CREATIVITY IN SYNCHRONOUS AND ASYNCHRONOUS LEARNING DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: A CASE STUDY

The corona virus outbreak has forced all universities to conduct learning online using the internet. We have considered to develop students’ creativity through online learning. We therefore applied synchronous learning and asynchronous learning methods in the classroom and observed how these methods influenced students’ creativity. Purposive sampling technique was used to select one out of 40 students from the Department of Mathematics Education at STKIP YPUP to participate in this study. The subject was chosen because he had fulfilled the criteria of creativity. Data analysis was performed in several stages as follows: 1) analyzing the interview data and the learning videos; 2) performing data reduction by making abstractions; 3) organizing the data in units that were then categorized by coding; 4) checking the data validity by doing time triangulation; 5) analyzing interesting phenomena that are associated with the participant’s creativity. The results of the analysis showed that the subject’s creativity was demonstrated through cognitive flexibility and cognitive fluency, indicated by repeated or cyclic cognitive processes before the participant discovered the solution to the problem. It can be concluded that both synchronous and asynchronous learning methods can support the development of college students’ creativity during the covid-19 pandemic. Keywords: Covid-19 pandemic; creativity; synchronous and asynchronous learning. AbstrakWabah virus corona memaksa semua perguruan tinggi untuk melakukan pembelajaran secara online menggunakan internet. Kami telah mempertimbangkan untuk mengembangkan kreativitas siswa melalui pembelajaran online. Oleh karena itu, kami menerapkan pembelajaran synchronous dan metode pembelajaran asynchronous di kelas dan mengamati bagaimana metode ini mempengaruhi kreativitas siswa. Teknik purposive sampling digunakan untuk memilih satu dari 40 mahasiswa Jurusan Pendidikan Matematika STKIP YPUP untuk berpartisipasi dalam penelitian ini. Subjek dipilih karena telah memenuhi kriteria kreativitas. Analisis data dilakukan dalam beberapa tahapan sebagai berikut: 1) menganalisis data wawancara dan video pembelajaran; 2) melakukan reduksi data dengan membuat abstraksi; 3) mengorganisasikan data dalam satuan-satuan yang kemudian dikategorikan dengan pengkodean; 4) pengecekan keabsahan data dengan melakukan triangulasi waktu; 5) menganalisis fenomena menarik yang terkait dengan kreativitas peserta. Hasil analisis menunjukkan bahwa kreativitas subjek ditunjukkan melalui keluwesan kognitif dan kelancaran kognitif, yang ditunjukkan dengan proses kognitif berulang atau siklik sebelum partisipan menemukan solusi dari masalah. Disimpulkan bahwa metode pembelajaran synchronous dan asynchronous dapat mendukung pengembangan kreativitas mahasiswa selama masa pandemi covid-19. Kata Kunci: Pandemi Covid-19, Kreativitas, Pembelajaran Synchronous dan Asynchronous

Avatar-User Bond as Meta-Cognitive Experience: Explicating Identification and Embodiment as Cognitive Fluency

Scholars have not reached an agreement on a theoretical foundation that underlies the psychological effects of avatar use on users. One group of scholars focuses on the perceptual nature of avatar use, proposing that perceiving the self-being represented by a virtual representation leads to the effects (i.e., Proteus effect). Another group suggests that social traits in avatars prime users causing them to behave in accordance with the social traits (i.e., priming effects). We combine these two theoretical explanations and present an alternative approach, hinging on a concept of meta-cognitive experience. The psychological mechanism of the avatar-user bond is explicated in terms of cognitive fluency, a type of meta-cognitive experience reflecting an awareness of how readily or easily information is processed. Under this explication, two concepts related to avatar-user bond, identification and embodiment, are understood as the meta-cognitive experience of cognitive fluency at the level of one’s identity and physical body, respectively. Existing empirical evidence on avatar effects is revisited to explore how this new theoretical framework can be applied.

Court Case Context and Fluency-Promoting Photos Inflate the Credibility of Forensic Science

Faulty forensic science sometimes makes its way into the courtroom where jurors must evaluate its credibility. But at least two factors may inflate how credible jurors find claims about forensic science: the mere context of a court case and the cognitive fluency of the evidence. To investigate, we asked people to judge various claims about forensic science as true or false. In Experiment 1 ( N = 287), we manipulated court case context by either attributing the claims to an expert in court or not specifying their origin. In Experiment 2 ( N = 320), we manipulated courtroom setting orthogonal to source expertise. In both, we manipulated fluency via the presence of related but nonprobative photos. We found each factor increased people’s bias to judge forensic science claims true. Our findings suggest the justice system must improve the quality of forensic science upstream from the courtroom to ensure jurors’ credulity is warranted.

Explaining second language utterance fluency: Contribution of cognitive fluency and first language utterance fluency

Given that utterance fluency in a second language (L2) is associated with not only L2 cognitive fluency but also utterance fluency in the first language (L1), the study examined to what extent different measures of L2 utterance fluency can be explained by L2-specific cognitive fluency and/or the corresponding L1 utterance fluency measures. Utterance fluency measures on speed, breakdown, and repair phenomena and cognitive fluency measures including speed of lexical retrieval, syntactic encoding, and articulation were collected in the L1 and the L2 from 44 Chinese learners of English. The results show that most L2 utterance fluency measures are accounted for by the combination of L2-specific cognitive fluency measures and the equivalent L1 utterance fluency measure, whereas the number of mid-clause silent pauses and corrections, and mean syllable duration are largely explained by L2-specific cognitive measures, suggesting that they reflect L2-specific knowledge and cognitive skills. In contrast, mean silent pause duration and the number of filled pauses are mainly explained by the corresponding L1 utterance fluency measures.

Situational Factors Influencing Receptivity to Bullshit

Individuals are motivated to maintain a sense of meaning, and enact cognitive processes to do so (e.g., perceiving structure in the environment). This motivation to find meaning may ultimately impact humans’ interpretation of "bullshit", statements intended to convey profundity without any meaning. Conversely, subtle cues threatening the meaningfulness of bullshit may elicit greater skepticism. Three studies tested situational factors predicted to heighten or diminish susceptibility to bullshit by changing motivations to seek meaning. We employed diverse methods including symbolic meaning threat (Study 1), social exclusion (Cyberball; Study 2), and manipulating cognitive fluency (Study 3). Taken together, the results indicate basic processes shaping the detection of meaning have implications for the appraisal of ambiguously insightful information.