Nine months ago, Dr. Sandrine Han suggested that I should check out Learning Creative Learning created by Lifelong Kindergarten at MIT Media Lab.

I hesitated for a moment because I was not sure if I would be able to complete this open online course. After all, the average completion rate of MOOC courses is about 15%. To my surprise, not only did I finish the entire course, but also go back and review some of the articles and resources provided by Mitchel Resnick and his lab team.

Learning Creative Learning is now officially a source of inspiration for me. The course materials are fun to read, the course structure is well-designed with 6 easily digestible modules, and the principles and strategies can be applied to any discipline at any school or university. I would recommend every educator to take the course if time allows.

However, if you do not have the time to finish the entire course, these are the things I would like to share with you:

• The spiral process of creative learning
• The core concepts of 4P’s: Project, Passion, Peers, and Play
• Strategies to foster creativity

1. The Spiral Process of Creative Learning 

In the first chapter of his most recent book Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passions, Peers, and Play, Mitchel illustrates the spiral process of creative learning: an iterative process when someone engages in a creative activity.

Creative Learning Spiral (Courtesy of Mitchel Resnick)

According to Mitchel, IMAGINE is usually the first step, followed by actions to CREATE things. PLAY refers to a stage where people experiment or tinker. SHARE create spaces for collaboration and peer feedback. Reflect basically means “how might we improve,” typically guided by a teacher or facilitator.

As a spiral process, the creative learning cycle is iterative in its nature. That means students need to try out different ideas and approaches to solve problems and improve their solutions. In order to support the creative learning process, Mitchel introduced 4P’s: Projects,  Passion, Peers, and Play. 

2. Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play

Projects

In chapter 2, Mitchel suggests that project-based learning is critical because it is the key to fluency, a similar concept to mastery.

“… When you learn to write, it’s not enough to learn spelling, grammar, and punctuation. It’s important to learn to tell stories and communicate your ideas…  Imagine trying to learn to write just by working on crossword puzzles. It could improve your spelling and vocabulary, and it could be fun, but would you become a good writer, able to tell stories and express your ideas fluently? I don’t think so. A project-based approach is the best path to fluency, whether for writing or coding.”

Mitchel also argues that learning by doing is not enough. Students should engage in  learning by making, which is the process of designing, building, and creating something:

“in the culture of the Maker Movement, it’s not enough to do something: You need to make something. According to the maker ethic, the most valuable learning experiences come when you’re actively engaged in designing, building, or creating something—when you’re learning-through-making.”

The idea of learning by making can be challenging to many of us. If you are wondering where to start, I would suggest thinking about these questions:   

• How do your current activities, feedback, and assignments support or do not support the “making” process?
• How can you create authentic projects that support the acquisition of 21st-century skills?
• And more importantly, are you willing to try out new approaches?

Passion

In chapter 3, Mitchel introduces the idea of “wide walls” building on Seymour Papert’s concepts of “low floor” and “high ceiling.” “Low floors” means technology should provide easy ways for novices to get started. “High ceiling” means technology should also provide ways for people to work on increasingly sophisticated projects over time.

According to Mitchel, “wide wall” adds that technology should support a wide range of different types of projects because people have different passions. He also suggests that passion leads to a phase of immersion in learning.

“Developmental psychologist Edith Ackermann described the process in terms of diving in and stepping back. When people work on projects they’re passionate about, they’re eager to dive in and immerse themselves. They’re willing to work for hours, or longer, and hardly notice that time is passing… But it’s also important for people to step back and reflect on their experiences. Through reflection, people make connections among ideas, develop a deeper understanding of which strategies are the most productive, and become better prepared to transfer what they’ve learned to new situations in the future. Immersion without reflection can be satisfying, but not fulfilling.”

He points out that we need to encourage “hard fun” instead of believing the misconception that students want learning to be easy.

“Too often, teachers and educational publishers try to make lessons easier, believing that children want things to be easy. But that’s not the case. Most children are willing to work hard—eager to work hard—so long as they’re excited about the things they’re working on.”

Although it is obvious that people learn the best when they are led by passion, it is not easy to implement when students just need certain courses in order to complete their degrees. However, whenever possible, it is our job to create space for flexibility and agency that ignite passion.  

If there is not much you can change in your course content, how about giving students choices to decide the format of their assignments? If they enjoy creating videos, can they submit a video instead of a writing assignment? And even before that, do your students know that they can talk to you about their interests or preferred ways of learning?  

Peers 

Mitchel suggests that we need to shift from think-it-yourself to make-it-together.

“This approach is more aligned with the needs of today’s society, where almost all jobs require collaborative effort, and the most important social issues require collective action.”

With peers, students collaborate with and learn from each other to create prototypes and artifacts. They seek for team members offline and online and develop communities by themselves. These meta-cognitive strategies enable them to become more self-sufficient.

But how should we support this? In chapter 4, Mitchel addresses it by discussing the shifting role of teachers:

• Catalyst: The best way for a teacher to provide a spark is to ask questions. By asking the right types of questions, a teacher or mentor can catalyze exploration and reflection, but the learner remains that active agent, in charge of the activity.
• Consultant: The goal is not to “deliver instruction” or “provide answers,” but to understand what people are trying to do and figure out the best way to support them.
• Connector: An important part of teachers’ job is to connect learners with other people who they might work with, learn with, and learn from.
• Collaborator: Teachers or mentors don’t simply provide support or advice. They work on their own projects and invite people to join in.

Play

Why is play even relevant or essential? In chapter 5, Mitchel explains that play helps students to explore the unknown and the uncertainty.

However, not all types of play are equally valuable. Citing work from Marina Bers, he agrees that there is a difference between playpen and playground.

“The playground promotes, while the playpen hinders, a sense of mastery, creativity, self-confidence, and open exploration.”

“Playpen” indicates limitations and restrictions, whereas “Playground” is open and encourages social interactions. With that, he suggests that the tinkering process combines the value of “playing” and “making.”

“The tinkering process is messier. Tinkerers take a bottom-up approach: They start small, try out simple ideas, react to what happens, make adjustments, and refine their plans. They often take a meandering, circuitous path to get to a solution. But what they lose in efficiency they gain in creativity and agility. When unexpected things happen and when new opportunities arise, tinkerers are better positioned to take advantage.”

Tinkering is inherently an iterative process, similar to the process of design thinking.

“Tinkerers believe in rapid prototyping and iteration. When working on a design project, they build something quickly, try it out, get reactions from other people, then make a new version— over and over.”

In order to cultivate creative thinkers, he cautions that teachers need to understand that step-by-step instructions should be a stepping stone, not a final destination. Teachers also need to encourage students to try out different approaches and styles so that they can switch strategies as situation warrants.

3. Strategies to foster creativity

In chapter 6, Mitchel lists 10 tips for parents and teachers to support the development of creativity based on the spiral process of creative learning. You may also find the 10 Tips here.

Contextualizing Learning Creative Learning for learning design in general, I think there are a few things we could implement effectively with some reasonable efforts:

• Low floor: A course should be designed in a way that is fun and provides a strong sense of achievement at the beginning. For example, you could gamify your first class by introducing a trivial game with a leader board, and everyone wins something.
• High ceiling: When possible, learning tasks should be designed with a gradual increase in difficulty.  A simple way to increase difficulty is to provide less support or aids. For example, your students may be provided step-by-step instruction at first. As the course progresses, students are asked to perform a task with less or no instructional aids. Sometimes it just means you talk less. 
• Wide wall: Consider the needs and interests of your students. Give students chances to choose projects or assignments. Empower them to figure out a topic they are interested in within the subject. An example I provided previously is to think about the format of your assignments, can students submit video assignments rather than writing assignments? Are they given the opportunities to discuss with you about their preferred ways of learning?
• Allow play and mistakes: High-stake assessments do not usually afford mistakes. Consider “drop the lowest grade” if you have multiple projects in one course so your students could experiment different approaches, or consider allowing students to submit assignments a few more times to make improvements (iterations) based on formative feedback they receive.
• Room for unknown: Use worked-out examples with purpose. Depending on your objectives, you may provide step-by-step instruction first, or you could give students opportunities to imagine and explore the possibilities of solving problems first. The key is that students need to understand that unknown is constant in the real world and the only way to deal with it is to try different approaches
• Build the habit of reflection: Establish a process for reflection. Provide opportunities and tools for your students to reflect as an individual and as groups. A simple tool like KFC (keep, fix, change) will make the reflection process much easier for new students. Also, encourage your students to document their process and iterations for reflection.

So, how about some creativity with your course design and teaching practices?  

The beauty of our team is that we are a team of 6 with diverse backgrounds and skillsets. That means we are able to, and we should, create as many learning opportunities for each other as possible in various fields including but not limited to project management, strategic communication, stakeholder management, marketing, programming, 2D/3D design, UX/UI design, game design, and learning design.

In this post, I’ll put together a crash course on learning design theories and practices for my team that is about to design and prototype a functioning virtual reality training simulation in 12 weeks.

Reviewing what I learned during my master program in Education, I selected some theories, principles, and practices for the team. They are important and relevant to this project yet not difficult to understand, and some of the theories and principles could be seen as common sense for people who are naturally empathetic.

So here is the list:

• Cognitive Load Theory
• Principles of Multimedia Learning
• First Principles of Instruction
• 4C/ID Model
• Worked-out Examples
• Principles of Adult Learning

As we are designing a VR simulation, another important task for me throughout this project is to contextualize these theories and discover how these principles may or may not apply in VR design.

Cognitive Load Theory

Why? Cognitive load theory provides a high-level understanding regarding how human brains process information and is the foundation for multimedia learning principles. 

Key Concepts

• Sensor Memory
• Short-term Memory
• Long-term Memory
• Chunk
• Extraneous Load
• Intrinsic Load
• Germane Load

Key Messages

• Do not OVERLOAD users because our cognitive capacity is limited.
• However, how much information is too much for users depends on individuals’ mental model (schema), which is why we need to research and differentiate the level of our users/learners.

Selected Resources

• Cognitive Load Theory and Instructional Design

Principles of Multimedia Learning

Why? Multimedia learning principles are evidence-based guidelines and practices that aim to decrease extraneous load, manage intrinsic load and maximize germane load. 

Mayer’s 12 Multimedia Principles:

• Coherence Principle 
• Signaling Principle
• Redundancy Principle 
• Spatial Contiguity Principle
• Temporal Contiguity Principle
• Segmenting Principle
• Pre-training Principle
• Modality Principle
• Multimedia Principle
• Personalization Principle
• Voice Principle
• Image Principle

In addition, Merriënboer offers three design principles and strategies:

• Variability principle
• Contextual interference principle
• Self-explanation principle

Selected Resources

• 12 Principles of Multimedia Learning as a Powerful Design Resources

First Principles of Instruction

Why? First Principles of Instruction is basically a synthesis of all major instructional theories. It is easy to understand and probably the best starting point to learn about learning design. 

Selected Resources

• Merrill Principles of Instruction

The 4C/ID model

Why? The 4C/ID model stands for four components instructional design model. It is a problem-based approach that is widely used in technical/medical training.

The four components in 4C/ID model are:

• Learning tasks
• Supportive information
• JIT information
• Part-task practice

Selected Resources:

• Problem-based Learning with 4C/ID
• Instructional Design Theory – 4C/ID Model

Worked-Out Examples

Why? Worked-out Example is a great approach to break down learning steps and show learners what to do. Renkl points out that learners gain a deeper understanding when they receive well-designed worked-out examples at the beginning of cognitive skills acquisition.

Selected Resources:

• Worked-out Example Effects

Principles of Adult Learning

Why? Because teaching adults are fundamentally different from teaching kids or teenagers. Understanding these principles will inform the high-level learning design for adults.

Selected Resources:

• Principles of Adult Learning

Reference

Merrill, M. D. (2002). First principles of instruction. Educational Technology Research and Development, 50(3), 43-59. doi:10.1007/BF02505024

Mayer, R. E. (2002). Cognitive theory and the design of multimedia instruction: An example of the Two-Way street between cognition and instruction. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 2002(89), 55-71. doi:10.1002/tl.47

Mayer, R. E. (2008). Applying the science of learning: Evidence-based principles for the design of multimedia instruction. The American Psychologist, 63(8), 760-769. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.63.8.760

Renkl, A. (2005). The worked-out-example principle in multimedia learning. In Mayer (Ed.) The Cambridge handbook of multimedia learning, (pp. 229-245). New York; Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press.

Roy, M., & Chi, M. T. (2005). The self-explanation principle in multimedia learning. In Mayer (Ed.) The Cambridge handbook of multimedia learning, (pp. 271-286). New York; Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press.

van Merriënboer, J. J. G., Clark, R. E., & de Croock, M. B. M. (2002). Blueprints for complex learning: The 4C/ID-model. Educational Technology Research and Development, 50(2), 39-64. doi:10.1007/BF02504993

van Merriënboer, J. J. G., & Sweller, J. (2010). Cognitive load theory in health professional education: Design principles and strategies. Medical Education, 44(1), 85-93. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2923.2009.03498.x