Abstract:

The Co-creative Extracurricular Educational Enrichment Project for High Ability (HA) Students organized by the Foundation for Assistance to Children and Youth with High Ability (FANJAC) and the University of Girona (UdG) consists of a set of active learning activities related by a thematic axis as a thread that the course 2017-18 was: "We explore together."

Students with HA have characteristics that allow them to perform activities differently, quickly understand problems, have a lexicon of their own at older ages, answer questions in a broad manner, be very observant, creative and curious, excel in leadership, sense of humor and memory, having the ability to solve complex problems, adapt to changing situations and generate new ideas.

Although for these characteristics one might think that the school failure among these students is residual, an educational malpractice and an inadequate social environment can generate boredom, demotivation and poor school performance.

Several authors related to neuroeducation have stated that motivation is the first step and perhaps one of the most fundamental for the teaching-learning process. If the students are not motivated, we cannot teach them adequately and to motivate them we must program activities that are in tune with their interests and in which they actively participate.

There is no doubt that motivation and academic performance are strongly related. Motivation is the motor that avoids boredom and leads to school success.
It has been identified that the processes of collaborative creation of resources and educational practices open from an inter and multidisciplinary vision that consider the reality of the students in a comprehensive manner and that adequately meet the needs and preferences of all students’ favour motivation.

We take advantage of our experience in other projects on the application of co-creation processes to involve students, teachers and families in order to enhance motivation, self-confidence, interrelation, social skills, leadership, acceptance of the failure as a source of experience, the attitude of cooperation and teamwork.

The project was carried out through an innovative co-creation process with education professionals who participated as volunteers and with family members of the students who collaborated with this innovation with their contributions. The students and their families selected the theme of the project through a co-creation process. Subsequently, the teachers through another co-creation process defined and prepared the activities that had to be carried out in each of the five 3-hour sessions that lasted the project and that took place on a Saturday morning of each month from December 2017 to April 2018. Students in some of the project activities used co-creation techniques. Finally, students, teachers and families evaluated the process carried out.

This article explains the various co-creation processes mentioned previously as a means to achieve the objectives of this project.

Keywords:

Co-creation, motivation, high ability students, extracurricular project.