Creative coursework and college students’ perceptions: Examining creative self-efficacy, creative personal identity, and intrinsic task motivation

Curricula to enhance creativity, including classroom activities, have been found to improve creativity in undergraduate students. Here, we adapted a series of structured classroom activities for an undergraduate Psychology of Creativity course to scaffold students’ work on creative projects using cognitive skills such as idea generation and evaluation. Students in the intervention group (n = 81) engaged in hands-on structured activities focusing on the creative process whereas students in the control group (n = 93) received lectures and discussions about the creative process without the structured activities. Intra-individual pre and post-activity differences were examined in students’ creative self-efficacy, creative personal identity, and intrinsic task motivation. In addition, 169 final creative projects were independently rated on originality and quality. We found that the intervention and control groups did not differ in overall creative self-assessments nor the originality of the projects. However, path analyses revealed a partially mediated effect of creative personal identity on creative self-efficacy and intrinsic task motivation after completing the course project. Additionally, creative personal identity remained a significant predictor of intrinsic task motivation, even when accounting for the mediating effect of creative self-efficacy. Pairwise comparisons revealed an increase in intrinsic task motivation and effort after the project, although they also reported a decrease in the perceived value of the project and feeling competent. The present findings suggest that coursework emphasizing creativity aids in student’s creative self-perceptions and motivations for creative tasks. The results and implications of the findings for promoting creativity in undergraduate students are discussed, as well as the study’s limitations.