Testing the effects of digital gamified creativity training

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental study that tests the effects of a new digital gamified creativity training program. Four techniques are used to assess the creativity level of a group of university students by taking measurements before and after the experiment. The instruments used are a domain-specific creativity test, a creative self-efficacy test, a belief in creativity training test and a domain-general creativity test. The study is performed among 100 undergraduate Communication students, divided into an experiment (N=51) and a control group (N=49). The experiment group participates in self-conducted training sessions and the control group is submitted to the same assessment procedure without participating in the training. Students in the experiment group performed online exercises for ten hours on a digital gamified creativity training program within a duration of four weeks. The results show that trainees in the experimental group increased their creative performance significantly in both domain-specific and domain-general creativity as well as their creative self-efficacy. No significant increase was found for their belief in creativity training. Furthermore, the implications of this study for digital gamified creativity training are discussed.