Stimulating creativity and negotiation skills by means of online collaborative poetry

Transcription

1 Stimulating creativity and negotiation skills by means of online collaborative poetry Giuliana Dettori, ITD - CNR, Genoa, Italy, dettori@itd.cnr.it Matteo Bonizzone University of Genoa, Italy, matteo.bonizzone@unige.it Abstract In this paper we describe an approach to structure online collaborative poetry and discuss an exploratory implementation of it. Our interest for such activity is determined by the fact that it appears a good way to foster creativity and collaboration skills. Not requiring any particular competence, apart basic language knowledge, this activity is suitable for learners of any age and background, as well as for both formal and informal learning contexts. Creativity and collaboration are soft skills that are important for people to cope with the rapid changes of our world. Our choice to develop collaborative poetry asynchronously online aims to grant flexible interactions and facilitate participants reflective involvement. The positive outcomes of the described experience suggest that such activity may constitute a useful learning opportunity and is worth further investigation. Keywords Online learning, collaborative poetry, creativity, collaboration, negotiation, soft skills. 1. Introduction and theoretical background The concept of creativity has been evolving over the past years (Glaveanu, 2010). Currently, it is no longer considered a special talent of few, gifted people, but rather a set of behaviours that everybody can and should develop (Craft, Cremin and Burnard, 2008). The importance of giving space to creativity in education is mentioned with increasing frequency in the literature (Craft, 2005). Unfortunately, school programs, at any level, do not usually include activities to help learners become creative thinkers (Sawyer, 2006a; Kangas, 2010). Working out approaches and activities apt to support the practice of creativity in different contexts is therefore highly desirable. Devising collaborative tasks fostering creativity appears to be particularly important, as many studies underline that creativity is an essentially social process (John-Steiner, 1993; Loveless, 2002). Several recent studies suggest that collaborative activities represent excellent opportunities to develop creative thinking skills (Sawyer, 2006b; Vass, 2007; Kangas 2010). Collaboration is likely to trigger creativity in that team members contributions have the potential to inspire new ideas to team mates. Mamykina, Candy and Edmonds (2002) highlight that collaborative creativity is fostered by actions such as: devising a common language; creating a shared understanding of the creative intention; engaging in discussion; sharing resources. In order to propose some activity apt to stimulate participants to put into play creativity and collaboration skills, several kinds of activities have been proposed (e.g. Arnedillo-Sanchez, 2008). We suggest an unusual but effective and simple kind of activity, i.e., asynchronous, online, collaborative poetry; to this end, we have been working out an approach to support its development.

2 Collaborative poetry consists in the joint creation of written texts that the authors view as poems. It does not require any literary inclination or particular competence, apart basic language knowledge, and can be performed equally well by both children or adults. It is suitable to be practiced in both formal and informal contexts, as an end in itself, to enjoy collaborative creativity on a non-demanding task, or in conjunction with other educational aims, such as practising with the use of language, be it native or acquired. Collaborative poetry is not a recent invention. It has been repeatedly practised in the past century, not only in literary circles experimenting new expressive modes or providing space for the critical discussion of its members poetic productions (see, e.g., Albany Poetry Workshop, 2009; Poetry Collaborative, 2009; Poetry Wikia, 2009), but also in schools with the aim to encourage students to join voices starting from some shared pattern (Teaching tolerance, w/d), and even as a therapeutic help (Chase, 2006) and a form of social game (About.com, w/d). Our approach differs from all of them, in that it aims to create contexts apt to engage learners in collaborative creativity. Our choice of developing collaborative poetry asynchronously online is due to several reasons, in particular to grant interaction flexibility (to the advantage of a varied group formation, especially in the case of working adults), and a deeper involvement of all participants, who have a looser time to effectively contribute to the shared production. Moreover, research in computer-mediated communication shows that online group interaction offers advantages as concerns writing, task-focused discussion and collaborative decisionmaking (for a review of studies on this matter, see Luppicini, 2006). The choice of creating poetry online is not a new one, either, as it is possible to find on the web several sites where this activity can be practiced, with different rules, on blogs or within working environments developed on purpose (see, e.g., the above mentioned web sites). These experiences, however, are usually based on voting individual contributions or on alternating the contributions of a number of people, without the possibility to discuss among group mates and agree on choices. The consequence of such ways of proceeding is that the participants may end up feeling unsatisfied of the whole product, or only marginally involved in its creation. Moreover, the collaboration remains at a rather superficial level, participants creativity is not stimulated by the interaction with other people s ideas, and no negotiation among group mates ever takes place. Negotiation, on the other hand, is worth attention, in that it is reported to be an important regulator of learning (Dillenbourg et al., 2008). With such limitations, collaborative poetry could hardly be seen as a learning opportunity. We planned an approach to collaborative poetry focused on actual collaboration among the participants. The activity is structured so as to give rise to truly collaborative situations in which learners work together towards the achievement of a shared goal. We chose as working environment a wiki including a discussion space, and provided a set of recommendations, so as to guide the participants in the creation of poems which can actually be perceived as joint productions. Providing a working environment which facilitates and helps the structuring of interactions appears crucial to support effective and fruitful collaboration; moreover, the literature repeatedly points out that online learning activities need to be suitably structured in order to produce valuable outcomes (Barkley et al., 2005; Jaques & Salmon, 2007; Weinberger et al., 2008). In the next section, we present our approach and describe the organization and context a the pilot experimentation carried out. Then we illustrate the outcomes of the experience, focusing on both the productions (contributions to the poems and messages exchanged) and the participants appreciation of the activity as emerged from an assigned questionnaire. Finally,

3 we discuss these outcomes, highlighting what features and conditions appear to support the practice of collaborative creativity. 2. An experience of online collaborative poetry 2.1 Context and method Nine people were involved in this pilot experimentation, divided into three groups of three persons each. The participants were all adults of ages ranging from 25 to 54 (average age 35).They included one master student, four PhD students in various disciplines and four working professionals: all well learned people, therefore, but mostly not very familiar with poetry, and in particular with online collaborative poetry. They were invited by one of the authors and accepted the invitation on a completely voluntary basis, just for feeling curious to take part in the experience, and were committed to jointly producing a poem. Three separate spaces for the activity (one for each group) were created on PBwiki ( a web site offering free wiki space for learning purposes and personal use. We chose a wiki as collaboration space, among the possible types of communication platforms, because it offers two features that appear particularly suitable for the intended use: 1) a shared editing pane, granting a group of people the possibility to work on the same file, and 2) a history function, allowing users to view all previous versions of the document created in the working space. These features are apt to simplify the work organization avoiding to set up turns or rules for the elaboration of a common file. Among the wiki spaces currently at disposal, we chose PBwiki because it also provides, in the same web page with the editing pane but separated from it, a discussion space. This allows participants to exchange opinions and discuss issues without mixing them with the produced text, hence supporting activity organization and improving interaction. This is an important point, in that effective interactions among learners is reported to be crucial for successful collaborative leaning (Kobbe et al., 2007). Each group member s contribution in the discussion space is identified by his/her nickname and picture, which is a simple way to state social presence, another feature which is considered important for the success of online learning activities (Garrison et al., 1999). Finally, PBWiki has a simple interface and allows the use of formatting styles in the editing pane, two other features apt to add clarity and facilitate group interaction. Each participant was granted access only to the working space of his/her own group, in order to avoid that groups could influence each other. Moreover, since some of the participants knew each other while others didn t, it was decided that all of them would log in using a nickname, so as to let them interact in anonymous way. Anonymity was expected to also help participants feel more at ease to express themselves during the poem creation. A key issue to be tackled in the organization of the experience was the assignment of constraints for the activity. Constraints may concern the poem s content (e.g., assigning a subject, or a title, or a number of words to be included in the poem), its form (e.g. assigning the poem length, the use of rhymes, the verse length, etc.) or the way to proceed in the composition (e.g. group members may cyclically compose one verse each, or all members make a proposal for each verse among which only one is selected, etc.). This is a delicate point, in that a lack of constraints may lead a group to waste time and energy in the effort to take common decisions, while the presence of many constraints risks to hinder the activation of creativity. A high number of constraints, moreover, decreases the opportunities for the group members to negotiate decisions. Finally, granting the groups a good amount of freedom allowed us to observe different kinds of behaviour and interaction modes. Therefore, since the aim of this experience was to observe the activation of creativity and collaboration, we opted

4 for a low number of constraints and assigned just the poem topic ( Clouds ), recommending the participants to jointly discuss and agree the poem type and structure, as well as the way to proceed in its creation. The task was to be completed within 2 weeks. At the end of the experience, we collected the participants appreciation and opinions by means of a questionnaire including 3 open questions asking general comments or suggestions and 19 closed questions to be answered on a 5-point Likert scale (1=not at all and 5=very much). Answers at least average (3 or more) were considered positive. For each closed question, a space was provided to comment on the numerical choice made. The answers to this questionnaire, together with the history and forum of the three wiki spaces, constitute the source of data for outcomes evaluation. Data analysis was focused in particular on participants perception of the different aspects of the experience. We did not make any attempt to evaluate the literary value of the poems produced, since this can not be measured in obvious way and is likely to be strongly biased by personal points of view; moreover, it does not really matter for the aims of our study, since it is not indicative of the collaborative process actually carried out or of the creativity put into play. We deemed the activity successful, hence, if the participants were satisfied of their creation processes, and considered the productions valuables if the authors were happy with them because the presence of a group of authors instead of just one provided an internal review of the product s quality. Analogously, we did not attempt any measure of the actual improvement to creativity and collaboration skills induced by the activity, since this was an exploratory experiment of limited extent, but we limited ourselves to check if the participants acknowledged any learning in some respect. 2.2 Outcomes The three groups started working as expected and all managed to produce a poem. They differed, however, as concerns type and style of the product, organization of the work, use of the wiki space, time devoted to the activity and personal satisfaction Tracing the activity in the wiki environment As concerns working times, only Group2 results to have considered mandatory the assigned time frame of two weeks, at the end of which group members stopped interacting and one of them assembled a poem from the collection of verses created so far. Group3 showed to notice that it was time to complete the task, but actually continued some slack activity over almost a month. Group1 took a break, having a still incomplete poem, after over 3 weeks, because one or the other member was going on vacation, but then resumed the work a month later and loosely continued for a couple of weeks, until they reached a satisfactory version. The different time devoted to the activity is reflected in the amount of communication in the wiki space, as shown in Table 1. Table 1. Different amount of interactions of the 3 groups in the wiki space messages exchanged in the forum savings of the editing pane (History) Group1 Group2 Group weeks of interaction

5 Besides the different number of weeks devoted to the task, the much higher number of messages posted by Group1 members depends on the fact that they always used the forum to communicate and the editing pane to compose, while the other groups, lamenting that new messages were inserted at the end of the forum and it was annoying to scroll down, after the initial discussion on work organization started using the work pane for both production and exchange. Group3 cleared the working pane at the end, leaving only the final version of the poem (hence the exchanged messages are visible only through the History), while Group2 left everything in sight. The different amount of contributions in the discussion and editing spaces can also be explained by the difference of their length. Group1 members tended to act quickly at both posting messages and saving the editing pane. This means that sometimes we find 2 or 3 consecutive messages by a same person, who continued to reason on the task after having saved a message, and hence needed to post again right away, or went back to the poem text to change perhaps just a comma. Group2 members, on the other hand, tended to write longer contributions, adding verses and comments in a same operation. Groups 3 acted in intermediate way between these two extremes. All groups started the interaction by making agreements on the kind of poem to develop and the way to alternate in writing verses. In Group1 a member raised the question if one would be allowed to modify others contributions (with affirmative answer of the group members); in Group3 this was put in practice without ever being explicitly said by anybody. In Group2, on the other hand, members tended to make proposals (on content and form) without making the effort to chose among, or merge them. As concerns poem production, Group2 appears to intend the collaboration mostly in terms of joint brainstorming, among which the group members could chose. Hence they produced a good number of ideas, varied and often divergent, which determined the need to sum up, every now and then, the progress made so far. This was not necessary in Group3, who adopted the method of cyclically producing one or two verses each, and ended up developing in parallel 2 poems instead of one, with different content despite the same initial two verses, since a contributor put forward two possible ways to continue after the initial verses and the group decided to carry on in both directions. Group1 decided to alternate contributions in unplanned turns, i.e., whoever had an idea was invited to go on, possibly modifying, but never deleting, their mates contributions. They discussed organizational aspects less than the other 2 groups. Both Group2 and Group3 made wide use of the formatting facilities, in particular of colours, to differentiate the contributions of each member as well as to distinguish verses from comments. In Group1 the formatting functions were used just to highlight proposed modifications to previous verses, and as soon as an agreement was reached one of the group members took care to clean up, leaving in the editing pane only the approved verses. Negotiation within groups took place in relation not only to the activity organization (which is more obvious) but also to form and content of the productions. Even though participants mostly accepted others contributions, modifications of peers work took place in several occasions, and this provided opportunities to negotiate variants that could result satisfactory to all participants. For example, in Group1, O. wrote a metaphoric description of clouds that M. did not like and changed with a more idyllic one. After the poem was completed, O. changed the mentioned metaphoric description back to the previous form. This made clear that there were conflicting points of view on that verse, and hence the problem to find a form that everybody would like was raised in the discussion space. Understanding what each of them liked or disliked in the expressions used, the third group member, E., proposed a new version which contained elements of both proposals and eliminated the least liked ones, so that after some discussion a satisfactory agreement could be reached.

6 2.2.2 Participants opinions from the questionnaire All participants except one expressed appreciation for the experience, for a variety of reasons: it was fun, a useful exercise to become tolerant, an interesting experience in a creative space, a rare opportunity to deal with poetry, an occasion to put one s abilities into play, the pleasure to experiment. The only unsatisfied respondent attributed to his own lack of time his scarce enjoyment and profit. One participant, who described herself as scarcely familiar with poetry and literature, disclosed that she had no idea how to start writing a poem, but observing how her group mates were proceeding gave her a new perspective on this activity. Several people pointed out that the brevity of the experience did not allow them to acknowledge certain influences or impressions, and expressed the wish to repeat the experience, so as to notice differences over time and deepen the poetic acquaintance with the same group or experience interaction with a different one. Anonymous participation was appreciated only in average measure. The group size was considered satisfactory but most participants admitted that a slightly bigger group would have worked as well. Figure 1 displays participants satisfaction of process and product, as well as their learning perception. The diagram shows the average answers within the 3 groups. Group1 appears to appreciate the experience most, with all values above 3 except for the perception of improving expressive skills, which remains at 2.7. Group2 results the least satisfied, especially as concerns the poem produced. Its members, however, acknowledge a positive influence on their creative and expressive skills. Group3, finally, shows satisfaction of both product and process but does not think to have learned much. In the free comments, a few participants lament a lack of time and different log-in schedules within the group, which made it difficult to interact as often (Group2) or as densely (Group1) as they would have wished, and to merge the wealth of ideas emerged (Group2 and Group3). As for the individual satisfaction expressed by the participants, Group1 and Group3 were rather homogeneous. This was not the case with Group2, due to the different focus of its members: one appreciated the variety of ideas emerged, and the acquaintance with a creative environment, the others lamented the group s inability to coordinate. Figure 1. Participants satisfaction and learning perception expressed in the questionnaire by the 3 groups Other questions provide more detailed opinions on the experience (Figure 2). The interaction carried out, even though rather slow, met the expectations of Group1 and Group3, but not much those of Group2, where one participant lamented lack of coordination. It is not surprising, therefore, that Group2 expressed the highest appreciation for the possible presence

7 of a moderator in future experiences. Even in this group, however, the average wish to have a moderator remains below 3 as one of its members thought that the presence of a moderator would hinder the activation of creativity. The positive influence of the assignment received on the creative process was appreciated mostly by Group1, but, in more limited measure, also by the other groups. All groups acknowledged the positive influence of collaboration on the product, even though Group2 just in average measure. In the free comments, the participants appreciated collaboration for having improved form and content, stimulated new ideas, offered the possibility to compare points of view, and introduced something unexpected in the creative process. Figure 2. Comments on interaction and process Finally, all groups appreciated working asynchronously and the working space set up (Figure 3). A participant (Group3) acknowledged a good use of the environment, that she found supportive of creativity and collaboration. All valued having time to reflect at individual pace. As concerns the wiki, the presence of a forum was appreciated, even though its lack of coordination with the editing pane did not favour the sharing of comments on the text under construction. 2.3 Discussion Figure 3. Appreciation of the working space set up and working asynchronously The outcomes of this exploratory study are very encouraging, especially in relation to the limited duration of the experience. The group activity appeared to be sufficiently structured to support smooth task completion.

8 The freedom left on activity and product organization led the 3 groups to develop their work in very different ways and with different outcomes, but always with rather positive satisfaction levels. Moreover, in all cases there are evident traces, in the analysis of the wiki space and in the questionnaire answers, that creativity and negotiation-oriented group interaction actually took place, which suggests that online collaborative poetry can actually be considered a learning activity and is worth being fostered. There is certainly wide space for improvement in the activity organization, since several problems emerged from the data analysis. Group2, for instance, lamented lack of coordination and expressed the lowest satisfaction of its product. This is likely rooted in the fact that they widely used pure brainstorming to collect ideas for their poem; this is essentially a form of divergent thinking (Kuhn & Holling, 2009), and hence requires a subsequent phase of convergent thinking (Goldstein, 2001) to evaluate the ideas proposed and select among them, a phase that the group did not suitably carry out. This is a relevant issue to take into consideration by adding appropriate specifications in the activity guidelines; this appears especially necessary if the approach should be adopted in a school context with younger participants. The continuous presence of a moderator, however, does not appear advisable. We share the point of view of one participant who pointed out that this would likely have a negative effect on the expression of creativity as well as on participants feeling of responsibility and consequent commitment. It might be good, though, to have a silent moderator who observes what is going on and intervenes to help the group adjust its working process only when strictly necessary, possibly pointing out the need to negotiate some decisions and helping to balance the space given to all participants. Groups of adults, however, should mostly be able to self-monitor with the only support of more detailed guidelines than those provided in this occasion. Having a deadline appears important to keep the participants focused on the task; it would be advisable, though, to grant longer time frames, so as to allow reflection at individual pace, a feature that was praised by one questionnaire respondent. It is not by chance that Group1, who took as much time as they wished, turned out to be the most satisfied of both the creative process and the produced poem. The work environment chosen to implement the activity also proved good, in that it resulted to offer the main features which, according to the literature, are conducive of collaboration and creativity, namely shared resources to support the activity and communication facilities to help participants engage in discussion so as to build a common point of view (Mamykina et al., 2002; Dillenburg et al., 2008). The chosen wiki platform appeared to be a valid support. Not only does it provide a shared editing space, but also offers suitable features to help the participants structure their interactions. In this respect, both the forum and the formatting facilities proved supportive of group dynamics. Further improvements in this respect would be advisable, however, since it would be good if users could associate comments to portions of text in the editing pane rather then posting them in the forum together with the discussion of general issues. Finally, it would also be advisable to experiment different amounts and kinds of assigned constraints, in order to analyse more in depth the possible influence of this aspect on the engagement of creativity and collaboration.

9 3. Summary and conclusion Creativity, which is increasingly necessary in the current rapidly evolving technological, cultural and social context, is currently considered a feasible skill for everybody. Collaboration skills also appear more and more essential to cope with the requirements of our networked society, where knowledge and competence are distributed among many, often differently located, subjects. Collaborative creativity is particularly desirable, in that the creative process is recognized to have an intrinsic social dimension that requires collaboration among creators (Loveless, 2002). In order to provide for these needs, it is necessary to set up activities apt to foster people s practice of collaborative creativity. To this end, we have been working out an approach to structure collaborative poetry online; this constitutes a formative activity, rather than a literary one. Practicing collaborative creativity on a task like that, which is not related to any specific content knowledge and can be suitable for people of any age, background and cultural level, has the advantage to let the participants free to concentrate on the process, hence avoiding cognitive overloading. Moreover, the production of poetry rather than of plain prose, entails particular care in the selection of words and in sentence construction, with possible positive side effects, on the long run, on participants expressive skills. Finally, attention to poetry may help to call attention on feelings and affective aspects, which for a long time have been given scarce importance in the educational context but are now recognized as an important component of learning, especially as concerns shared creative thinking (Vass, 2007). We carried out an exploratory experience to test our approach to online collaborative poetry. Its outcomes appear positive. Nine adults with different backgrounds, organized in three small groups, participated in the creation of a poem in reserved spaces of a wiki environment. The three groups behaved in rather different ways, but all of them managed to complete the assigned task and expressed a good level of satisfaction, as well as their appreciation of this kind of activity as a learning opportunity. These positive outcomes confirm that online collaborative poetry may be valuable to foster the practice of creativity and collaboration skills, and encourage us to refine our approach by carrying out further investigation. References About.com (w/d). Retrieved May 21, 2010 from Collaboration.htm Albany Poetry Workshop (2009). Retrieved May 21, 2010 from Arnedillo-Sánchez, I. (2008). The Mobile Digital Narrative Tool. In I. Arnedillo-Sánchez & P. Isaias (Eds.), Mobile Learning 2008 (pp ). Lisbon: IADIS Press. Barkley, E. F., Cross, K. P., & Howell Major, C. (2005). Collaborative Learning Techniques A Handbook for College Faculty. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Chase, K. (2006). About Collaborative Poetry Writing. Journal of Poetry Therapy, 3(2), Craft, A. (2005). Creativity in schools. London, UK: Routledge. Craft, A., Cremin, T., & Burnard, P. (2008). Creative learning: an emergent concept. Opening remarks. In A. Craft, T. Cremin and P. Burnard (Eds.), Creative learning 3-11 and how we document it (pp. xix-xxiv), Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books. Dillenbourg, P., Järvelä, S., & Fischer, F. (2008). The Evolution of Research on Computer- Supported Collaborative Learning: From Design to Orchestration. In N. Balacheff, S.,

10 Ludvigsen, T. de Jong, A. Lazonder, S. Barnes & L. Montandon (Eds.), Technology- Enhanced Learning - Principles and Products. Berlin: Springer. Kobbe, L., Weinberger, A., Dillenbourg, P., Harrer, A., Hämäläinen, R., Häkkinen, P., et al. (2007). Specifying computer-supported collaboration scripts. Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 2, Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T. & Archer, W. (1999). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: computer conferencing in higher education, The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2-3), Glaveanu, V. P. (2009). Paradigms in the study of creativity: Introducing the perspective of cultural psychology. New Ideas in Psychology 28, Goldstein, J. (2001). Concept Mapping, Mind Mapping and Creativity Documenting the Creative Process for Computer Animators. ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphic, 35(2), Jaques, D., & Salmon, G (2007). Learning in groups: A Handbook for Face-To-Face and Online Environments. London, UK: Routledge. John-Steiner, V. (1993). Creative lives, creative tensions. Creativity Research Journal, 5(1), Kangas, M. (2010). Creative and playful learning: Learning through game co-creation and games in a playful learning environment. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 5(1), Kuhn, J.-T., & Holling, H. (2009). Exploring the nature of divergent thinking: a multilevel analysis. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 4, Loveless, A. (2002). Literature review in creativity, new Technologies and learning. Bristol: Nesta Futurelab. Retrieved May 21, 2010 from Luppicini, R. (2006) Review of computer mediated communication research for education, Instructional science, 35(2), Mamykina, L., Candy, L., & Edmonds, E. (2002). Collaborative Creativity. Communications of the ACM, 45(10), Poetry Collaborative (w/d). Retrieved May 21, 2010 from Poetry Wikia (2009). Retrieved May 21, 2010 from Sawyer, R. K. (2006a). Explaining creativity. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Sawyer, R. K. (2006b). Educating for innovation. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 1, Teaching Tolerance (w/d). Retrieved May 21, 2010 from Vass, E. (2007). Exploring processes of collaborative creativity The role of emotions in children s joint creative writing. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 2(2), Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Weinberger, A., Kollar, I., Dimitriadis, Y., Mäkitalo-Siegl, K., & Fischer, F. (2008). Computer-Supported Collaboration Scripts. In N. Balacheff, S. Ludvigsen, T. de Jong, A. Lazonder, S. Barnes & L. Montandon (Eds.), Technology-Enhanced Learning Principles and Products. Berlin: Springer.