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Teaching Creativity at Scale: Overcoming Language Barriers in a MOOC

Armend Tahirsylaj, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden;  Bryan Mann, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA & Jack Matson, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA. (Pages 1 to 19)

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) allow higher education institutions to deliver courses for free to anyone with Internet access and thus to attract expansive linguistically diverse audiences worldwide. The purpose of this article is to address language barriers and challenges for creating and maintaining online learning communities in the Creativity, Innovation and Change (CIC) MOOC. This exploratory and descriptive study relied on CIC MOOC data and learning analytics framework to guide the analysis. The article discusses a number of strategies for fostering community as well as course innovations to make CIC more attractive and engaging. Authors conclude that understanding how to promote community with linguistically diverse students when aiming to teach creativity at scale contributes to a better comprehension of and responding to the needs and challenges of non-native speakers in the MOOC platforms.

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Disruption-based Innovations for Incumbent Technology Businesses

Almoataz Kamel and Mohamed K. Watfa, University of Wollongong in Dubai, Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences, Department of IT Management (Pages 20 to 50)

Disruptive innovation has been the subject of countless research since the term was coined by Christensen back in 1997. This research, however, looks at the topic from a new angle – that of the business being disrupted. The research presents an attempt to model and support strategic business risk management based on threats coming from disruptive innovation in the market from the incumbent technology or business’s point of view. We present three different theoretical paradigms, build hypotheses upon those paradigms, and then proceed to test those hypotheses. The results of the research include mapping the presented theorems onto the world of business, and assessing their impact on long-term business planning and strategic risk management practices. 

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Empowering Leadership, Psychological Empowerment and Employees’ Creativity: A gender perspective

Emil Knezovic, International University of Sarajevo, and Muad Amer Musrati, International University of Sarajevo (Pages 51 to 72)

Prior research has shown that employees’ creativity can contribute to the organizational effectiveness, innovation, and survival, and as that it represents an important concept to study. Not surprisingly, there has been an increasing interest in understanding factors that promote employees’ creativity, and one of the persistent factors is empowerment. The present study investigates whether empowering leadership and psychological empowerment positively influence employees’ creativity in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In addition, it explores whether there is a moderating effect of psychological empowerment on the relationship between empowering leadership and employees’ creativity. Finally, this study examines whether there is a difference between female and male employees in empowering leadership and psychological empowerment.  Field survey data collected from different companies indicates that empowering leadership and psychological empowerment are positively related to employees’ creativity, while psychological empowerment has no moderating effect. Gender differences are present only regarding empowering leadership.

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Operationalizing Blended Learning to the Context: Towards Clarity in Implementation

Royce L. Willis; David Lynch and Paul Fradale, Southern Cross University, Australia (Pages 73 to 89)

Implementing Blended Learning can be challenging, especially without a clear or aligned definition of what is being implemented.  Factors to consider when operationalizing Blended Learning to the school context will be initially be discussed herein.  A process to operationalize Blended Learning to the context of a school or classroom is then presented and utilized in an actual whole of school implementation of Blended Learning.  The effect of this process is then quantified and tested in a follow-up assessment of staff members’ perceived understanding of Blended Learning in their context.  Result identify the developed process as significantly improving the perceived understanding of Blended Learning in the context of the school by those involved.  The operationalized definition is intended to aid communicating within the school, to stakeholders and student parents, and in any associated research reporting, as well as aiding in aligning staff in the implementation of Blended Learning and in curriculum development.

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The Role of Cognitive and Affective Behavior in Predicting the Creative Thinking of University Students

Mingchang Wu, National Yunlin University of Science and Technology; Ibnu Siswanto, Yogyakarta State University, Indonesia and Tuatul Mahfud, Balikpapan State Polytechnic, Indonesia. (Pages 90 to 103)

Creativity has become a critical skill in the face of future competition and needs to be included in the learning process in educational institutions to prepare highly competitive human beings. Therefore, the ability to predict factors that affect creativity becomes very important in developing the learning process. This study aims to explore the predictors of creative thinking ability that includes affective creativity, future imagination, and positive psychological capital simultaneously and interactively. Data were collected through questionnaires from 278 students of the School of Humanities and Applied Science from one of National University located in Central Taiwan. Data analysis using structural equation modeling analysis. The results show that collaborations among the affective creativity, imagination, and psychological capital significantly influence students' creative thinking. That confirms that students' creative thinking can be nurtured through a combination of several personality factors.

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Exploring the Impact of Pedagogical Strategies in Drawing Instruction on Drawing Skills Satisfaction: A Case Study on Ghanaian Communication Design Students

Eric Francis Eshun, Touphic, Mohammed A. and Edward Appiah, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology, Ghana (Pages 104 to 122)

This study delves into the understanding of Communication Design students’ perceptions of drawing instructions and drawing skills satisfaction. While Ghanaian communication design students have good performance in design skills they seem to have low confidence in drawing skills. Two questionnaires about learning strategies and satisfaction, based on Motivational Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ), were issued to 220 participants. The results show that there was no significant difference between students’ perception of drawing teaching strategies based on gender. Also, the drawing learning strategies components demonstrated positive, significant relations with each other.

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The Development Model of Exploitability Knowledge Based on Entrepreneurial Learning to Innovative Performance and Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Widodo., Tatiek Nurhayatie. Department of Management, Faculty of Economics Unissula, Semarang-Indonesia (Pages 123 to 133)

Actualizing sustainable competitive advantage is the dream of every businessman. Therefore, the purpose of this research is actualizing the condition through innovative performance and exploitability knowledge with the antecedent of entrepreneurial learning. The respondents of this research is 150 chosen leader or manager of Batik SMEs in the Province of Central Java. This research result shows that the actualization of sustainable competitive advantage is influenced by high innovation performance.

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Innovative Human Resource Practices and Selected H.R.  Outcomes in Software Firms

Ramkumar. A & Rajini. G., VELS Institute of Science, Technology & Advanced Studies (VISTAS), India (Pages 134 to 157)

Human resource management (HRM) is the strategic and coherent approach to the management of an organization's most valued assets – the people working in the organization, who individually and collectively contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the business. As context, this paper views adoption and sustenance of innovations in human resource management practices as part of HR strategy and examines the relationship between the innovative HR practices and certain selected HR outcomes. The purpose of the study is to investigate the extent of satisfaction with innovative HR practices implemented in the organisation with the goals of:  a) To bring out the human resource outcomes reflected by their levels of job satisfaction, organisational commitment and organisational citizenship behaviour. b) To ascertain the relationship between innovative HR Practices and the human resource (HR) outcomes among the employees in software firms in Kerala and c) To develop and statistically validate a model linking innovative HR practices and the HR outcomes.

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Employee Engagement, Work Autonomy and Innovative Work Behaviour: An empirical study

Pragati Swaroop and Varsha Dixit, Gautam Buddha University, India (Pages 158 to 175)

Innovation is critical for organizations to survive and grow in this competitive age. Innovation cannot take place without the active involvement of employees, and hence, study of organizational behaviour that supports innovation is important for organizational success. This paper aims to examine the effect of employee engagement and work autonomy on innovative work behaviours in organizations. Data was collected from 267employees, 231 males and 36 females, from various organizations in India.  Empirical analyses of data through statistical procedures indicate that employee engagement and work autonomy are both positively related to innovative work behaviour. It was also found that employee engagement does not moderate the positive relationship of work autonomy with innovative work behaviour. Limitations of the study and directions for further research are also stated.

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Development of Creative Personality Inventory (CPI): Hypothetical Concept

Eko Susanto,Yuni Novitasari, Syamsu Yusuf, Ilfiandra, Universitas Muhammadiyah Metro – Indonesia, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia – Indonesia (Pages 176 to 192)

This study reports the development and testing of a creative personality measurement tool called Creative Personality Inventory (CPI). The theory that this inventory is built upon is based on the premise of a Creativity Trait. A test of the validity of the inventory was done using Spearman-Brown and reliability with Split-Half. The study focused on high school students in the province of Lampung – Indonesia. The number of participants in the study is 149 people (96 women and 50 men) aged between 16-18 years. The study’s results suggest that the CPI serves as a reliable self-report to measure the creative personality of students with a reliability coefficient of 0.911.