Seminar at the UCL Knowledge Lab by Dr. Mark Readman exploring the ways in which the concept of creativity is socially constructed, mobilised, and mythologised. At its simplest, creativity is a word used to describe certain kinds of activity. But these activities can be very different – a mental activity such as solving a mathematical problem or a physical activity such as making a sculpture, for example – which should make us question the coherence of the single word which accounts for them. ‘Creativity’ is a potent signifier, but what it signifies is slippery; it is a particular kind of problem – a problem of meaning rather than a problem of practice This talk examines some of the dominant versions of creativity – from Ken Robinson’s formulation of ‘having original ideas that have value’, to Csikszentmilhalyi’s notion of an alchemical phenomenon arising from a confluence of different factors – and puts them to the test in relation to some contemporary examples. Much research tends to treat creativity as a ‘thing’ and seeks to identify what ‘it’ is; I suggest that it is more critically rigorous to circumvent questions which seek equations for answers and to look, instead, at the factors which produce a sense of ‘things’ and which give them real effects. I argue, ultimately, that to think critically about creativity means asking what we talk about when we talk about creativity.

Dr. John Potter & Prof. Julian McDougall discuss everyday literacy practices with digital media. Sounds, images, and text onscreen are part of the lived experience of children from the earliest years, underscored by sounds, touch, and movement at home, in school, and through all the spaces in between in which they move. This talk explores the use of some key terms employed in recent work in the field (Potter & McDougall, 2017) including Dynamic Literacies as a way of framing all ‘literacy’, Third Spaces as a way of conceiving its locations and possibilities for shared meanings; Porous expertise as a way to think about the changing relationships around learning throughout the life-course.

Several existing projects have shown promise in using robot-assisted interventions for social and academic skills teaching with autistic children, including emotion recognition. Dr. Alyssa Alcorn presents The DE-ENIGMA Horizon2020 project, which seeks to extend and “scale up” the available evidence in this area, comparing a robot-focused and human-focused emotion teaching programme across a large sample of autistic children in London and Belgrade. These children (age 5-12), represent a wide range of ability and include many children with intellectual disabilities and limited language, who are often excluded from educational technology research. This talk will give some background on the rationale for using humanoid robots with autistic children, present some initial results from DE-ENIGMA’s first year of studies, and reflect on what we have learned—both with the robot, and in the associated background and qualitative work with schools, parents, and families.

Exploring the current and future structure of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL), contrasting the Utopian and Dystopian outcomes if a comprehensive instruction framework is, or is not, introduced. Building on a recent position paper (Rummel, Walker & Aleven, 2016, Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 26(2), 784-795), Nikol Rummel argues against supporting collaborative learners in an overly simplistic manner and for CSCL support provided within a comprehensive instructional framework.