نقش تنوع تجارب زندگی در تقویت خلاقیت مشارکتی در گروه‏های دانشجویی با خصوصیات آماری متفاوت

Collaborative learning becomes a key instructional tool in a variety of educational settings, from primary to higher education. This paper examines the role of demographic diversity (gender and nationality) on collaborative creativity. A self report questionnaire is used to evaluate students’ life experiences in terms of diverse mindsets (diversity in interests, likes, and attitudes) and intergroup contact (interaction with dissimilar others), and a research report analysis reveals groups’ collaborative creativity. The results show that diverse mindsets moderate the effect of gender diversity on collaborative creativity in such a way that groups whose members are more broadly oriented in terms of interests, likes, and attitudes benefit more from this form of demographic diversity as compared with groups whose members are less broadly oriented. No support is found for the moderating role of intergroup contact for the effect of demographic diversity on collaborative creativity. The results presented in this paper suggest that diversity of life experiences is a moderator worthwhile considering in the group diversity–group creativity relationship and provide insights into the necessary conditions for collaborative creativity.

In higher education (especially in management programs), educational activities extensively use collaborative learning groups in order to help students develop collaboration and teamwork skills (Chen, Donahue, & Klimoski, 2004). Oftentimes, educators are advised to compose heterogeneous groups (especially with respect to gender and nationality) so as to let students interact with different others and as such allow them to benefit from exchanging and working with a large variety of ideas (Lou et al., 1996). Whereas scant literature is available studying demographic diversity in the context of collaborative learning, previous research reports positive effects of gender heterogeneity on such outcomes as group cognitive complexity (Curşeu and Pluut, 2013 and Curşeu et al., 2007a) and group creativity (Curşeu, 2010 and Schruijer and Mostert, 1997) as well as beneficial effects of nationality diversity on group creativity, especially in later stages of group development (Milliken & Martins, 1996). However, little to no interest has been shown in investigating students’ skills to work with diversity as a contingency factor when exploring the diversity – group performance link. In other words, previous research did not explore whether groups consisting of members who have a broad personal experience with and hold positive attitudes towards social diversity benefit more from demographic diversity as compared to groups whose members have been less engaged in interacting with dissimilar others and have more negative diversity attitudes. The aim of this paper is therefore to test the effect of demographic diversity on collaborative creativity and the extent to which students’ life experiences moderate the impact of gender and nationality diversity on group creativity in collaborative learning settings.

The results presented in this paper suggest that diversity of life experiences is a moderator worthwhile considering in the group diversity–group creativity relationship and provide insight into the necessary conditions for effective collaborative learning experiences. However, not all types of life experiences are equally predictive for group creativity. The data suggest that diverse mindsets rather than intergroup contact make students more receptive towards dissimilar others, as student groups consisting of broadly oriented group members benefit more strongly from the cognitive resource diversity associated with gender diversity in terms of collaborative creativity.