International Journal of Computer Science Research and Application 2012, Vol. 02, Issue. 01(Special Issue), pp. 95-100 ISSN 2012-9564 (Print) ISSN 2012-9572 (Online)

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH AND APPLICATION

© Author Names. Authors retain all rights. IJCSRA has been granted the right to publish and share, Creative Commons 3.0

www.ijcsra.org

The Stimulation of Students’ Creativity by Using Multimedia Platforms Maria Dinica1, Luminita Dinescu2, Cristina Miron3 1

2

University of Bucharest, Faculty of Physics, ROMANIA, [email protected] University of Bucharest, Faculty of Physics, ROMANIA, [email protected] 3 University of Bucharest, Faculty of Physics, ROMANIA, [email protected]

Author Correspondence: University of Bucharest, Faculty of Physics 405, Magurele Atomistilor Street, 77125, Romania, +4 021 457 4521, [email protected]

Abstract The creative activity is related to the previous acquired knowledge and the use of it in new situations. The student’s originality consists in personally living an already existing direction. An important role in creation is played by the associations and recombination of cognitive data. The personality factors also have a significant weight in creation. By using some multimedia platforms in the educational process, it is stimulated the students’ interest in studying a subject and in applying the acquired knowledge to practical situations. In this way, their cognitive system is developed and the manifestation of their creativity in as varied as possible contexts is favoured. We have described here the way in which glogs may be integrated in some projects regarding Physics and we have analyzed the influence of multimedia posters on students’ school success and on their creative potential, too.

Keywords: Creativity, multimedia learning, glogs

1. Introduction The human being has a natural predisposition to creativity, which through education and culture can become an effective capacity of creation and a defining feature of personality. The formation of creative behaviour, as one of the species of acquired behaviour, will be the primary need of the future society (Moraru, 1997). The characteristics and the exigencies of contemporary life, the more and more acute necessity to solve the problems having an increasing complexity which appear in all domains of activity, have changed the creativity education into a priority, into a stringent necessity for society, for all the domains of activity. The strategy of promoting creativity imposes some measures regarding the discovery of the creative potential and the promotion of some modalities that should stimulate the transition from the potential creativity to the manifested one (Ionescu, 2011). Creativity is the result of a complex assembly of personality factors, normally distributed, and the potential (latent creativity) is inherent to the ordinary human being (Stoica-Constantin, 2004). The creativity phenomenon is situated at the confluence of intrinsic motivation, abilities and knowledge revealed in a domain, and significant creative skills (Amabile, 1983). The creativity pedagogy starts from the premises that stimulating and educating creativity depends on the total social relationships in which an individual is engaged, on the multitude of influences exercised upon him (Ionescu, 2011). Creativity has a wide sphere of content, significant at both the individual and social level, which points to many domains of activity. Creativity does not only require motivation, but it also generates it. The school

96

International Journal of Computer Science Research and Application, 2(1):95-100

performance increases when the creative students’ results are evaluated according to their creative capacities (Sternberg, 2005). At the school age, a more diagnosed and predictive value is held by the concept of potential creativity. This concept is operational in educative activities which will be oriented towards stimulating and developing the components of the creative potential. Any preoccupation for the child development, whether cognitive, affective, volitive or psychomotor, implicitly has beneficial effects on creativity stimulation (StoicaConstantin, 2004). Each and every subject can be taught routinely or creatively. At the social level, individual creativity can be cultivated with a maximum of efficiency by introducing it in school, under several forms. Preparing the student creatively in school, he will also manifest creativity in society (Moraru, 1997).

2. Multimedia Learning The development of the multimedia systems and of the possibilities offered by the Internet experiments new possibilities of achieving an interactive learning between student and informative products specifically carried, due to the fact that the student has the control over the wished dialogue, in terms of duration, extent, thoroughness, concretization, combination (Joita, 2006). The integration of computerized informational technologies and of multimedia into the learning and selflearning strategies, offers today promising solutions for the concretization of the applications in cognitive psychopedagogy, for educational practice. Multimedia represents the assembly of software and hardware, capable to simultaneously use media sources such as films, videos and music combined with text and numbers, simulations and electronic communication. Multimedia learning is an interactive and quasi-autonomous form of accessing knowledge, which does not require the teacher’s mediation, which is based on informing, observing, experimenting, discovering and information processing intercessions, due to the use of multimedia. Multimedia allows a multimodal education, adapted to different psychological profiles of those who study, a perceptive multimodality, coherently articulating image, word, colour and sound in composed representations. The trainee is asked for an active and interactive attitude, personal reflection, critical thinking, imagination, creativity; he is put in situations of elaborating, and applying personal projects, of doing research in which freedom of action is maximum (Ionescu, 2011). Multimedia offers exciting possibilities for meeting the needs of 21st-century learners. Research has shown us that the brain processes information using two channels — visual and auditory. When information is presented using both channels, the brain can host more new information. By taking advantage of this multimodal processing capability and technology-based tools, we can dramatically enhance student learning through multimedia instruction. Multimedia Learning Principles are: 1. Words and pictures are better than words alone. 2. Multimedia learning is more effective when learner attention is focused, not split. 3. The presentation of multimedia content should exclude extraneous and redundant information. 4. Multimedia learning is more effective when it is interactive and under the control of the learner. 5. Multimedia leaning is most effective when the learner is engaged with the presentation. 6. Multimedia learning is more effective when the learner’s knowledge structures are activated prior to exposure to multimedia content. 7. Multimedia learning is most effective when the learners can apply their newly acquired knowledge and receive feedback (SEG Research, 2008). In multimedia projects students do not learn simply by using multimedia produced by others; they learn by creating it themselves. Multimedia certainly has the potential to extend the amount and type of information available to learners. Multimedia can offer layers of beneficial resources, provide gratuitous information leading to frustration and overload, or anything in between. Well-designed multimedia helps learners build more accurate and effective mental models than they do from text alone (Shank, 2005). Glogster is a fun and innovative tool for creating collage-style multimedia posters and allows users to interact with content. Digital posters (glogs) go beyond standard presentation mediums such as paper posters or PowerPoint. Glogster allows teachers and students to share knowledge with others while expressing their creativity. The benefits of electronic posters are excellent: colour, movies, animation, sound and true interactivity are now possible; the presentation can be archived and made available on the Internet; easy searching for particular

97

International Journal of Computer Science Research and Application, 2(1):95-100

topics of interest during the limited time at the conference is easy; expensive and often time-consuming printing in large formats is no longer needed (ter Haar Romenij & Barentsz, 2003).

3. Study 157 9th-grade students were involved in this study, from technological classes, specialization services. The paper presents the way in which electronic posters are integrated in some projects at Physics and analyses the influence of multimedia learning on the students’ school success, as well as on their creative potential. The concept of mechanical energy is studied both during the gymnasium and high school years. Since we assume that during gymnasium the students understood this notion and now they have become capable to operate with it in varied contexts, during high school the respective notion is fathomed, interdisciplinary connections are made and a wide range of applications are approached. During the first lesson of the unit “Mechanical Energy”, students’ knowledge was tested. Since the results indicated gaps in the way to define and apply this notion, a project-based multimedia learning was applied as a strategy. The projects had a common task for all the classes, that was creating an electronic poster (glog) by using the Edu Glogster platform (http://edu.glogster.com), but also some tasks that differed from one class to another: making a PowerPoint presentation, a portfolio with solved problems, a cardboard poster, a scale model and an experimental shaping. All these tasks were related to the theme of energy or to some derived notions (mechanical power, potential energy, kinetic energy, alternative energies). The students of each class were divided into groups. The time given was two weeks. The advantages offered by these different required products are consequent to their characteristics: a) Problems solving permits forming and enriching the notions, developing the logical thinking and developing the intellectual abilities to apply knowledge in practice. b) A poster is any piece of printed paper designed to be attached to a wall or vertical surface. Typically, posters include both textual and graphic elements, although a poster may be either wholly graphical or wholly text. Posters are designed to be both eye-catching and convey information. c) A scale model is a physical model, a representation or copy of an object that is larger or smaller than the actual size of the object, which seeks to maintain the relative proportions (the scale factor) of the physical size of the original object. d) The experiment represents the knowledge source and the research method in Physics; it is the main way of forming students’ concrete representations e) PowerPoint presentations consist of a number of individual pages or slides. Slides may contain text, graphics, sound, movies and other objects, which may be arranged freely. f) After presenting and analysing the students products, each class was applied an assessment test in order to establish if any progress had been made in acquiring the notion of mechanical energy and especially in connecting it to other notions and applying it.

4. Results and Discussions The results obtained after applying the pre-test confirm the fact that in this study statistically equivalent classes were involved. The results obtained at the two tests are compared in the graphic in Figure 1. It is noticed that the project-based multimedia learning has led to school progress for each class. The creation of glogs has favoured both the motivation for learning, and the stimulation of students’ creativity. Yet, the exclusive use of multimedia facilitators does not favour a significant increase of school results. Being a science, underlain by shaping and experiments, it is necessary that these specific learning methods always be integrated in the students’ learning activities. The best results at the post-test were obtained by the classes at which the projects had included the scale model and experimental shaping as products. The problem solving still remains a method that proves its efficiency only when the students have assimilated a notion and are motivated to fathom it. Even if it is a very appropriate method for consolidation, during the formation or correct acquisition of a notion its efficacy is reduced.

98

International Journal of Computer Science Research and Application, 2(1):95-100

Figure 1: A comparison between the results obtained by students at Pre-Test and Post-Test

Figure 2: Electronic Poster

99

International Journal of Computer Science Research and Application, 2(1):95-100

Figure 3: Scale Model

Figure 4: Experimental Installation

5. Conclusions Use multimedia to help learners find their way around it. If multiple types of media and content are required, use position and prominence to direct learners’ attention to the most important information. Consistent-looking and consistently placed navigation elements clarify what to do next. Help learners determine how to proceed but don’t restrict their choices unless it’s absolutely necessary. Although multimedia offers designers enormous opportunities for making learning environments meaningful and effective, multimedia by itself does not assure a good learning environment (Shank, 2005). In multimedia projects, students do not learn by using multimedia produced by others; they learn by creating it themselves. The use of multimedia platforms while studying Physics creates the conditions for obtaining school success by reaching the motivational optimum required for each sequence of the learning process. Still, it is not the audio-visual message that has beneficial educative influences, but its integration in a learning-self-learning strategy done by the teacher. A heuristic education is recommended, which should base the formation of students’ independent and creative thinking, which should activate their spontaneity and initiative, their whole intellectual, affective and motivational potential. What is acquired by personal effort and by creative learning has big chances to fix and to become operational, through a transfer in other learning situations (Ionescu, 2011).

100

International Journal of Computer Science Research and Application, 2(1):95-100

The success of project-based multimedia is ensured when the curriculum, the resources, the students’ skills and abilities are ensured, resulting in a global effect consequent to the attunement of the aesthetical and technical criteria while making its products.

References Amabile T.M., 1983, The social psychology of creativity. Springer – Verlag, New York. Haar Romeni B.M. ter and Barentsz J., 2003, How to design an attractive (electronic) poster. In Proocedings of European Conference of Radiology, Vienna, pp. 36-40. Ionescu M., 2011, Instruction and education. Modern educational paradigms, 4th edition. Eikon Publishing House, Cluj Napoca. Joita E., 2006, Constructivist learning - an alternative: bases, strategies. Aramis Publishing House, Bucharest. Moraru I., 1997, Creativity psychology, volume I. Victor Publishing House, Bucharest. SEG Research, 2008, Understanding Multimedia Learning: Integrating multimedia in the K-12 classroom. from http://brainpop.com/new_common_images/files/76/76426_BrainPOP_White_Paper-20090426.pdf Shank P., 2005, The Value of Multimedia for Learning. from http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/thinktank/valuemedia/The_Value_of_Multimedia.pdf Sternberg R.J., 2005, Manual of creativity. Polirom Publishing House, Iasi. Stoica-Constantin A., 2004, Creativity for students and teachers. European Institute, Iasi. http://edu.glogster.com

A Brief Author Biography Maria Dinica is a Ph.D candidate in Physics – Direction of Physics Education, Faculty of Physics, University of Bucharest and Physics teacher at the Superior Commercial School “Nicolae Kretzulescu” of Bucharest. Her research is concerned with the promotion of teaching methods which capitalize the students’ creative potential. Her studies show that using multimedia learning in studying Physics can lead to an increase of the students’ inherent motivation and materializes in the development of their creative capacities. Luminita Dinescu is a Ph.D candidate in Physics – Direction of Physics Education, Faculty of Physics, University of Bucharest and Physics teacher at the Technical College “Dimitrie Leonida” of Bucharest. Her research are uses of technology in physics education, theoretical models of students learning physics, examination of successful educational reforms and replication studies of such reforms, and student problem-solving in physics. Important results of his studies showed that traditional or passive learning approaches do not improve student conceptual understanding of very basic physics concepts. Surprisingly, this result was demonstrated to be independent of the instructor even when lectures were elegantly prepared and the instructor lead the students through a clear and meticulous outline. Cristina Miron is Ph.D Lecturer of Faculty of Physics at University of Bucharest. After having done a Ph.D in Physics of Condensed Matter in 2005, she became a member of the physics education group at Faculty of Physics – University of Bucharest. Her research is concerned with the didactic aspects of physics teaching. Gradually her interest has shifted towards research in physics education, with particular emphasis on how such research may improve teaching practice. Her activity addressed the following research questions: As physics instructors engage in using new educational technologies? Does the use of new educational technologies impact how faculty members talk about the nature of teaching and learning physics? She was also involved in establishing empowering outreach opportunities for undergraduate physics students who are interested in teaching.

Copyright for articles published in this journal is retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the journal. By the appearance in this open access journal, articles are free to use with the required attribution. Users must contact the corresponding authors for any potential use of the article or its content that affects the authors’ copyright.