Fostering Creativity in Tablet-Based Interactive Classrooms

This article aims to examine the effects of an instructional model that leverages innovative technologies in the classroom to cultivate collaboration that improves students’ comprehension, fosters their creativity, and enables them to better express and communicate their ideas through drawing. This discussion focuses on classroom interaction systems and technologies that can foster creativity, including tablets, electronic blackboards, interaction management solutions, and high-speed wireless internet. To address the study aims, we conceptualized an instructional model entitled “Visual Thinking through Tablet-based Classroom Interaction” (VTTCI) and applied it for one semester in English classes in a high-tech middle school in Korea. This model aimed to enable students to better express and communicate their ideas through drawing; to understand the lesson material’s text and topic; to conceive of core ideas related to the topic; to visually express concepts through drawings, presentations, and discussions; and to ultimately gain a better understanding of the material based on the drawings. After applying the instructional model for one semester, we assessed the creativity of the students in the six treatment classes using the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking-Figural form, (TTCT), and we compared their scores with those of the students in the six control group classes, who did not receive the treatment. The results revealed that the students in the treatment group scored significantly higher on the Originality, Abstractness of Titles, and Elaboration subscales and on overall creativity. Thus, the VTTCI model can be seen to affect creativity. The results show that the students’ creative proficiency improved with the adoption of the instructional model for tablet-based interactive classrooms.