Abstract:

Crowdsourcing has become an emerging topic in research and practice in the previous years. Numerous research and case studies have discussed crowdsourcing models, benefits and constraints. In addition, many researchers investigated the potentials of the crowdsourcing models as a support to creative processes. However, there has still not been much research related to crowdsourcing in educational environments.

In this paper we present an approach to harnessing the potentials of crowdvoting through a social network as a support to students' creative projects. The goal of the research was to design and evaluate a model for motivating students' creativity through a crowdvoted competition on a social network. The experiment was conducted at the Department of E-business, Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade. Students were assigned a project in 3D modelling and animation. The task was to design a promotional animation that could support the defined marketing activities. The ten best projects were selected by teachers, and posted on a Facebook page for opened crowdvoting.

Results of the research show that students generally had positive attitudes toward this type of activities. They were motivated to create original projects, as well as to promote their work. Finally, we analyze if students' creativity styles were related to their attitudes and performance.

Keywords:

Crowdvoting, creativity, social networking, e-learning.