R&D Unplugged #20 – with Chloé Mercier
Modeling creativity for learning: from computational approaches to educational futures?
Creativity is often treated as an elusive or immutable capacity, making it difficult to study, and even harder to teach. However, approaches at the intersection of computer science and cognitive science, especially learning sciences, aim to model creativity as a situated and iterative learning process, shaped by reflection and feedback.
Drawing on computational methods, we will show how creative processes can be analyzed and formalized without stripping it of its educational richness. These models offer new ways to study how learners explore ideas based on their prior knowledge, preferences, and stimuli from the environment ; but also how they revise their work and develop creative strategies over time. Building on this foundation, our future research directions focus on writing education, with the goal of fostering both creativity and meta-cognitive awareness, rather than automating production.
Finally, we will situate this work within the broader framework of digital humanities and the emergence of STEAM education: what if bridging the “sciences vs humanities” divide was essential for more inclusive educational pathways and for addressing persistent social and gender inequalities?
Event open to all
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More about the speaker
Chloé Mercier is a researcher at Inria Bordeaux, within the Mnemosyne team (Inria, LaBRI, IMN – Bordeaux Neurocampus). She obtained her PhD from the University of Bordeaux in 2024, where she conducted her research in partnership with the LINE, a laboratory dedicated to digital innovation in education at Université Cote d’Azur. With a background in computer science, she is also passionate about dance, and enjoys exploring how computational methods and embodied practices can inform one another in the understanding of cognitive processes such as creativity.
Organised by the Learning Transitions Research Unit, R&D Unplugged series – the Talk and the Podcast – focuses on the purpose of Research, its key data, and its tangible impact on the real-world. Sign up to receive news (in English) from our R&D Unplugged series: more info here.
