Unlocking student creativity through a robotics-enhanced story creation summer camp: A pilot study

Creativity is a vital component of the 21st century skills that encompasses multipledimensions. To examine how creativity can be fostered through a one-week summercamp, designed to engage 14 elementary students (ages 6 to 10) in a roboticsenhancedstory creation experience. Quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed toexplore how campers participated in the story creation activities and demonstratedcreativity in both their process and final products. Quantitative results from theTorrance Test of Creative Thinking - Figural (TTCT-F) show significant improvementsin fluency and elaboration but non-significant declines in overall creativity, originality,abstractness of titles, and resistance to premature closure. Qualitative findingshighlight campers’ abilities to demonstrate creativity in diverse ways but also identifyseveral areas where creativity was absent or limited. Additionally, it was found that taskdesign played a crucial role in shaping creativity. While most literature focuses onrobotics as a programming tool, this research provides fresh evidence on how roboticscan be utilized as a story creation tool to promote creativity. The paper concludes witha discussion of the study’s limitations and implications for future research.