Paperclips, circles, and six-legged spiders: An exploration of self-perceived and measured creativity among CS students

Abstract

This paper presents an exploration of the creative potential of a small group of computer science students, how their scores on divergent production tests relate to their self-perceived creativity in certain domains, and how these both relate to their academic performance in a computer graphics programming course. It was found the higher the creativity on alternative uses tests the higher the grade the students achieved on the course, and the higher the creativity as measured by a figural divergent production test the higher their self-perceived creativity was across a set of domains related to computer science. The implications of these findings in terms of exactly what our assessments are measuring is discussed.