across in the writing of texts that involved co-construction of texts; the establishment of intertextual and intercontextual relationships between the texts themselves using ICT; the development of dialogic and textual production strategies; and the appropriation of diverse cultural artefacts for the construction of knowledge.

Orchestrate the Collaborative Creativity Process in Language Education

Schmoelz (2018) reports how secondary education students who use digital narratives to encourage co-creativity show a greater commitment, at the time of planning the writing activity and a high control and effectiveness in the development and resolution of the activity. In the digital storytelling phase, students experience enjoyment and fun that allows a better-constructed storeys. The qualitative study covers 125 students who are interviewed, questioned, recorded and discussed.

This paper reviews studies of designs of technology-enhanced learning environments that promote collaborative creativity skills in language education. The final objective of this review has been to capture advanced knowledge for designing future language technology-enhanced learning projects capable of promoting key collaborative and creative processes.

This paper aims to fill a gap in educational research around the use of digital technology to promote collaborative creativity skills. Our selection criteria include four essential research variables to enhance creativity in a global knowledge society: collaboration, creativity, technology and language education. Only 26 studies meet all these criteria.

Although digital and interactive technologies are claimed to create a favourable language learning environment capable of fostering creative and collaborative language learning and writing ( Wang and Vásquez, 2012 ), most of the studies reviewed have not been explicitly designed to improve and evaluate creativity as a social and collaborative endeavour. On the contrary, the importance of creativity in these papers is limited to the creation of a purely digital linguistic product, such as a text, a video or a podcast ( Andayani, 2019 ). Therefore, this review paper can be taken as the basis for future research in language education.

From our review study, we conclude, firstly, that the features of digital and interactive technologies enable the design of powerful and rich language learning environments for knowledge co-creation. These technology-enhanced learning environments open up new opportunities for learners to, collaboratively, generate, modify and evaluate new ideas through online and multimodal interaction.

Secondly, the qualitative analyses of the selected papers conclude that technology can play three important roles to favour co-creativity in language education, namely, tutor, tool and medium. Technology can act as a tutoring device that guides the implementation of key co-creation skills. Therefore, there is a pattern of work and action that leads to solving language problems with digital tools that promote collaborative work, albeit in a sequenced way: Blogs, Wikis, WebQuest, Kahoot and YouTube as the most popular environments ( Contreras Salas, 2012 ).

Besides, technology can act as a tool that enables and shapes the development of co-creative thinking skills. Therefore, creative thinking arises from the use of technology that shapes the thinking of its users. This is where creative writing of digital narratives in environments, such as IMOvie, Iphoto, TOEFL Writing Test ( Mellati and Khademi, 2014 ) or MMOL for second language learning emerged.

Furthermore, technology can play the role of the medium that creates rich and resourceful environments to stimulate the emergence of collective creative processes. From this point of view, blogging ( Armstrong and Retterer, 2008 ) or the use of Wikis as online collaborative writing environments ( Mak and Coniam, 2008 ) allows students to improve their co-written writing skills by building texts in digital environments and encouraging e-collaboration between them.

Thirdly, six different forms of technologies have been identified in the reviewed studies that promote co-creativity in language education. They are the following: audio and video platforms, web-based environments, wikis, mobile technology and word processors. These forms of technology support online group learning that enthral students in active and resourceful-user experience for collaborative knowledge creation.

Finally, our work has its limitations that may have conditioned our results because of having discarded papers that could have contributed to answering our research question. Among these limitations, we highlight the following three: (a) limitation in the type of publications considered: only articles that followed a blind peer review procedure were considered; (b) limitation in the language chosen: only articles written in English and Spanish were included; and (c) limitation in the search keyword strategy and that these could be insufficient to include key articles in our field of study. However, in an attempt to minimise these limitations, firstly, a systematic review methodology was followed. Secondly, the most significant and prestigious databases in the field of education were consulted: Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar.

As a final remark, this paper gives evidence of how technology can support the learning of key linguistic and literary processes, such as: speaking, listening, reading and writing. Furthermore, this paper concludes that co-creativity is an intrinsic phenomenon of literary knowledge. However, there is a need to develop future language technology-enhanced learning projects capable of promoting key collaborative and creative processes in language education. We hope this paper may contribute to reaching this objective.

Data Availability Statement

Author contributions.

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

This research has been funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of the Government of Spain under Grant EDU2019-107399RB-I00.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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