Detecting & supporting student creativity in online learning

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Creativity is a dynamic process which generates ideas that are both novel and of value. Creativity has been shown to promote students’ critical thinking, self motivation and to promote students’ mastery of skills and concepts. Despite their increasing prevalence in schools, technological educational environments do not currently promote creativity in students’ interactions or support teachers’ ability to detect creative thinking by students. This proposal will develop methods and algorithms in artificial intelligence and learning analytics towards creating technology-based environments that support creative thinking by students, and teachers’ abilities to understand and support such behavior. The suggested proposal will contribute to basic research both in computer science and educational technology. It will provide novel computational models for describing creativity in technology based learning environments, and algorithms for detecting creative outcomes from students’ interactions with these environments. It will design visualizations and presentations for teachers in a way that aids their understanding of students’ interactions and allow them to intervene with this process when deemed necessary. Lastly, it will provide algorithms for producing machine-generated support that will adapt to the needs of students, directing their interactions in a way that facilitates the creative process, giving the right feedback at the right time, and personalizing content information. A crucial component of the proposal is to extensively evaluate our algorithms and methods in real classrooms, using a class of flexible educational software that support key aspects of creative processes, such as exploration and trial and error.