Promoting students’ creativity by creating a platform for self-expression

Abstract: Today students all over the world use different types of social media to express their thoughts, feelings and ideas. It can either be expressed in a close environment, such as group chats or to a more open environment such as a feed for example on facebook, which could be seen by anyone and not only students. The purpose of this thesis is to research how to develop a prototype platform where the students have the choice to express themselves in other ways than writing and share their thoughts, feelings and ideas with other students around the world. For inspiration for design, existing tools and technologies have been researched on how they can attract and engage students into using them for different activities in educational settings. Furthermore research has been made on how to maximize the students’ creativity and keep them engaged with the prototype for them to be able to express themselves freely and creatively. After that the prototype was tested to measure its impact on the students in regards to the engagement and fun and also if they could see this as a new potential way of connecting and sharing thoughts, ideas and feelings with students worldwide. After analyzing and receiving feedback from the students, it was discovered that the final prototype platform needs further work and improvement in order to increase the engagement and fun in the prototype platform. Furthermore future development ideas were discovered, both when the results were analyzed and during the development of the prototype platform.