The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of design thinking instruction on the creativity of preservice teachers. Preservice teachers took part in a two-week unit on 3D printing as a part of their regular instruction in an educational technology course. The experimental group was introduced to design thinking instruction as a framework…

"Paideia," a Classical ancient Greek notion of education, encompassed both holistic formal instruction and art (particularly poetry) as means to develop cultural values and understanding. This dissertation examines how the new media arts--as a transdisciplinary and computational field--can be leveraged to fulfill a contemporary notion of…

Makerspaces can support educational experiences in prototyping for young learners, while physical computing platforms enable high levels of creativity and expression. However, each of these have high barriers of entry, especially for youth without prior experience. Commercial microcontrollers have become a popular tool to use when designing both…

Design schools represent a unique context for the study of creativity. Design school students are expected to master creativity by developing individualized processes. Student development in the design classroom has traditionally focused on cultivating professional skills and aptitudes. However, design school students may have long-held beliefs…

From computational and scientific viewpoints, virtual reality (VR) is a well-researched technology, platform, and mode of communication. However, from an arts perspective, virtual reality has very few, if any, defined parameters as an artistic medium. This study aims to explore the technical affordances and the experiential and creative phenomena…

This multi-study dissertation explored technology and creativity within three different technology-rich creative musical spaces. Through the use of three contrasting empirical methods (qualitative content analysis, intrinsic case study, and phenomenology), I explored the complex ways technology and musical creativity are linked. In the first…

There is an ever-increasing need for technologically literate citizens to find creative ways to solve societal problems. STEM, the integration of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics subjects continues to be a popular topic as schools grapple with how to best prepare students for an ever-evolving society. As societal and technological…

Creativity is an important problem-solving tool in the design context. People who are in design education treat creativity as an important component of their self-identity. Thus, it is imperative to develop and be mindful of creativity in design education. Most traditional design fields focus on creative outcomes that impact revenue, trends, and…

This thesis is an article-based (3-paper format) dissertation. In the first article, the research team adapted an input-process-outcome (IPO) model of group-level processes in the classroom, as a theoretical framework, to examine students' experiences regarding pre-college engineering curricula, classroom environments, and their experiences with…

With the innovation of the internet, the learner is able to access his or her online classroom anytime, and anywhere based on the customized online learning environment by instructional designers. Creating online learning environments, also known as instructional design, can be challenging. This research focused on how instructional designers…

This dissertation uses constructivist grounded theory to illuminate the practices and activities-namely, those tied to the information creating and the informal information provider roles-of"serious YouTubers", specifically "serious beauty and lifestyle" YouTubers. A "serious YouTuber" is defined as an individual who…

Creativity and collaboration in education is a topic of growing interest among scholars and educators. Teachers around the United States are being tasked with the re-design of learning experiences but these demands are seldom accompanied by processes to support the creativity that is required for any design of learning. This study merged theory…

The purpose of this non-experimental research study was three-fold: (1) to investigate the relationships among the attributes of creative problem solving ability (divergent thinking, convergent thinking, motivation, general knowledge and skills, and environment) and their relationships in the humanities (specifically those that took enrichment…

The literature on teacher practice is abundant but the notion of framing teachers as designers is comparatively new. Teachers are highly embedded in doing design on a daily basis. As designers of instruction and learning experiences they are unique in that they are also content experts, deliverers of instruction, and have a nuanced understanding…

Before the mobile revolution, the father of educational technology Seymour Papert declared, "[T]he computer's true power as an educational medium lies...in the ability to facilitate and extend children's awesome natural ability and drive to construct, hypothesize, explore, experiment, evaluate, draw conclusions--in short to learn--all by…