Creativity as a pathway to computer science

Abstract

The study presented in this paper explores characteristics of creativity and the question whether creativity forms a possible pathway into the field of Computer Science (CS). For this purpose, we analyze computing experiences of students majoring in CS and Bioinformatics. The study is part of two research projects exploring creativity in CS Education and students' pathways to CS.

Understanding understanding source code with functional magnetic resonance imaging

“…There are many discussions about the best way to teach computer science and software engineering [16,43,66]. The close relationship to language processing raises the question of whether it is beneficial to learn a programming language at an early age or to learn multiple programming languages right from the beginning, which is a major issue in designing computer-science curricula.…”

Predictive effects of creative abilities and attitudes on performance in university-level computer science courses.

“…The present study sought to investigate whether creative ability measures and measures of attitudes related to creativity could predict success in introductory and advanced-level computer science courses. While computer scientists and computer science education researchers largely view computer science as a creative discipline (Knobelsdorf, & Romeike, 2008; Romeike, 2007a, 2007b), no study to our knowledge has directly examined whether creativity measures can predict achievement in computer science courses. As creativity is one of the “core soft skills” of computer science (Romeike, 2007a), identifying the specific creative factors that predict computer science success could be an important step in developing effective curricula that emphasize creativity in the computer science classroom.…”

“…Finally, we believe that this work could be used to inform perceptions of computer science itself. As we noted in in the beginning of the article, many computer scientists themselves consider computer science to be a creative field (Knobelsdorf & Romeike, 2008; Romeike, 2007a), and much of what happens in computer science writ large (even outside the classroom) involves the generation of novel and useful content, placing these activities squarely within the definition of creativity that most creativity researchers use (Runco & Jaeger, 2012). Our current findings showing that specific measures of creativity are associated with computer science achievement, at least within the confines of a university-level computer science course, provides additional empirical support that computer science should, indeed, be thought of as a creative field.…”

“…This is an important gap in the literature, because there are strong reasons to expect that creative abilities -commonly defined in the creativity literature as cognition that results in the generation of novel and useful output (Runco & Jaeger, 2012)would support success in computer science courses. Perhaps most notably, computer scientists themselves view the field as a creative one in which creativity is "demanded and encouraged" (Knobelsdorf & Romeike, 2008) and is identified as one of the "core soft skills" of computer science (Romeike, 2007a). Indeed, there are many aspects of computer science that require creativity to be successful.…”

Estudio sobre la creatividad relacionada con la habilidad de programadores universitarios

“…Al respecto, Knobelsdorf y Romeike (2008) presentaron un estudio basado en testimonios de estudiantes de Ciencias Computacionales, quienes expresaban el motivo por el que elegían esa carrera. En los resultados identificaron que había alumnos creativos que preferían disponer de libertad y acrecentar su imaginación para crear productos nuevos conforme a un problema dado; los alumnos argumentaron que no es necesario sentarse a escuchar al profesor y tomar notas, pues esto es una limitante de tiempo y creatividad, por lo que prefieren trabajar de manera independiente.…”