The purpose of this study is to examine an impact of university students' openness to diversity on creativity, cooperative learning competency, and unlearning competency, and the mediating effect of cooperative learning competency and unlearning compe...
The purpose of this study is to examine an impact of university students' openness to diversity on creativity, cooperative learning competency, and unlearning competency, and the mediating effect of cooperative learning competency and unlearning competency. To do this, two research questions were established. First, do university students' openness to diversity affect their creativity? Second, how the cooperative learning competency and unlearning competency affect the relationship between openness to diversity and creativity.
To verify these research questions, this study set the openness to diversity as a dependant variable and creativity as a independent variable, then set two mediating variables which were cooperative learning competency and unlearning competency.
The target population for this study is university students from seven different universities. The survey was conducted for 12days from October 7, 2013 to October 17, 2013, and this study used convenience sampling method and distributed 600 questionnaires. After eliminating incomplete and insincere reponses, 533 out of 600 responses were used fo data analysis.
The results of this empirical study are as follows: First, there are statistically significant co-relations among the all variables. Second, openness to diversity of university students has a positive effect on cooperative learning competency, unlearning competency, and creativity of university students. Third, cooperative learning competency, unlearning competency have positive effect on students' creativity. This shows that the more students enhance their cooperative learning competency and unlearning competency, the more students develop their creativity. Fourth, cooperative learning competency and unlearning competency have mediating effect on the relationship between openness to diversity and creativity. Fifth, unlearning competency has a mediating effect on the relationship between openness to diversity and cooperative learning competency.
This study suggests the following implications to cultivate creative people in universities. First, it is necessary to develop the curricula and programs that help student to understand and embrace the diversity. Secondly, it is required to design the teaching method that can encourage students to develop various learning competencies. Thirdly, since the unlearning competency should be developed and used throughout one's life, teaching model that can enhance the unlearning competency should be developed. Fourth, the programs and education system for promoting students' creativity should be provided because the creativity can be enhanced by interaction with individual's characteristics, resources and environment. Moreover, if the openness to diversity, cooperative learning competency, and unlearning competency would be considered when the programs for creativity are developed, the programs must be more effective and appropriate.
University students can build the core competencies to be globally qualified talents under the appropriate educational policy and system. Therefore, universities should prepare and provide proper learning environment and educational systematic support.