Supporting Creative Learning by Information Communication Technology (ICT) in Project Teams

Introduction

A project is a complex effort that necessitates a problem analysis and that must be planned and managed, because of desired changes that are to be carried out in people’s surroundings, organization, knowledge, and attitude to life; it involves a new, not previously solved task or problem; it requires resources across traditional organizations and knowledge; it must be completed at a point in time determined in advance (Zhou, 2014). In order to ensure task accomplishment and stimulate group dynamic, project management is essential to support learning activities. The social theory of learning indicates the project group works as a community and needs multiple forms of leadership: thought leaders, networks, people who document the practice, and pioneers, etc. These forms of leadership may be concentrated on one or two members of the group or widely distributed, and will potentially change over time (Wenger, 2006). The ability of a manager will be tested to the utmost when complex technical changes demand a high level of corporate activity. A premium is placed upon fixing clear objectives, setting up high-response decision-making, communication and control systems to enable a wide range of resources and disparate talents to be harnessed to the full (Zhou, 2012).

The rapid development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is demanding swift action to engage learners to participate in the mainstream of development. The emergences of the era of new technologies such as the Internet and various applications have taken steps towards a new environmental challenge in the field of teaching, learning, and assessment (Daud & Zakaria, 2012). More attention has been focused on a new learning culture of learning afforded by new technologies, where learners are at the center of learning process, participating in ways that were not possible before. Flexibility, personalization and different learning styles can be combined; and learning can be authentic, motivational and conceived as a social process, enabling peer-to-peer informal interactions that lead them to learn from each other (Kampylis, Bocconi & Punie, 2012). In order to better facilitate group communication, strategies are expected to explore aiming to facilitate a closer interaction between learners, learning tasks and learning tools in building a creative learning environment. Project team communication is not only organized by face-to-face discussion, it also be mediated by online strategies. For example, Dropbox is a popular way of group document management; Doodle is a way of booking the time of an activity; Skype is used to online group meeting. These online strategies are helpful to organize and manage project work. Therefore, ICT knowledge is not only the learning objective but also a learning tool integrated into learning life. From this sense, ICT may be described as one of project team’s learning partner – it provides a domain which project team members should engaged themselves to learning activities and meanwhile provides the way of how to access the learning activities.