The presentation of the M C Squared project at the 8th World Environmental Education Congress (WEEC 2015)

1. Creativity squared?
Investigating social creativity
in the design of educational resources
fostering creative thinking
in maths and sustainability learning
Maria Daskolia - Chronis Kynigos
UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS
Computer Technology Institute & Press “Diophantus”
MCSquared (http://mc2-project.eu) is funded by the European Commission under FP& (Project no. 610467),
Strategic Objective ICT-2013.8.1 “Technologies and scientific foundations in the field of creativity”

2. the MC2 project
• creativity squared ?... the two ‘creativities’
 social creativity in the design of educational resources
 mathematical creativity
• 2013 – 2016 (http://mc2-project.eu )
• 6 academic and 3 industrial partner organisations from Europe
Objectives:
a. to develop a digital system for collaborative design of
creative resources (the c-book technology)
b. to bring together educational designers from diverse
fields to collaboratively design exemplary (c-book)
resources
c. to advance our knowledge of social creativity in the
design of creative educational resources supported by
the c-book technologies

3. Defining ‘social creativity’
• a design activity
• situated within a socio-technical environment
• leading to the production of ‘creative’ outputs:
(ideas + artefacts), which are:
 novel/new
 appropriate
 elaborate
Fischer (2001; 2011)

4. The MC2 socio-technical environment
Four Communities of Interest (CoIs):
- professionals in educational design
- diverse communities of practice
- joint “interest”:
- the design of c-books
- requiring
- combination of multiple knowledge systems
- exchange of perspectives
- integration of domains
 for creative thinking and practice to take
place

5. The MC2 socio-technical environment
The C-book technology:
- an authoring tool
- a set of dynamic widgets (Cinderella, E-slate,
Geogebra, Scratch-NETLOGO, etc)
- a learning analytics tool
- a communication and collaboration (CoI-Code)
facilitating and enhancing collaborative
design of educational resources for CMT
the c-books

6. Identifying social creativity in MC2 project
 heterogeneity
 diversity in
perspectives, expertise
 interdisciplinary
collaboration…
In the CoI
social creativity
… in the design of c-books

7. Identifying social creativity in MC2 project
boundary crossing
(Akkerman & Bakker, 2011)
CoI members transcending the
“boundaries” of their disciplinary and
professional field/ teaching practice
with the use of “boundary objects”:
allowing them
- communicate
- collaborate
- enrich perspectives
social creativity
is nurtured by
processes of…
to achieve a
demanding
task: the
design of a
c-book

8. the CoI:
- 9 members:
- 3 Math edu
- 4 EE
- 1 on-line learning
- 1 developer
duration:
-18/10/2014 - 5/2/2015
- CoICode: 120 posts
A case study: social creativity in the design of the
“Sustainable city” c-book

9. A glimpse of the c-book “Sustainable city”...
The learning goal: to unveil the mathematics
hidden behind urban environmental issues
causing unsustainability in the city

10. Focus and research question
 to understand how social creativity in
the design of c-books is nurtured by
boundary-crossing interactions between
CoI members with a different disciplinary
and professional profile
Focus
Research question:
How do boundary-crossing interactions between CoI members with
an EE and a Math Ed profile affect the CoI's performance in terms of
social creativity in the design of a c-book?

11. Boundary-crossing: 4 mechanisms
Identification: defining the diverse
identities and practices – delineating
the boundaries
Coordination: communicative and
cooperative efforts to transcend the
boundaries
Reflection: expanding one’s
perspectives through perspective-
making and perspective-taking
Transformation: co-creation of
shared problem space, and new,
hybrid ‘objects’ and practices
Akkerman & Bakker (2011)

12. Method
Focus of analysis
• ‘critical episodes’
Selected segments of the CoI
members’ collaborative design
activity, highlighting aspects of
boundary-crossing interactions
 a first lens to filter the collected data
 a contribution to our understanding of an
interdisciplinary design activity of educational
recourses as a socially creative process
Data corpus:
The CoI members’
contributions in CoICode

13. Episode 1: “Communicating
difference”

14. Identification: employing differing ways of
delimiting own ‘boundaries’
EE CoI participants:
 propose ideas stemming from environmental theory to be
used as metaphors/ organising concepts
 identify and share online learning materials as sources of
inspiration for new design ideas
 critically elaborate and work on others’ ideas
Math CoI participants:
 express need for quantifiable data and formulae as input for
ideas
 reject many ideas as too demanding in pedagogical and
technical elaboration
 call for less abstract - more “concrete” ideas

15. Boundary-crossing and social creativity
- communicating and realising the boundaries
- different languages
- diverse needs
 a rich and challenging environment
 they get informed and inspired by other members’
perspectives
 they are urged to devise ways to communicate and
collaborate to pursue the common task
 coordination and reflection are used to substantiate
own perspectives and to create new perspectives

16. Coordination: defining ‘common space’
through translation
Establishing a common space for Maths and EE by bringing in
resources, as “boundary objects”, such as:
- Posting a list of own readings for others to comment
- Searching for sources in a field other than own to
identify affinities
- “Translating” shared resources to bridge differences
and synthesize opinions

17. Episode 2: “Reaching reflection”

18. Reflection: creativity out of reflection
and for reflection
- Build new ideas and ‘objects’ to
substantiate and explicate
reflection (perspective-making)
- Secondary use: provoking
reflection in others (perspective-
taking)
Boundary objects. They enable:
-communication
-meaning construction
-integration of perspectives
-enrichment / expansion of pre-
existing views
Eirini’s idea: students realise the concept of
climate change / rise of temperature through
observing and comparing arithmetic values
on a yearly basis

19. MC2 c-book productions
in Maths and sustainability learning
• Biking in the city
• Riding in the park
• Sustainable city
• Climate change
• The bioclimatic amusement park

20. thank you!
Maria Daskolia
mdaskol@ppp.uoa.gr
MCSquared (http://mc2-project.eu) is funded by the European Commission under FP& (Project no. 610467),
Strategic Objective ICT-2013.8.1 “Technologies and scientific foundations in the field of creativity”
The research leading to these results was funded from the European Union, FP7, GA 610467: project
“M C Squared”, http://mc2-project.eu. This publication reflects only the author’s views and Union is
not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.