Ecstasi Project: Using Technology to Encourage Creativity in the Assessment Process

The notion of creativity has attracted increasing attention in Higher Education in recent years, and is seen to be of importance in a variety of disciplines, not just those which are closely associated with the creative industries. This provides a challenge to educators to understand how the concept can be incorporated into student learning and assessment. This paper introduces the Ecstasi project, which is studying the creative learning journey of students in two different disciplines and institutions, on modules which use an inquiry-based pedagogy. The students are encouraged to creatively utilise information technology to develop artefacts for their assessed work.. A key challenge is the assessment of creativity, which we consider this using the dimensions of person, process and product. The paper discusses creativity and its assessment in HE, presents preliminary results from the on-going longitudinal study, and considers the role of technology in this process.