Students' multi-modal re-presentations of scientific knowledge and creativity

The paper brings the results of a project that passed on to students the opportunity for re-presenting their acquired knowledge via the construction of multi-modal 'learning resources'. These 'learning resources' substituted for lectures and books and became the official learning sources in the classroom. The rational for the project was multiple: a. It was expected that the process of re-contextualizing the scientific concepts into students' lifeworlds, their metaphors and into their everyday language, would benefit both, the creators and the consumers, b. Students were expected to develop multiliteracies in addition to gaining authorship and c. The open and encouraging learning environment that enabled multiple and multimodal ways of presentation was expected to promote small c creativity to be expressed in the diversified natures of the constructed materials. The results indicate that the stimulating and encouraging environment did promote creative divergence in students' re-presented products. This was found to be true for Relative Creativity (number of higher creativity products as compared to lower ones), and Diversified Creativity (changing the nature of the constructed product from semester to semester). These materials as learning resources were shown to be as effective as lectures and the construction period was shown to add to students' knowledge gains. An interesting effect of frontal lectures was found which is attributed to possible different ways of knowledge organization that are induced under different learning conditions.