Creativity differences between open-ended and well-defined tasks in a virtual environment

With recent growing attention to the potential benefits of educational games, Minecraft has emerged as a tool for students to learn multiple subjects and cognitive skills, including creative thinking. Recent studies on creativity have implications for the proper deployment of Minecraft-based instruction. For example, manipulation of different problem-solving spaces can induce different problem-solving mindsets (well-defined vs. open-ended). This work has shown that mindsets formed in an initial task would carry over and have significant influence in the subsequent problem-solving tasks. The study reported here investigates creativity and its relationship between problem-solving mindsets and problem-solving spaces. It attempts to replicate previous research with Legos, but in Minecraft. Creativity is assessed using common approaches, including the alternative uses test (AUT) and the Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT). The findings of this study suggest a partial replication in Minecraft of the original Lego study. Specifically, the study concludes (1) participants in an open-ended task receive significantly higher creativity scores than the well-defined problem-solving group, and that well-defined tasks diminish creative performance in a free-play task. (2) the presence of explicit instructions have no significant influence on the creativity score of the following free-play tasks. And (3) Among variables like the level of skill/experience, interest, and material used in Minecraft, only interest level proves to be significant to the creativity score in the free-play (open-ended) task