Design students meet industry players: Feedback and creativity in communities of practice
Introduction
Basic academic knowledge aside, creativity, collaboration skills and vocational relevance are key qualities required of graduates transitioning into today’s creative digital industries (Binkley et al., 2012; Botma et al., 2015; Edmondson et al., 2012; Onsman, 2016). By digital creative industries, we refer to the convergence of the fields of design, programming, interactive media and business (Proctor-Thomson, 2013). Creativity is presently the cause of much movement in educational research, as it is crucial not only in the arts, but also in seemingly disparate areas such as the domains of science and engineering (Crilly & Cardoso, 2017; Cropley, 2015; Oh et al., 2013). Creativity nevertheless remains particularly important in the digital creative industries that are intrinsically associated with innovation (Wijngaarden et al., 2019). Creative and innovative outcomes aim for both novelty and appropriateness for real-world problems; this makes authenticity a crucial factor in all creative activity (Amabile, 1982). Authenticity, from a learning perspective, involves the assignment of ill-defined problems in interdisciplinary settings, active ties and collaboration professionals and experts in the field, and—crucially—industry-driven criteria and feedback to guide the ensuing work (Grohs et al., 2018; Herrington, 2009; Lombardi, 2007). Social collaboration competencies are also crucial for authenticity in learning, especially in the digital creative domains, where teamwork is essential (Becker et al., 2017; Leung & Bentley, 2017; Nguyen et al., 2016). Higher education (HE) is nevertheless falling behind in producing social creative thinkers who have real-world experience and feel confident to collectively drive innovative performances in the professional domain (Edmondson et al., 2012; Mourshed et al., 2013). A key cause appears to be insufficient dialogue between academia and industry, a combination that can effectively inform and enhance programs in achieving desired outcomes (Roodhouse, 2009). Students placed in decontextualized learning settings that are isolated from real-world practice report a lack of motivation to engage in creative collaboration and problem-solving (De Graaf & Kolmos, 2003; Herrington et al., 2004; Leung & Bentley, 2017).
One response to these problems originates from situated learning, a theory which supports that knowledge cannot materialize out of the context— be it conceptual, social, technical or professional—it is meant to apply to (Brown et al., 1989). Communities of Practice (CoPs), a model originating from the same theory, suggest that groups of people can collectively create knowledge and competence as socially situated members of a common practice in a particular domain (Lave & Wenger, 1999; Wenger, 1998). In the same vein, we propose that collaboration and creativity in learner teams can be bolstered through social participation in real-world industry-academia (cross-organizational) CoPs. We base this on what we currently know through existing research on the positive contribution of CoPs in learning (deChambeau, 2017; Fegan, 2017; Park, 2015; Pharo et al., 2014; Power & Armstrong, 2017; Tight, 2015). As the majority of the abovementioned work takes an intra-organizational approach (i.e. focusing only on education), what we currently lack is research on the CoP-mediated role of industry in education, and the effects of this interaction on learning. There is also much scope to analyze the learning phenomena that occur within CoPs in a specific discipline (Smith et al., 2017).
This work reports on the collaboration processes and outcomes of HE students as participants in a cross-organizational CoP in the field of design. The study takes place in a blended learning setting, therefore the role of technology is deemed crucial for both team-based and more importantly, community-wide collaboration, as it can help bypass the geographical and temporal obstacles posed by the heterogeneity in the CoP membership (academic and industrial members). By recruiting two groups of learners—an experimental and a control group— the study first aims to compare the CoP’s impact on the creative outcomes of students. It then proceeds to analyze the emergent CoP collaboration processes, and more specifically the feedback. The purpose of the analysis is thus to understand the nature of the cross-organizational feedback in Design studies and in turn, how this is experienced and processed by learners in the CoP (Cummings et al., 2016; Popescu, 2014). Feedback is significant also due to the fact that it’s strongly associated with the practice of design and related disciplines (i.e. architecture, engineering, HCI), where critiquing and reviewing is fundamental in the development of creative works (Adams et al., 2016; Huet et al., 2007). This study is thus guided by the following research questions (RQs):
- 1
What are the effects of participation in a cross-organizational CoP on the creative outcomes of learners?
- 2
What is the nature of the feedback that typically emerges in cross-organizational CoPs in the field of design and related domains?
- 3
How is community-wide collaboration experienced and processed by the learners in the CoP?
This work aims to form a well-rounded understanding of the collaboration phenomena and resulting outcomes, in respect of feedback. Through its findings, it seeks to contribute useful insight and direction for educators, designers and researchers who wish to implement, participate in or evaluate the HE cross-organizational CoP model, with a special focus on feedback, for the purposes of enhancing learning and outcomes for students.
The following sections outline important work relating to CoPs, creativity, collaboration and feedback in education. Next, we describe the methods employed in the study and proceed to analyze the various outcomes, triangulating and drawing connections between quantitative and qualitative results. Finally, the key findings are outlined in the discussion and conclusion sections.
Section snippets
Communities of practice (CoPs)
CoPs can emerge organically in any social group sharing a common passion and goals in a given field (Eckert, 2006); alternatively, they can be intentionally designed and maintained by a CoP “steward” (Wenger et al., 2009). The steward—mainly associated with virtual CoPs (VCoPs) - is also responsible for tailoring technology to the specific needs of the community (Dolmans et al., 2015).
At its core, and drawing from cognitive apprenticeship and situated learning theories, the existence of a CoP
Participants
The study involved 38 (26 female and 12 male) third-year Multimedia and Graphic Arts undergraduate students (in a four-year course). The students (age range from 21 to 24, M = 22,4) were enrolled in a Web Design and Development course (WDD) for a semester (13 weeks x 180-minute-lessons) and were divided—by registration—into two groups (Group1, N = 21 and Group 2, N = 17). The students put themselves in teams of around four people, totaling about five teams in each group. Both groups had
Results
We present findings in the following order to facilitate a better, more structured understanding for the reader with regard to the objectives of the study.
Discussion & conclusion
This study reported on three key variables in HE students’ participation in a cross-organizational CoP; the types and content of feedback provided by community members as part of the social collaboration, the perceived effects of this feedback on the learners, and as a result, the creative outcomes that the latter went on to achieve. We deemed necessary to organize this section into two parts, specifically, creativity and feedback related discussion of findings.
Limitations & future work
This study is limited by both the small number of participants and the localized nature of its sample; the students were recruited from a department in a local university and grouped in two cohorts by means of academic registration (convenience sampling). Although findings cannot easily be generalized to a wider and more diverse audience, the study provides evidence and guidance of its replicability with regard to the design of the technological, epistemic and more importantly, the social
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This work has been partly supported by the project that has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 739578 (RISE – Call: H2020-WIDESPREAD-01-2016-2017-TeamingPhase2) and the Government of the Republic of Cyprus through the Directorate General for European Programmes, Coordination and Development.
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