First inspire, then instruct to improve students’ creativity

Creativity is one of the most essential skills for success in life in our dynamic, complex world. For instance, we are currently facing major problems with the COVID-19 pandemic, which requires creative thinking for solutions. To increase the pool of creative thinkers, we need tools that can assess and support people's creativity. With advances in technologies, as well as in computer and learning sciences, we can create such support tools. In this study, we investigated the effectiveness of a creativity-support system that we developed in the level editor of an educational game called Physics Playground. Our goal was to improve college students' creativity. Participants (n = 114) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions and instructed to create as many creative game levels as possible in about two hours. The four conditions included: (1) Inspirational – with supports that provided access to a website with example levels, a brainstorming tool, and a remote association activity; (2) Instructional – with supports that provided specific instructions to first design as many levels as possible, then pick four of the levels, and enhance them using a tool called SCAMPER; (3) Both – with both inspirational and instructional supports; and (4) No Support, which did not include any creativity supports. The major finding from this research was that the Both condition was significantly more effective than the other conditions in improving students' creativity measured by the creativity of the game levels created by the students. Implications of the findings, limitations, and future research are discussed.