CONTEXT We witness an increasing adoption of education technology in HE. This development was amplified by the recent COVID-19 pandemic, when HEIs were “forced to move learning online due to nationwide shutdowns”, resulting in a massive shift towards hybrid and online learning settings which is assumed to stay Thus, the awareness, knowledge, readiness and capacity of HE teachers in using digital learning materials and distance learning techniques in general has increased dramatically over the last six months [4]. However, creativity is said to rely on direct connection to others, and on teaching settings allowing for face-to-face phronetic experience This constitutes a challenge to teaching creativity online, and systematic approaches to guide engineering teachers in incorporating the topic into online teaching settings are yet missing. OBJECTIVE The main objective of TICON is to identify and overcome the barriers in engineering HE for teaching creativity online, and to upskill the teachers in terms of digital teaching with appropriate pedagogical approaches. Being able to teach creativity online brings opportunities for students, and these may be defined as the secondary objectives of TICON. It will enable disabled students to join the courses, or groups of students from different regions and countries may learn and work on a project together while improving their innovation capabilities. The main target group of TICON are HE engineering teachers, HEIs and their teacher training departments, and the final beneficiaries are HE engineering students. The indirect targets are: HEI management, HE policy makers, and HEI teacher training centers/HR departments. OUTPUTS & WORKFLOW The TICON objectives will be achieved through a robust workflow, evolving around 3 IOs. Based upon an update of the preliminary and preparatory research, and analyzed in 4 focus groups with 15 HE teachers each, the O1 Curriculum defines pedagogical approach and the structure and content of the learning materials to be developed within O2 (TICON learning content), and provides recommendations for the user-centered design of the e-learning platform of O3 (TICON e-learning platform). The use of design-thinking approaches in the focus groups allows to drill deeper into the challenges and needs of the HE teachers and ensures that the outcomes are user-centered and reflect reality. O2 and O3 focus on the development of the learning content and assessment method (O2) and the e-learning platform (O3) and are in constant cross-fertilization and feedback between them to ensure the the content developed fully aligns with the functionalities of the e-learning platform and vice-versa. This allows for a lean and agile development of both IOs. IMPACT TICON will provide HE Engineering teachers with the theoretical knowledge and practical skills to teach creativity in online and hybrid contexts, aligning with the pedagogical objective of their course and to know how to ensure in these contexts, student motivation, skills attainment and skills assessment in the most adequate and efficient way. TICON will give them a deeper insight and understanding of creativity, and teaching creativity for engineering in online contexts, which will lead to the efficient adoption of creativity methods and techniques in the way they provide their online teaching (in creativity but also in other areas of knowledge) CONSORTIUM The consortium, consisting of educational experts, engineering HE teachers, instructional technologists, and creativity experts from Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Turkey and Spain, collaborate with their different perspectives for reaching the objectives of TICON. The wide network of the consortium partners will be mobilized, a defined set of people from the abovementioned target groups will be reached and the communication channels of the partners will be used to facilitate the dissemination of the project outputs.
The main objective of TICON was to identify and overcome barriers in engineering HE to teaching creativity online, and to upskill the teachers on digital teaching with appropriate pedagogical approaches. It was aimed at developing, based on a thorough need analysis, an online learning environment to provide engineering HE teachers with self-learning teaching material and guidance to efficiently implement creativity teaching in their online classes. TICON focused on assisting them in developing new skills to improve their creativity teaching related technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK). Being able to teach creativity online brings opportunities for students, and these were defined as the secondary objectives of TICON. It aimed at enabling disabled students to join the courses, or groups of students from different regions and countries to learn and work on a project together online while improving their innovation capabilities. Consequently, the main target group of TICON were HE engineering teachers, HEIs and their teacher training departments, and the final beneficiaries were HE engineering students. The indirect targets were HEI management, HE policy makers, and HEI teacher training centers/HR departments.
We applied because we witnessed, amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, an increasing adoption of online and hybrid teaching in HE which is assumed to stay. Thus, the awareness, knowledge, readiness and capacity of HE teachers in using digital learning materials and distance learning techniques in general has increased dramatically. However, creativity relies on direct connection to others, and on teaching settings allowing for face-to-face phronetic experience. Moreover, student anxiety and discomfort increase in online spaces, thereby inhibiting the willingness to participate in creative tasks that require the presentation of ideas outside of the normal thinking paths. Together, this creates a serious barrier to teaching creativity online, and systematic approaches to guide engineering teachers in incorporating the topic as well as creativity methods into online teaching settings were missing. At the same time, creativity evolved into a cornerstone skill of future engineers because it cannot be automated and taken over by technology such as AI and hence, HE engineering teachers were increasingly required to teach creativity to engineering students.