Developing and Testing a Serious Game to Train Creative Thinking

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Issue Date
2018-07-01
Language
en
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Abstract
Creativity, the ability to generate new and useful ideas, is one of the most desirable employability skills in the twenty-first century. Despite this need, creative ideas are scarce because we have a tendency to activate semantically related information and concepts and thus are constrained from producing new, unconventional ideas. This research aims to develop and test a gamification training program that helps the practice of far conceptual combination. In Study 1, a computerized game was developed and validated by correlating 49 participants’ game performances with several creativity measures. The results suggest that divergent thinking is central and necessary for game performance. Subsequently, the effectiveness of this game was examined using a pre- and post-training design in Study 2. Three cognitive components of creativity, divergent thinking, convergent thinking and insight problem solving of 27 university students were measured before and after their four-week game training. It was found that divergent thinking and convergent thinking significantly improved following this creativity game training. Potential for an effective gamification approach and possible improvements for the game training was finally discussed. Keywords: creative thinking, game training, divergent thinking, convergent thinking, insight problem solving
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Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen