CEEO Main Site - The Briefcase: Using Wide-Spread Collaboration to Motivate Innovation and Creativity

The Briefcase: Using Wide-Spread Collaboration to Motivate Innovation
and Creativity

Investigators
Ethan Danahy, Peter Sneeringer, Susan Tse, & Chris Rogers

Collaborators
Mike Cole (UC San Diego, Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition)

Noah Finkelstein (University of Colorado at Boulder - Physics Education Research @ Colorado)

Funding Source
This project is supported by the National Science Foundation under the Creative IT Grant.

Goals and Overview

The intent of the Briefcase concept is to extend the functionality of the RoboBook product currently under development at the CEEO to include the scalability of a Wiki-like backbone. The idea is to provide students with an authoring environment (like familiar word processing or presentation software programs) that helps students:

1. learn how to use various software packages;
2. keep track of what they are doing through blogs, pictures, and movies;
3. discuss and team with others (locally and remotely) to problem solve; and
4. share what they develop with others around the world.

The power of the Briefcase lies in the freedom of expression (or representation) that it affords the user. To help foster interest, creativity, and innovation in science, environments like this provide students with a broader range of ways to share their ideas. This project works to develop the tool, and assess its effectiveness, with regard to increasing engagement and promoting creativity.

Interested parties should contact Dr. Ethan Danahy for more project information or to become a pre-release product tester.