Computer Supported Collaborative Learning and Social Creativity: A Case Study of Fashion Design

Abstract

There is an increasing volume of literature theorizing on how social creativity can be fostered in the Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) environment, however, a scant amount of research has been actually carried out to investigate how the dynamics and creative cognitive processes taking place in the CSCL environment create communities of design. The scarcity of readily usable instruments to determine whether students engage in social creativity in a CSCL environment and if so, to what extent, has prompted this study to derive an analytical framework for tracking the effects of the creative processes upon the design community. With reference to the social, situated, distributed nature of social creativity, a self-devised instrument based on the Activity Theory (Engestrom, 1987) is established for understanding creativity in the context of computer supported collaborations. It can be understood as a set of three phases that occur with relation to collaborative creative processes, namely: exploration/clarification (phase I), negotia- tion and argumentation (phase II), and evidence of evolution and redesign (phase III). Based on the Activity System Model of Engestrom (1987), a content analysis scheme is proposed in which the analytical framework of subject-community-object triad, subject-community-roles triad, and subject-community-tool triad will investigate the inter-relationship among the interactivity, crea- tivity presence, and social presence within a CSCL community.