Effects of Creativity Styles on Learning Engagement and Motivation in STEAM Education

Abstract

Participating in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) fosters learning engagement and improves student learning outcomes. This study explored the effects of creativity style on learning engagement and motivation in STEAM education to emphasize the critical inner process of learning. The curriculum content was established based on STEAM with artificial intelligence (AI) game development. A Creativity Assessment Questionnaire was designed to measure students’ learning motivation through STEAM creativity. Before the experiment, the participants completed a creativity questionnaire to determine their creativity style. This study included 65 undergraduate volunteers from a national university in central Taiwan. Before the experiment, all participants completed a questionnaire to determine their creativity style, classified as either low or high ACT (actively engage in generating ideas) or low or high FLOW. During the experiment, they were asked to participate in our designed STEAM-with-AI-game learning activity, and their motivation and engagement were evaluated. Although there was a limitation of generalizability due to nonrandom sampling, this study revealed the effects of creativity style on the relationship between motivation and engagement in STEAM education. Our findings showed that creativity styles played a critical role in learning motivation and engagement. In addition, the creativity styles of ACT and FLOW enhanced learning engagement and motivation in STEAM education through STEAM–AI gamification.