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Department of Computer Science, Unit Catalogue 2007/08


CM40204 Creativity and IT

Credits: 6
Level: Masters
Semester: 1
Assessment: EX50CW50
Requisites:
Aims: To give the students an advanced level of understanding of current theoretical, methodological and practical 'creativity in design' research issues. To provide the students with knowledge about the nature of creativity, creative processes and current creative practice. To provide the students with an interdisciplinary perspective on creativity. To give the students experience of studying creativity in different domains, and provide input to the design of user-centred creativity support tools, and present the results.
Learning Outcomes:
The students should be able to understand the current debates about the nature of creativity and different approaches to supporting creativity. They should also be aware of the current and potential role of computers in supporting creativity. They should be able to challenge and recognize advances in the state of the art in user-centred, creativity support research. They should also be able to develop research programmes to overcome problems in the usability of current creativity support tools.
Skills:
Problem solving T/F, A
Working with others T/F, A
Can reason analytically and scientifically about taught material T/F, A
Can research, summarise and cogently debate state of the art literature T/F, A.
Content:
What is creativity? Is it possible to define creativity? How can the creative process be described, analysed, modelled and judged? What are the hallmarks of creativity in design? Can creativity be taught? Different theories of creativity from different disciplinary perspectives, and different models of the creative process will be presented. Methodological problems in studying creativity will be covered and discussed. The problem of how it is possible to enable people to become 'more creative, more of the time' will also be presented and discussed in class. The students will be taught about the myriad potential roles of the computer in supporting, enhancing and enabling creativity, along with different principles and guidelines developed for the design of creativity support tools. How to evaluate the usability and effectiveness of creativity support tools will be considered. Finally, the students will be introduced to a number of different applications developed as potential computer based tools to support creative processes.