Abstract:

The main purpose of this project was to examine the effect of "Tablet" devices versus traditional media "pencil and paper" when performing creative tasks by higher education students. The study was conducted with a sample of 25 students from the Degree in Computer Engineering at the Public University of Navarra. Subjects were assigned randomly to the experimental group (N = 13) who worked with "Tablets" and the control group (N = 12) who performed creative tasks in "pencil and paper". The independent variable was the tablet device and applications, dependent variables were: overall creativity, narrative creativity and pictorial creativity. The procedure consisted of two distinct phases. The first intervention phase, in which the subjects in the experimental group (GE) performed individually six creative task -three verbal tasks and three drawing tasks- with "Tablets", while the control group (GC) performed the same in the format "pencil and paper". Creative tasks of the experimental group were accomplished with the assistance of software applications installed in “Tablets” with three different interaction styles: only visualization of animated objects in a two dimensional space, visualization and composition with static objects in two dimensional space, and only visualizations of animated objects in a three dimensional space. In the second evaluation phase, all subjects were examined in creativity through the Test of Creative Imagination for Adults, PIC-A (Artola, Barraca, Mosteiro, Ancillo, Poveda and Sanchez, 2012) consisting of four games, three of which measured narrative or verbal creativity while the fourth measured pictorial creativity. The results showed that using "Tablets" encouraged the creative potential of the experimental group relative to the control group. In addition, students who scored higher on creativity in narrative PIC-A performed better on verbal tasks than in drawing tasks. This type of study aims to contribute to research work in human-computer interaction, and to foster creative potential of higher education students, for whom creativity is a highly appreciated professional and social competency.

Keywords:

Tablets, creative tasks, narrative creativity, pictorial creativity and higher education.