Abstract:

This paper presents the collaborative experience that is under development as the European ERASMUS+ project THINKGAME (Cooperation to implement Creative Thinking and Gamification for innovative online training of STEM students). This project goal emerges from the need to enhance teachers' abilities to incorporate innovative methods in the e-learning systems. The ThinkGame initiative offers a methodology and proof-of-concept for teachers seeking to create digital educational content that motivates students to develop their creative thinking skills.

The current generation of students who studied during the pandemic have two problems. On the one hand, access to online content that offers them easy and unconditional solutions to many of the problems of everyday life, which has diminished their ability to think creatively. On the other hand, they no longer have the habit of continuous and sustained training through repetitive learning and work on many practical exercises that would provide them with the deepening of theoretical aspects and the speed in solving problems. By introducing online tools based on creative thinking techniques, the ThinkGame project aims to provide students with the framework in which to develop these much-needed skills.

The ThinkGame project aims to develop an innovative approach for learning, combining creativity, gamification, and STEM topics. The use of gamification elements or other active learning methodologies is not new, but it has not been widely adopted, even less in online learning tools. Introducing the elements of gamification and creative thinking in online tools will allow STEM teachers to adopt on a large scale the enrichment of courses, thus improving training, adding a substantial innovative effect in terms of pedagogical methods, and learning practices, both for the online component, as well as on the overall learning results.

In this paper, the overall project setup will be presented. Both from the organisational point of view of the partnership and also presenting the collaborative approach for development and creation of digital educational content that motivates students to develop their creative thinking skills.

Keywords:

Gamification, Creative Thinking, STEM.