Supporting Creativity in Software Development: An Application in IT Education - Current Issues in IT Education - page 87

the problem is unstructured, goals are indistinct, and the outcome of an action cannot always
be clearly identified. The tool is rather generic, because it uses a technique that can be applied
to a variety of scenarios and can help people process relevant documents while identifying
issues. These documents act like a “trigger” to stimulate domain-specific ideas from users.
CONCLUSION
This study proposed and empirically tested a specific learning tool aimed at stimulating
creative problem solving of IT students. The tool was designed on the basis of a brainstorm-
ing technique. The essence of the tool was to provide users with external stimuli and expose
them to a large number of ideas over a short period of time. The tool was tested in the context
of an information system requirements specification task. The results of the test indicated
that the tool was useful in enhancing creative performance of the users. After interacting with
the tool, participants were able to generate more original ideas while maintaining levels of
relevance and workability necessary for innovative software designs. Our findings imply that
creativity can and should be taught to IT students, and that the learning tool described in
this study can potentially be a valuable facilitator of the process.
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