Creativity and intrinsic motivation in computer science education

Abstract

This paper describes our teaching experiment at the University of Helsinki, where the aim was to investigate a possibility to provide a learning environment supporting a combination of creativity, intrinsic motivation and the use of robots to bring constructionism into computer science (CS) education. To put the ideas into practice we developed a pilot course targeted at intermediate-level CS students. The learning objectives were not strict, but instead the attendees could participate in setting them and also take part in designing future uses of robots in CS1 and CS2 courses. There was no teaching in the traditional sense, but instead we arranged workshops based on creativity-enhancing working methods.