CREATIVITY IN A TIME OF PANDEMIC: Lessons from CompeTI.CA & Brilliant Labs research in Education

Lessons from CompeTI.CA & Brilliant Labs research in Education

By Jacob Lingley | Instructional Design & Co-Program Director | Brilliant Labs

Dr. Viktor Freiman | Professor, Université de Moncton | Department of Elementary Education and Educational Psychology | Faculty of Education

The article below is a summarized excerpt of a longer piece of research forthcoming on our Academic Blog (www.brilliantlabs.ca/blog). If you are interested in learning more about the topics presented in this article, be sure to check out our blog before November 2020 for the full version. The blog format will include a brief discussion regarding if some of the speculative thoughts became a reality. The blog will also feature more detail about the collaboration

Multiple school observations conducted by the CompeTI.CA research team has documented, since 2016, important gains in student creativity (Freiman and Kamba, 2020). For instance, when team members arrived at one school in western New Brunswick, they were literally pulled by three Grade 3 students over to a project that filled the foyer of their school. Researchers were soon captivated by a passionate, 40-minute long story about how a model community, made from cardboard, wires, tape and blinking lights was produced by the students’ entire class. It was an amazingly rich lesson of creativity. A lesson that was given by these students, one of which mentioned that he and his classmates felt more like teachers than students. The student voices were filled with pride for what they had made -- they had harnessed their collective creative power and accomplished something real. This was only one example of rich experiences students shared with us in makerspaces across the province from May 2016 when we made the first visit until March 2020 when school life of all students across New Brunswick dramatically changed. Almost seven months later, September 2020 has seen students, teachers and thousands of school community members return to a very different culture of learning. While the brilliant ideas of the young makers described above were

abruptly cut short in March, there is new hope and opportunity for a reimagined version of their ideas to continue. As this new reality is being co-constructed by school communities, it remains unclear what influence adaptations to new learning conditions during a pandemic will have on creativity in education. Since the media coverage of the pandemic has seen many graphs to help inform the public about the impact of COVID-19, we will rely on the use of a graph as a metaphor to convey the important role of creativity in education in the context of making. Since 2014, many schools in New Brunswick, Canada have joined an international community of educators who are dedicated to providing students with creative opportunities to express their knowledge (Freiman, 2019). Concurrently with this community growth, Brilliant Labs has observed a marked change in the number of schools who have adopted a culture of making through the construction of makerspaces and maker-centred student projects. In fact, the number of student projects Brilliant Labs supported in New Brunswick alone has grown significantly from 21 in 2014 to 2382 in 2019. As we find ourselves discussing a growing number of creative student projects, we often rely on metaphors like a graph with an increasingly steep slope. This is purely a qualitative observation and not one that relates to any specific set of data. There are numerous student project examples that could be used to explain the manifestation of creativity on this curve. What is impossible to know is where the next point on this metaphorical curve will be in the next few months.There are necessary pandemic constraints that may lead some readers to think that the curve could dip downwards. The restrictions on material sharing, classroom occupancy and simply how close any one student can be to anyone else, lead to conversations and concerns that for right now, have no end. Like many of you, many of our conversations this summer were filled with speculation concerning what will happen to this trend in creativity when students return in September. What was amazing (yet unsurprising given the passionate dedication our teachers contribute to their profession), was how easy it was for us for our speculation to explore scenarios in which creativity wouldn’t only be present in our schools but could indeed increase. We were inspired by how our social media streams were inundated with examples of how students and teachers were expressing their resilient selves and remaining creative regardless of constraint. We are further inspired by the multiple local and global initiatives of significant merit that could have their own creative metaphor. Even though most of what lies below is based on speculation, it is plausible to add some scientific flavour to what is an optimistic forecast. Extending our curve metaphor a little further, below we present a brief portrayal of what we call A Coordinate System of Makers’ Creative Endeavors. This system comes from our research data and helps us to identify two main axes through which we speculate maker educators will embrace a new reality while remaining as creative as ever (and perhaps even more!). Each of these axes will be discussed in-depth in our forthcoming blog article.

Creativity through Knowledge

Mobility & Virtuality. More than ever, the pandemic has forced many individuals to explore their knowledge of a concept in the most non-traditional ways. This wasn’t really a surprise since we have been observing students for years express their knowledge concepts in nontraditional ways through the use of diverse materials in makerspaces. For instance, we recall a moment from our research observations where we were particularly impressed at two Grade 6 students’ ability to manipulate a complex object in 3D space on a computer screen. Using the software TinkerCAD these students performed complex transformations that required at least some knowledge of shape and space. The students would casually talk about an object’s rotation as just a necessary step in completing their design goals. They remained unaware of the complex abstraction that they were making as they moved their knowledge from the physical to the virtual - and once printed - back to the physical. This knowledge mobility was noticed time and time again during the shutdown. Many virtual engagements relied on non-traditional forms of knowledge expressions like hand-gestures to convey concepts. Perhaps the forced virtualization of our communication during the pandemic has forced us to reconsider how our knowledge of concepts exists as we move from a physical space to one that is less than physical. We have a tendency to think of virtual learning experiences as missing something. Perhaps they are not missing something, they are becoming something new. Something more useful in any space - something creative.

Creativity through Collaboration and Knowledge Co-Construction.

Social media during the pandemic has made us abundantly aware of the perils of ill-timed video conference interruptions. Perhaps it was a family pet, a child or a poorly timed yawn, all of these moments have been shared beyond what once was a comfortable audience size. The benefit of this move to collaboration via video conference is it has reinforced the value of collaboration with individuals in your network with whom you rarely interact. The removal of geographic barriers that prohibited collaboration with distant team members has significantly influenced the creativity of solutions discussed across team members. Yet again, this is knowledge that was already apparent among students in a collaborative learning environment. We might recall the cardboard community model-building project from Grade 3 makers we told you about at the beginning of this article. Students we interviewed said that this project was the first time that many of them collaborated with their peers on what they felt was a real and complex task. It was thrilling to discover that students understood that it was through their shared conversation and action that they built the model of their community. Each time a fellow classmate presented their idea, their cardboard building they were constructing became more refined. They used their collective experience and the available materials to coconstruct not only their goal but also a representation of their shared knowledge. The discovery of new collaborative groups is something that we will continue to see emerge as student and teachers learn more about the skills and experience they bring to a group - even if they are not all in the same physical place at once. It is mainly because of the above-described imaginative thoughts we were sharing with each other during our summer conversations and the many more that will come once school returns in September, that we are encouraged that the Creativity in Education Curve will not flatten regardless of constraints. Any constraint implemented in response to the pandemic is done for our collective safety and wellbeing. Even though some collaborative learning areas in a school may be redefined out of logistical necessity, the spirit that originally inspired the construction of that space lives on in the culture of the school. The spirit of a makerspace and the affordances they can provide across a school’s community is one of resiliency. This resiliency can be influenced to lead a school community to explore creative pedagogies that extend far beyond any one’s physical space. This is where creativity will prevail.

TWITTER: JULIE GAUTREAU, TEACHER, BESSBOROUGH SCHOOL. NOMINATED IN THE UPCOMING MAKER NEWSLETTER FOR ENCOURAGING #MAKERFUN PROJECTS & UPCOMING IN SCHOOL EFFORTS.

Want to learn more?

If you have questions or would like to learn more about school communities exploring creative pedagogies that extend beyond physical space— Let’s connect you! Email: jacob@brilliantlabs.ca or visit www.brilliantlabs.ca/blog

ByJacob Lingley | Instructional Design & Co-Program Director | Brilliant Labs