Designing a Constructivist Mobile Application to Foster Creative Thinking in Undergraduate Students: Development and Evaluation

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-3113395/v1

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Designing a Constructivist Mobile Application to Foster Creative Thinking in Undergraduate Students: Development and Evaluation

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3113395/v1

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Seamless usage of mobile applications in promoting individual learners’ creativity and facilitating their personal learning activities is increasingly acknowledged. This research aimed to design and develop a mobile application based on a constructivist learning environment to enhance creative thinking for undergraduate students. The re- search was conducted in two phases: (1) designing the elements of mobile applications by gathering input from 28 undergraduate students and nine experts through interviews and surveys and (2) assessing the effectiveness of mobile applications on students’ creative thinking through tests and interviews. The results revealed that the development of mobile applications consisted of six components, namely, 1) problem base; 2) learning resources; 3) scaffolding; 4) center for collaborative learning; 5) coach; and 6) creative thinking center. Through the proficient utilization of mobile applications, learners engage in immersive experiences and practical exercises that bolster their creative thinking capabilities within their academic interest. Students showed notable improvements in their average creative thinking scores after using the extensive mobile application, demonstrating the application’s powerful effectiveness. Future research endeavors should prioritize augmenting the sample size and delving into precise metrics to appraise creative thinking, thus strengthening the robustness of the findings.

Physical sciences/Nanoscience and technology/Techniques and instrumentation/Design synthesis and processing

Earth and environmental sciences/Environmental social sciences/Psychology and behaviour

Biological sciences/Psychology/Human behaviour

Mobile Application

Constructivist Learning Environment

Creative Thinking

Undergraduate Students 1

The rapid evolution of information and communication technology has made mobile applications increasingly important in facilitating and enhancing learners’ learning activities and creativity [1]. In Thailand, the use of mobile learning has gained significant attention, as it has the potential to support students in formal learning environments, encourage lifelong learning, and contribute to higher academic achievement [2–4]. However, the quality assessment of education in Thailand has revealed a lack of advanced thinking skills, particularly in the area of creative thinking [5]. Many teachers still rely on traditional teaching methods, focusing primarily on knowledge transfer rather than fostering innovative teaching practices [6, 7].

It is essential for Thai higher education institutions to generate highly trained and skilled teachers who can use information technology and provide engaging learning experiences for students in order to meet those challenges. The Teachers’ Council of Thailand has emphasized the use of information technology for communication, information seeking, and the development of media and innovations to enhance student learning [8]. Additionally, the National Economic and Social Development Plan of Thailand emphasizes the importance of upgrading the quality of education and promoting

lifelong learning through the creation of creative and living learning resources within communities.

In designing and developing innovative learning resources, it is essential to adopt theoretical frameworks that align with modern pedagogical approaches. Constructivist theory, rooted in Piaget’s cognitive constructivism and Vygotsky’s social constructivism, has been widely recognized as a suitable foundation for designing and developing innovative learning environ-

ments that support learners in creating knowledge, emphasizing reflection, and fostering cognitive processes [9, 10]. These

theories advocate for the creation of learning communities where learners can collaborate, utilize resources, and engage

in problem-solving activities, ultimately facilitating the acquisition of knowledge and the development of critical thinking skills.

The importance of participation and engagement in a variety of learning activities, such as analysis, synthesis, brain- storming, interactions, and case studies, has made active learning techniques very popular [11]. With the aid of these strategies, educators can change their emphasis from imparting information to encouraging interactive and collaborative learning. Mobile-assisted language learning [12], flipped classroom models [13], and the use of mobile devices to enhance language learning [14] are a few examples of previous studies that have investigated the potential of mobile learning environments in fostering active learning. The current body of research, however, has not gone into great detail on how mobile applications might effectively stimulate cognitive processes and foster creative thinking in the classroom.

Therefore, the goal of this study is to address this research gap by developing a mobile application that encourages undergrad students to engage in active learning and be creative. This project aims to give educators a useful tool for developing their students’ creative thinking abilities by utilizing constructivist learning environment concepts and the affordances of mobile technology. This study’s main goals are as follows:

design and develop a mobile application to enhance creative thinking for undergraduate students based on a con- structivist learning environment; and

Evaluation of the mobile application.

By performing this study, we hope to add to the body of information presently available on mobile learning and creative thinking. Additionally, we believe the study’s conclusions will have important implications for educators, enabling them to encourage creativity and design engaging and efficient learning environments. Teachers can improve their students’ learning experiences and provide them with the necessary creative thinking abilities required for the 21st century by embracing mobile applications as cutting-edge tools.

Mobile Application and Creative Thinking

As they enter the workforce, students who are creative will have a distinct advantage. [15] identified four stages in the creative process: 1) preparation, 2) incubation, 3) illumination, and 4) verification. Old and new information are digested in an unorganized way during the incubation stage, whereas illumination entails organizing and connecting ideas clearly. Verification establishes that concepts are accurate and true at the last stage. Fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration, according to the psychometric approach, are the four main elements that make up creativity [16, 17].

Mobile applications have been important in encouraging young people’s development of creativity. Students can learn at any time and from any location because of connectedness and mobility features, which also make it simple for them to access information resources and acquire new knowledge and skills [18]. Prior studies have indicated

that mobile applications are an effective tool for promoting students’ creative thinking. For instance, [19] found that the application of interactive apps in mathematics courses enhanced students’ creative problem-solving abilities. Similarly, integrating mobile applications into realistic mathematics is effective in enhancing learners’ creative thinking ability [20]. Other studies have emphasized the potential and effectiveness of mobile application-based learning for improving students’ creative thinking in various subjects, including mathematics [21], physics [22], business courses [23], business English writing [24], and chemistry [25]. Furthermore, mobile applications can be utilized in designing learning materials that enhance students’ creative thinking skills [26].

Theoretical framework

This study was carried out based on the following theoretical framework (Fig. 1):

Contextual base

The Thailand Qualifications Framework and the educational innovation and information technology course at the Faculty of Education, Nakhon Phanom University were used to enhance students’ morals and ethics in using information technology for learning and work, as well as to improve knowledge and understanding of concepts, theories of media and educational inno- vations. Relevant issues of technology use, learning resources and networks, the media, students’ competence and learning outcomes were also emphasized in this course to help students have a foundation in developing innovative learning methods. In addition, to enhance students’ ability to apply creative thinking in their daily lives, Thailand standards of knowledge and professional experience of teachers (No. 4) B.E. 2021 [27] were applied to develop their creative abilities.

Psychological base

The mobile application design is based on two principles to support learners in problem solving and collaborative learning:

Cognitive constructivism – stated that if learners encounter problems that cause cognitive conflict or disequilibrium, the cognitive structure into equilibrium must be adjusted [28]. Therefore, it is important to consider the important level and individual ability by presenting problematic situations to encourage students to use the thinking process to find solutions. 2) Social constructivism highlights the importance of scaffolding as learning support for students who are under the zone of proximal development (ZPD) [29].

Pedagogical base

The Open Learning Environments Model (OLEs) by [30] focused on the cognitive ability to respond to stimulation, promoting learning through the metacognition of realistic problem-solving experiences and providing tools and re- sources to support learning efforts. Moreover, the development of multidisciplinary thinking allows learners to make choices by designing elements and principles in line with learning resources and scaffolding.

Scenarios based on actual contexts were employed following the problem-based learning principles by [31], allowing learners to reference or relate to their experiences. This approach necessitates information processing in accordance with Klausmeier’s principles, which help to organize the learner’s data processing and storage system.

The management of learners’ information during learning was based on the SOI (Selecting, Organizing, Integrating) Model (Mayer at al., 1996) and the principles of cognitive apprenticeship [32], which helped learners conduct tasks in complex cognitive activities.

Media and technology base

The theory of media symbol systems was considered a hypermedia used in the design of applications presented as animations, graphics, text, and sound. In addition, hypertexts were utilized to connect knowledge nodes, enhance intellectual knowledge and facilitate knowledge building and management of learning through mobile applications [33]

Additionally, the use of new media to develop educational applications for students and enhance learning value has been promoted by the Thai government, particularly in response to the COVID-19 situation [34].

Creative Thinking base

Creativity consists of four abilities, namely, fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration, based on the structure of intellect theory (SOI) of [17] and the perspectives of previous studies [35, 36]

Fluency refers to the ability to generate a large volume of ideas or solutions to a problem in a limited time frame. This ability relies on comprehension rather than memorization of information.

Flexibility is the ability to create a variety of useful ideas or to adjust principles to reach the same goals.

Originality involves generating novel ideas that differ from commonplace ones. This ability can be derived from the modification.

Elaboration is the detailed thinking ability that enables one to expand on the main idea in a more comprehensive, clear, and meaningful way. This ability also involves improving ideas through evaluation and knowledge criteria.

This study used sequential mixed methods and was carried out in two phases:

Phase 1. Design Process

To design an appropriate framework of mobile application, researchers carried out 28 interviews with undergraduates from Nakhon Phanom University’s Faculty of Education who were enrolled in the education innovation and information technology course. The interviews aimed to explore the students’ expectations of creative thinking in their classroom, such as project- based learning, the use of digital devices for information searching, teacher learning management to enhance creative thinking, collaborative learning, and teacher support during the learning process. The design process involved two steps: designing the mobile application framework and evaluating the framework. A statement to confirm that all methods were carried out in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations.

The design framework of mobile application

The framework based on a constructivist learning environment and knowledge construction principles to promote active learning consisted of four important foundations (as presented in Table 1).

Stimulating the creation of intellectual structures to promote creativity

By encouraging students to develop cognitive conflict through specific contexts by stimulating the creation of intellectual structures to promote creativity. To achieve this, constructivist theory principles were utilized to incorporate innovation elements within a “problem base” approach. The approach included various contexts that allowed learners to relate problems to their personal experiences and set learning activities based on the principles of [17].

Cognitive balance support

The principles of cognitive constructivism were used to develop cognitive conflicts from problem base and learning tasks. The goal was to encourage learners to adjust the cognitive structure to achieve knowledge construction equilibrium. Intellectual balance support is a process of information collection to enable learners to use that information as a guideline for searching for answers and solving problems based on the principles of [37], the SOI Model [38] and the advance organizer principle of [39]. Therefore, the "Learning Resources” were designed to include organized information or content presented in a mind map that shows the relationship of concepts. Graphic, animations, photos, colors, font size, and flashing characters were also employed to enhance the learning experience.

Promoting knowledge construction and creativity

The focus of knowledge construction is on individual knowledge creation, which may result in limited, incomplete, or misun- derstood knowledge. To address this issue, the “Centre for Collaborative Learning” was designed to allow learners to interact with groups to exchange experiences, to lessen misunderstandings and to develop a broad range of perspectives, thereby expanding their cognitive structures. Tools were created as a medium or method to promote creative thinking and enhance understanding of using information technology to build learners’ knowledge [22, 23, 40]. A “creative thinking center” was established to support effective cognitive processes and hands-on learning activities.

Helping and supporting knowledge construction

A scaffolding design consisted of four key elements: (1) a conceptual scaffolding base to facilitate the aggregation of the learning materials; (2) metacognitive scaffolding to support problem-solving methods aligned with the course objectives; (3) procedural scaffolding to employ a mobile application for active learning and creative thinking; and (4) strategic scaffolding to assist in identifying solutions to relevant problems and adapting to changes in learning. In addition, teachers provided guidance and exchanged knowledge with learners during the learning process. Consequently, a “coach” was designed to allow learners to access expert assistance through various tools, both synchronously and asynchronously, until they could confidently work independently.

Table 1

The design framework of mobile applications based on a constructivist learning environment
	Principle	Concept	Element
Stimulating the creation of intellectual structures to promote creativity	Cognitive constructivism [41]	Cognitive conflict	Problem Base
	Situated learning [31],	Authentic context
	OLEs [30]	Enabling Context
	Creative Thinking [17]	- Fluency, - Flexibility, - Originality, - Elaboration
Cognitive balance support	Information processing theory [37]	- Sensory register - Short term memory - Long term memory	Learning Resource
	Meaningful learning theory [39]	Advance organizer
	SOI Model [38]	S: Selecting O: Organizing I: Integrating
Promoting knowledge construction and creativity	Creative thinking [17]	- Fluency, - Flexibility, -Originality, -Elaboration	Creative thinking center
Promoting knowledge construction and creativity	Social constructivism [40]	Collaboration	Center for Collaborative Learning
Helping and supporting Knowledge construction	Social constructivism [40])	Zone of proximal development	Scaffolding
Helping and supporting Knowledge construction	OLEs [30]	- Conceptual scaffolding - Strategic scaffolding - Metacognitive scaffolding - Procedural scaffolding	Scaffolding

Evaluation of the design framework

After designing a framework, three constructivist theory experts from universities were invited to validate this tool. An evaluation form containing open-ended and close-ended questions was designed and sent to experts to obtain their feedback on the design framework. The collected data were then analyzed to assess the quality of the framework. Based on the experts’ evaluation and suggestions, the design framework was revised.

Phase 2. Evaluation Process

The evaluation of mobile applications consisted of two stages: first, the design of the mobile application and second, the students’ experiences with the mobile application.

The mobile application design

The design of the mobile application was evaluated by nine experts through an evaluation form with open-ended questions to check the conformity or inconsistency of the content, media, and design and to obtain their opinions and suggestions of the mobile application. They were divided into three groups: 1) three experts to validate the designed contents in terms of the level

of accuracy and suitability for learners’ characteristics, relevance to the updated event, and content complexity to facilitate

students’ learning; 2) three design experts to evaluate the components of mobile applications by allowing learners to explore

various functionalities of the mobile application; encouraging learners to create self-knowledge, develop critical thinking,

and improve experiences and skills concerning information processing by solving problematic situations; and analyzing and answering problematic situations by using learning tasks. Regarding this, problematic situations were designed according to the principles of information processing theory by integrating stories into real context situations; 3) and three experts to evaluate the media of mobile application in terms of (a) the appropriate, eye-catching, harmonious and interesting architecture design and colors, (b) the suitability and consistency with the contents through graphics, images and font sizes, (c) the links to various resources, and the easy accessibility and use of information resources through icons, and (d) navigation symbols to find information easier and meet learners’ needs. The results of the evaluation stage were used to adjust and revise three relevant aspects of the mobile application.

Students’ experiences with mobile applications

After revising the design based on the experts’ evaluation and suggestions, researchers used this application in the educational innovation and information technology course. The study involved 28 undergraduate students who actively utilized a mobile application for their classroom learning activities. This study confirmed that informed consent was obtained from all participants. Prior to participating in the study, all participants were provided with detailed information about the purpose, procedures, potential risks, and benefits of the study. They have signed an informed consent. All methods were implemented in alignment with the pertinent guidelines and regulations. The experimental protocols received approval from the Nakhon Phanom University's Research Ethics Committee under the referral number "HE118/64". Then, the creativity measurement model of the Institute for the Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology (2019) based on the model of [17] was conducted to evaluate students’ abilities.

The learners’ creativity was designed with 16 items, including four components with rubric scoring criteria, namely,

(1) fluency (full score: 5); (2) flexibility (full score: 10); (3) originality (full score: 20); and (4) elaboration (full score: 10). There were particular parameters employed to guarantee the test's quality. These parameters are the IOC accuracy, which ranges from 0.60 to 1.00, the level of difficulty (P) between 0.20 to 0.80, and a discriminant power (R) above 0.20. The reliability of the test is also high, at 0.92. In addition, the test was used to compare how well students learned before and after using a mobile app for educational purposes. In addition, an interview protocol was also carried out to obtain 28 students’ opinions of the creativity of mobile applications with the four aforementioned components.

Data availability

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

The development of mobile applications based on a constructivist learning environment

The mobile application was designed in six elements (Fig. 2):

Problem Base

Piaget’s constructivism (1971) was utilized to create an open learning environment, with a focus on learners’ knowledge construction, based on real-world context by open and multi-contextual problems to help learners relate features concerning their experience. In addition, creativity based on the principles of [17] was also applied. Problematic situations were presented through animated cartoons and text on the mobile phone interface. An example of the problematic situation was developed by designing a situation and then creating a learning task that analyzed the problem and answered questions (Fig. 3).

Learning Resource

Learning resources refer to a collection of information or knowledge that learners can use to solve problems and create new knowledge through self-learning. Information processing theory [37] and the SOI model [42] were used to promote learners’ knowledge construction by processing information during learning based on three steps: selection, organizing and integration. In addition, the advance organizer principle [39]was applied to organize information into categories to record long-term memory. A mind map was designed to illustrate the relationship of concepts, graphics, animations, and real pictures while emphasizing important information by using colors, font size and flashing characters to process information in short- and long-term memory, enabling self-learning from diverse information.

Scaffolding

Scaffolding comprised four characteristics:

Conceptual scaffolding allows learners to create concepts and provide guidance or hints that help them navigate resources or other learning resources by summarizing key points and creating diagrams to establish meaningful connections;
Strategic scaffolding designed as flow charts was capable of empowering students to systematically analyze prob- lems, strategically plan solutions, and end effectively utilize learning resources, all while making crucial connections between new and prior knowledge.
Metacognitive scaffolding, drawing on [43] metacognitive theory, facilitates learners in managing their individual learning processes. It takes into account learners’ prior knowledge of the subject and guides them on which strategies are necessary to effectively solve problems. To put this theory into practice, researchers have developed a guideline that directs, monitors, and assesses thinking processes to solve individual problems.
Procedural scaffolding involves introducing students to the characteristics and work systems of a mobile application, guiding them on how to effectively use the app during the learning process. This includes instructions on how to use available tools and locate the required information, ensuring a smooth and successful learning experience.

Center for Collaborative Learning

The Center for Collaborative Learning focuses on enlarging students’ cognitive structures, promoting cooperative problem solving, and supporting collaborative learning activities. Social media platforms such as Facebook, blogs, and Line are in- cluded in the learning exchange room to enable students to communicate with peers, teachers, and professionals and exchange ideas. Additionally, students can establish shared objectives in social learning situations to encourage social interaction and advance learning through expression and idea sharing.

Coach

This component aims to support learners in undertaking more complex tasks and improving their skills by observing and comprehending experts’ demonstrations and explanations. It also involves monitoring and guiding learners to prevent misun- derstandings and offering advice to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and understanding. Coaches closely observe students as they work on assigned tasks and provide helpful hints through social networks or video conferences (e.g., Google Meet, Zoom) to assist them in achieving their learning goals.

Creative Thinking Center

Creative Thinking Center is intended to facilitate students’ creativity through a four-stage program

Stage 1. focusing on encouraging fluency thinking by providing problems that students must show within a limited time.

Stage 2. Enhancing flexible thinking by having students devise innovative ideas for presenting brochures in an engaging way.

Stage 3. Boosting originality thinking, giving learners the opportunity to design a presentation and incorporate technology to enhance their ideas.

Stage 4. Promoting elaboration thinking by allowing students to refine and expand their ideas based on feedback and evaluation using certain criteria.

The use of principles, theories, and methods with suitable media in a mobile device was employed to encourage self-directed learning and stimulate the creative thinking of students. Furthermore, the media’s capabilities allow ubiquitous learning, enabling students to access educational content and resources at any time and from any location, resulting in the development of creative thinking across four distinct components:

Fluency

Gamification features were added to the mobile application, making the learning experience more engaging and pleasurable. These features included incentives such as additional scores and rewards, stimulating learners to approach problems with creativity. Additionally, a time limit was introduced to prompt learners to respond rapidly and confidently.

Flexibility

The mobile application provided interconnected tools to other applications, allowing learners to modify rules and principles while still attaining their objectives and enabling them to learn at their convenience, anywhere and at any time.

Originality

Media features, encompassing images, videos, and various other formats, were devised to support learners in comprehending information through novel visualization methods, fostering creativity, and inspiring fresh ideas.

Elaboration

The mobile application facilitated collaborative examination of details to enrich and expand upon the primary idea, building upon the original ideas. Moreover, by enabling idea sharing and generation, creativity is reinforced, fostering a cooperative and imaginative learning atmosphere.

Furthermore, the learning task’s design facilitated students in practicing creative thinking by presenting problem sit- uations prescribed by the teacher. The creative thinking center’s design resembled a game, allowing students to refine their skills and expertise through practice.

The evaluation of the mobile application and undergraduate students’

creative thinking

Evaluating the development of mobile applications

The evaluation process was conducted as follows:

The design framework of mobile applications revealed that the theories utilized in the design framework were deemed valuable and appropriate. These theories were outlined in the first phase of the methodology, known as “The Design Framework of Mobile Application”.
Product

The quality of the design of a mobile application was indicated as follows:

The use context of mobile applications

Effective learning requires collaboration and the use of technology. To facilitate this, learners were organized into distinct groups that could work together using a mobile application. By doing so, they were able to learn from one another and broaden their thinking by taking into account the opinions of their peers. They were able to learn from their peers and widen their thinking by considering their peers' viewpoints as a result of doing this. As a result, they were able to complete their work more quickly, which enhanced their academic achievement. The effectiveness of the group, however, was significantly impacted by its size. Groups with only two members tended to work slowly, even though they had good academic achievement and were able to help each other. On the other hand, groups with four or more learners faced challenges such as unequal distribution of tasks or difficulty seeing the computer screen clearly.

To make the most of the mobile application, it was important for teachers to introduce innovative learning methods and explain them through real-world problems to develop their thinking abilities and become more confident using the application.

Undergraduate students’ creative thinking

The measurement of students’ creative thinking yielded the following results:

Fluency in two areas:

Word fluency: Learners answered many questions by recalling their past works and reading materials.
Associational fluency: Students associated, compared, and categorized things in one minute. They generated numerous answers and tried to think quickly to keep up with the time limit.

Flexibility: Students created new ideas by modifying their existing ones. They sought advice from peers when facing problems, used different resources (e.g., classroom, YouTube, games, books) to generate new content, and applied these ideas or methods to their own works.
Originality: Learners designed unique works by exploring whether their ideas had been done before, how they differed from others, and using design principles, theories, and experiences to create their works.

The test results from 28 students showed higher learning performance after using the mobile application (X̅ = 40.39)

Table 2. The students’ creative thinking

Components		Before learning		After learning
	Mean (X̅)	Standard deviation (S.D.)	Mean (X̅)	Standard deviation (S.D.)
Fluency (full score: 5)	1.39	0.57	4.57	0.50
Flexibility (full score: 10)	2.43	0.79	8.82	0.86
Originality (full score: 20)	4.36	1.45	17.93	1.12
Elaboration (full score: 10)	2.07	0.77	9.07	0.90
The total score	10.25		40.39

1. The study demonstrated that the mobile application’s design comprised six components. As a result, learners were able to engage in hands-on experience and explore ways to solve problems. For effective learning, the environment should prioritize authenticity, which is related to learners’ circumstances. This finding corroborates previous research that identified con- structivist theory as a foundation for designing learning experiences that promote learners’ proactive knowledge construction [44].

In addition, the application of principles of social constructivism was utilized to develop learners’ cognition. By engaging in social interactions with others, learners were able to construct knowledge and required assistance in the learn- ing process through scaffolding. Additionally, the design of the innovation was grounded in social and cultural contexts, emphasizing problem solving through collaboration, resulting in the creation of a component called collaboration. This com- ponent allowed students to broaden their perspectives by exchanging ideas and insights with peers or others. This finding was supported by previous research by [45], who asserted that exchanging learning experiences among learners facilitated the development of knowledge, especially through mobile learning, which offers online communication and flexibility [46, 47]

Based on the zone of proximal development theory, it is believed that learners below the ZPD require learning assistance, while those above the ZPD can learn on their own. Therefore, scaffolding was incorporated to support learners below with ZPD, consistent with the findings of [48], [49], and [50]. Moreover, learners may encounter misconceptions or incomplete knowledge during self-learning; hence, it is necessary to allow them to socially interact with peers or others to correct misconceptions and gain diverse perspectives that expand their cognitive structures. This finding strongly supports the study of [45], [51], and [52]that utilized social constructivism to design instruction and support the knowledge construction process of learners. In addition, the principles of [17] were used to promote students’ creative thinking, which is similar to those reported by [53]and [54], who applied creative principles in learning management.

2. The evaluation of creative thinking showed that the posttest scores were higher than the pretest scores for all components.

2.1 Fluency: The learners demonstrated fluency in their creative thinking abilities, as shown by their ability to quickly and proficiently name the technology used in their presentations (Word fluency) and compare advantages and disadvantages in various ways within a limited time (Associational Fluency). The learners were able to fluently connect relationships and apply principles in designing learning activities for the mobile application. The cognitive innovation implemented to support creative thinking resulted in higher average posttest scores than pretest scores. These findings are supported by the research of [55] and [56], who mentioned that word fluency and fluent thinking skills were promoted. Furthermore, the results suggest that high levels of social interaction among students can positively affect associational fluency, as noted by [57, 58].

2.2 Flexibility: Learners were able to generate new ideas and modify them as needed to achieve their goals, indi- cating their capacity for flexible and adaptive thinking. This paper also studied adaptive flexibility that can be beneficially changed rules and principles to achieve common goals by putting them into practice to design learning activities in mobile applications. In addition, mobile applications were found to enhance students’ ability to engage in flexible thinking, which is in line with previous research showing that flexible thinking enables learners to solve problems by developing guide- lines, replacing outdated methods, or applying alternate models based on prior knowledge and experience [59, 60].

2.3 Originality: It was found that learners could design new and unique pieces of work that differed from others by applying the principles into practice, resulting in an improvement in their original thinking skills. These results are consistent with previous studies by [60], [62] and [63], which demonstrated that creative thinking based on original design thinking allows learners to generate novel and unique ideas effectively.

2.4 Elaboration: Learners could think elaborately and create new ideas by utilizing rubrics or criteria designed for se- lecting answers during evaluation. This allowed students to evaluate and add more ideas to improve them, thereby promoting the development of elaborating thinking. This evaluation also supported past research conducted by [64], [65]and [66], who observed that learners become more meticulous, detailed and careful.

The goal of the research done for this study was to design and test a mobile application that embraced constructivist learning principles. The program included important elements, including problem-based learning, group learning, scaffolding, coaching, and a center for creative thinking. The mobile application was found to be extremely effective at fostering critical thinking skills, knowledge construction, and creative thinking abilities among learners after a thorough evaluation process that covered design, contextual implementation, and the assessment of undergraduate students’ creative thinking. The constructivist and social constructivist theories served as the foundation for the application’s design, which placed a strong emphasis on the value of authentic problem solving and group collaboration. The evaluation’s findings recognizably showed that students’ capacity for fostering creative thinking had significantly improved, as shown by noticeable improvements in fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration. This study focuses on the potential of mobile apps as powerful instruments for fostering constructivist learning and fostering students' capacity for creativity. It is predicted that these results will contribute to the body of knowledge relating to constructivist pedagogy and further support the incorporation of mobile applications in educational settings in order to achieve the best learning outcomes.

Acknowledgment

This work was supported by Innovation and Technology Research Group, Faculty of Education, Khon Kaen University and Nakhon Phanom University, Thailand.

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No competing interests reported.

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Designing a Constructivist Mobile Application to Foster Creative Thinking in Undergraduate Students: Development and Evaluation

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Abstract

Figures

Introduction

Literature review

Mobile Application and Creative Thinking

Theoretical framework

Contextual base

Psychological base

Pedagogical base

Media and technology base

Creative Thinking base

Methodology

Phase 1. Design Process

The design framework of mobile application

Stimulating the creation of intellectual structures to promote creativity

Cognitive balance support

Promoting knowledge construction and creativity

Helping and supporting knowledge construction

Evaluation of the design framework

Phase 2. Evaluation Process

The mobile application design

Students’ experiences with mobile applications

Data availability

Results

The development of mobile applications based on a constructivist learning environment

Problem Base

Learning Resource

Scaffolding

Center for Collaborative Learning

Coach

Creative Thinking Center

Fluency

Flexibility

Originality

Elaboration

The evaluation of the mobile application and undergraduate students’

creative thinking

The use context of mobile applications

Undergraduate students’ creative thinking

Table 2. The students’ creative thinking

Discussion

Conclusions

Declarations

Acknowledgment

References

Additional Declarations

Supplementary Files

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