The importance of productive dialog in computer science students´ creative thinking

Computer science is a creative field to work, creativity is demanded from industry and very relevant and evident in software design processes. So, teaching creativity is an important endeavor in computer science education. This work highlights the importance of verbal creativity, providing empirical evidence that when students engage in other students´ ideas, new knowledge emerge and is deepen. In this work we performed two case studies. In the first one were considered three computer graphics classes. Patterns of productive discourse that describe knowledge advancement have been found when students engaged in other students´ ideas, criticizing, comparing, evaluating, selecting ideas, considering different alternatives, and pointing positive and negative outcomes. The second case study was run in six human-computer interaction classes. The online discourse was analyzed by means of the following categories: relevance, importance, novelty, bringing outside knowledge to bear a problem, ambiguities, linking ideas and interpretation, justification, critical assessment, and practical utility. The results show that when students are better in categories critical assessment, and linking ideas and interpretation, they are also better in category novelty and also the products generated are better. When they engaged in others´ ideas they elaborated better interface designs.