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ZLL > Creativity and Artificial Intelligence Seminar: ECIU Challenge

Creativity and Artificial Intelligence Seminar: ECIU Challenge

Course period: Summer Term 2024

Course format: seminar

Goal: (a) learning to think holistically about creative processes and practicing collective creativity, (b) exploring the creative possibilities and limits of generative AI, (c) cultivating soft skills relating to interdisciplinary and international collaboration.

Project overview

1. Inital Situation

The starting point of this experimental, hands-on master’s seminar is the circumstance that artificial intelligence (AI) can produce a wide variety of outputs that might be perceived as creative (1). At the same time, the current AI revolution renders traditional modes of university teaching outdated (2). Thus, drawing inspiration from the didactical method of challenge-based learning (3), this course leveraged the students’ collective creativity in approaching the topic of the seminar, creativity in the era of AI. The seminar took place from 15 April to 24 June 2024. To develop and implement the seminar, I secured a grant by the European Consortium of Innovative Universities (ECIU). Students from various disciplines participated. The seminar was conducted in a hybrid format, with two-thirds of the participants attending in person through NTA, while the remaining one-third, consisting of international students from ECIU partner universities, joined online. The assessment format consisted of presentations.

2. Challenges & Goal

Project Goal: Designing & implementing the challenge from scratch
Goal of student projects: Identifying and developing a solution to a sociotechnical challenge at the intersection of creativity and AI
Key learning goals: (a) learning to think holistically about creative processes and practicing collective creativity, (b) exploring the creative possibilities and limits of generative AI, (c) cultivating soft skills relating to interdisciplinary and international collaboration.

3. Pedagogical Concept

Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) served as the didactical foundation of the seminar. Accordingly, interdisciplinary student teams pursued innovative projects that cast new light on AI-powered creativity or address sociotechnical challenges raised by seemingly creative AI systems. Thus, creativity was not merely a topic of the seminar but a cornerstone of the didactical setup. Following CBL, the seminar was structured into three stages: the Engage, Investigate, and Act phases. Each phase concluded with a milestone meeting where student teams presented their ideas and received feedback from their peers. As the seminar teacher, I gave inputs on the foundations of generative AI, the science and philosophy of creativity, and current debates in AI ethics. On that basis, the student teams developed product ideas and prototypes dealing with issues ranging from sustainability and misinformation to the future of work and entertainment. In July 2024, a student delegation presented their results at the Possibility Studies Network conference at the University of Cambridge, a leading conference in the field of creativity studies

4. Evaluation

At the end of the semester, the course was evaluated using Evasys, with questions based on BiLOE (4). These questions were designed to assess the achievement of key learning goals (a) to (c) outlined in Section 2.

5. Results

Student evaluation results:

ⁿ⁼¹⁶

^{1=achieved completel}

^{4=not achieved at all}

Click, to enlarge

6. Reflection & Conclusion

What went well: clear structure, input sessions, multidisciplinary outlook, active student participation, stakeholder involvement
Challenges: hybrid format, time constraints, group work, especially differences in dedication
Refinements: extended Engage phase, more input and guidance, more time dedicated to prototyping and product development during Act phase, extended team building activities, clearly defined areas of responsibility for each student within a team
Learning goals: As shown in section 5, most students achieved both key learning goals and personal objectives. From my experience, CBL works best for students with high internal motivation
Sustainability of Challenge: new iteration of seminar in winter term 2024-25, more time-intensive than other seminars since teacher constantly needs to react to evolving dynamics of student projects, students valued feedback they received at Cambridge conference, two teams consider developing their projects further as startups

References

^{(1) Bozenhard, J. (2023): Criss-Crossing Creativity, Bodleian | (2) Kamalov, F., Calong, D.S., Gurrib, I. (2023): New Era of Artificial Intelligence in Education, Sustainability 15(16) | (3) Cator, K. & Nichols, M. (2008): Challenge Based Learning, Apple, Inc. | (4) Frank, A., Weiß, P., & Bitterer, F. (2019): Lernzielorientierte Evaluation von Lehrveranstaltungen - das Bielefelder Modell (BiLOE), Handbuch Qualität in Studium, Lehre und Forschung}