Exploring Students’ Creativity and Design Skills through a Multimedia Project: A Constructivist approach in a Malaysian classroom

Abstract

Research has shown that students have graduated from
institutions of higher learning with a lack of creativity and
critical-thinking thinking skills. This mismatch in skills has
resulted in a nationwide initiative in using technology in
the classroom to create a learning environment that would
stimulate students’ creative and problem-solving process,
and to cultivate an engaging and media-rich design
learning process. In this paper, we explored the use of
constructivist learning principles within a multimedia
design course on students’ creative and critical-thinking
skills, via the design of a multimedia project. The project
design and development required group collaboration and
the enabling of students to document their design process
throughout the trimester in webpages and project reports.
The results of the study showed that student teams were
able to create innovative and engaging applications and
were able to document critical-thinking processes
throughout their project development. Motivation,
teamwork and collaboration, and increased understanding,
were key components of this learning environment and
multimedia technology was an enabler for them to
become creative and critical in their thinking, thus
increasing their engagement in the classroom. The
constructivist learning principles used in the study also
showed positive results as a pedagogical framework for
creating engaging learning environments for students.