Open discussion: Teaching computational creativity

[Carlos León]

Hannu Toivonen proposes the next topic for discussion:

How to teach or learn computational creativity? Five years ago when I first wanted to study CC I was in the lucky position to be able to set up an international autumn school with great speakers (http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/en/ascc/). The tutorials there and in the second edition of the event two years later (http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/ascc2013/) gave me and some 100 others good introductions to various central aspects of CC.

I have since been trying to also educate our MSc and PhD students in Helsinki on CC. But how to set up an academic course in CC?

In our courses I have tried to cover a range of aspects from philosophy of CC to its theory and practice. Given the absence of a suitable text book, the written material has consisted of some selected original articles.

To give students practical tools and skills in several areas or creativity (language, images, sound), we decided last autumn to use Markov chains and genetic algorithms (and genetic programming) as generic generative methods. The emphasis then was on how to build actual creative systems using these merely generative methods as building blocks.

If anyone is interested, the course description and materials are available at http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/en/courses/582366/2015/S/K/1 . (Note that the teaching method was largely based on the so-called "flipped classroom”.)

If you teach CC, what are the contents that you teach? What kind of teaching methods and materials do you use? Is there something we should do about CC education as a community?

You are kindly invited to comment on the topic.

[a.k.jordanous]

Great to see this discussion. Colin Johnson and I have just taught a new module on CC at Kent for the first time this year. We had lectures (2 a week, one theoretically-based, one on practical applications, usually around a theme such as music or scientific creativity), plus one practical programming class a week. In the second half of the term we asked students to do a discussion seminar on a selected paper each week based around students' short presentations. We borrowed an idea from Thor Magnusson/Alice Eldridge's course on Generative creativity at Sussex for these seminars - some students would speak for 5 minutes on the positive aspects of the paper, others would present a critical view of the paper. 

In terms of content, here's the overview: https://www.kent.ac.uk/courses/modules/module/CO659 

The module was not heavily subscribed (though it was only running for the first time this time around) but some of the students we got were really excellent, with plenty of potential for further study of CC at postgraduate level. 

Would be great to have an open discussion at ICCC this year about how to teach CC, would that be possible? Comparing syllabi, assessment methods, teaching methods, etc? Also, we could set up a network of guest lecturers perhaps? Would PROSECCO be able to support this kind of activity? I absolutely loved teaching this module, though some of the lectures and tutorial topics really stretched my knowledge and experience of CC. Great to have the opportunity to investigate areas of CC that we're not specialist in though :) 

anna

[Maya Ackerman]

Thank you for this great discussion! Let me second Anna's suggestions to have a discussion about this at ICCC. It would be incredibly helpful!

This spring I taught a course on computational creativity for the first time, to a small group of graduate students (12). It was the best teaching experience I ever had :-)

We started with a few lectures on human creativity, based largely on Explaining creativity: The Science of Human Innovation by Keith Sawyer. It was helpful to show the students how notions of creativity changed over time, and discuss creativity myths within the familiar context of human creativity before moving on to computer creativity. Then we covered foundations of CC, Markov chains, evolutionary algorithms, and a little machine learning. 

After this first part of the course, students (1) wrote an essay on foundations of human and computer creativity, and (2) made a TwitterBot that produces creative output (at least some of the time). The students loved the TwitterBot assignment, put a lot of effort into it, and produced some very nice bots (This one grew into a research project: https://twitter.com/color_my_words). 

Then we had a few invited speakers from different departments. I wanted to give the students a sense for how computing is used in other disciplines from the perspective of researchers in these fields (particularly music, visual art, and dance). We were also lucky to have a Mark Riedl visit our class. 

The final part of the course was based on the Oxford learning model. Students wrote literature surveys on each of 5 topics (foundations of CC, computational musicology, CC and visual art, CC in dance and drama, and social implications of CC), and we held class discussions centered around their findings. In parallel, students worked on their course projects, making original creative software. 

Here's the course website: http://www.cs.fsu.edu/~ackerman/cc/computational_creativity.html

It would be great if we could set up a link somewhere to all of our CC courses. It would help us improve our courses, and perhaps more people will start offering CC at their schools. Thanks again for the great posts and see you at ICCC!

[Carlos León]

2016-04-27 5:43 GMT+02:00 Maya Ackerman <ritas...@gmail.com>:

It would be great if we could set up a link somewhere to all of our CC courses. It would help us improve our courses, and perhaps more people will start offering CC at their schools. Thanks again for the great posts and see you at ICCC!

If people are interested in this, we can provide a section in the official ACC website (computationalcreativity.net) and share all links and other material. In case any of you are interested, let me know privately and we will consider adding the section if there is a reasonable number of links and courses. It would be fantastic to have such a resource publicly available in the website.

Thanks for the great ideas!

--

Carlos León <cl...@ucm.es>
Assistant Professor

Room 420bis (4th floor)
Department of Software Engineering and Artificial Intelligence
Computer Science Faculty
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
28040 Madrid
Spain

Phone: (+34) 91 394 7606
Fax: (+34) 91 394 7547
Skype: clnznr
Twitter: @clnznr
Google: cl...@ucm.es

[tony....@ucd.ie]

Dear colleagues

The PROSECCO coordination action has, as part of its primary mission, the goal of creating and sharing resources for the teaching of Computational Creativity. You'll find the PROSECCO web-site to be a trove of reusable resources, from instructional videos (from past CC schools and conferences) to papers and an introductory text book that communicates the philosophy and goals of CC to a general or novice audience. The site can be accessed here:  PROSECCO-network.eu  (the accompanying Twitter feed is  @PROSECCONetwork.eu)

PROSECCO also has a well-stocked GitHub for CC development resources arising out of the 2015 and 2016 code-camps:  https://github.com/prosecconetwork

A blog dedicated to issues in the construction of CC systems has also been established, and was used by participants in the 2016 camp:  http://www.bestofbotworlds.com/

Please contact Tony....@UCD.ie if you would like to be registered as a full user of the blog. Membership is done by invitation in this way to ward off spammers.

Finally, RobotComix.com contains the aforementioned textbook in an online form (contact Tony....@UCD.ie if you would like a PDF version) as well as a tutorial on building CC Twitterbots.

best wishes,

The PROSECCO gang

On Thursday, 21 April 2016 14:30:33 UTC+1, Carlos León wrote:

[rafapyp]

I think it is a great idea to have a section in the official ACC website for gathering resources and sharing experiences!

There are endless ways of teaching CC. We need to learn from each other. I am interested in comparing different approaches; e.g. what the PROSSECO's gang (PROSSECO is an European project) does, what people in Europe that do not participate in PROSSECO do and what people in other parts of the world (e.g. USA, Canada, Australia, Filipinas, México and so on) do in order to organise a course in CC.

I hope colleagues get excited about this initiative.

 

I share my experience in the topic.

The first time I tough a course on CC was in January 2002, in the postgraduate program in Computer Science at the UNAM (National University).

In general I do similar things to what Anna and Maya have described: a general introduction to creativity (mainly from a psychological and philosophical perspective); then we read and discuss different papers describing running systems, methodologies, and so on (during such discussions I encourage students to analyse what are the limitations and the contributions of such systems to the understanding of creativity; i.e. it is not enough to generate “something”); we have also done the exercise of studying one particular work and then organising discussion groups of critical vs. supportive students; we study in deep the models we have created in our research group and discuss their scope and limitations with students (this exercise has been very productive); and, of course, students develop a final project.

 

Sometimes I have had the opportunity to teach this course together with Atocha Aliseda, a colleague from the Institute of Philosophical Research at the UNAM.

When we teach the course together, we have groups of students coming from postgraduate programs in Computer Sciences and in Philosophy of Science. As a result, we have engineers, mathematicians, physicist, psychologists, philosophers, anthropologist…, in the same group.

This has been a really great experience!

The discussions are richer and it has produced really interesting results.

I strongly recommend this interdisciplinary approach.

   

Last time, I had the pleasure to teach this course together with Wendy, a former PhD student of mine. This is the web page of the course:

http://wendysan.wix.com/cc-2016

 

[a.k.jordanous]

Agreed that it would be great to have a pool of online teaching resources available for the CC community.

At ICCC this year, is there any room in the schedule to have a discussion about teaching CC? Or perhaps we can have this discussion alongside ICCC, during a lunchtime or evening slot? I'd be very keen to compare syllabi etc.

Anna

[a.k.jordanous]

(Including the prosecco resources of course - Tony is this site likely to stay live beyond the duration of the prosecco grant?)

[Joe Corneli]

Cf. Ashok Goel in recent news:

«A really fun thing in this class has been once students knew about Jill
they were so motivated, so engaged. I’ve never seen this kind of
motivation and engagement. What a beautiful way of teaching artificial
intelligence.»

From: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/05/11/this-professor-stunned-his-students-when-he-revealed-the-secret-identity-of-his-teaching-assistant/

Some folks in the G+ discussion where I found this link questioned how
this work would/could generalise:

«I teach writing. None of my work can be automated in this way. Of
course, maybe SOMEDAY they will invent a grammar checker that is not
total crapola. That would be nice. [...] I teach appx. 80-90 students
every semester, and I'm responding with detailed feedback to their
formal writing every week.» -Laura Gibbs

["F. Amílcar Cardoso"]

Dear all,

Thanks Hannu and Carlos for rising this theme, thanks everybody for the relevant contributions. This is being an inspiring discussion.

Following a suggestion that some of you make, the organisation of the ICCC 2016 analysed the possibility of promoting a discussion session about this theme during the conference. As you know, the number of submissions and the accepted papers increased a lot this year. As a consequence, the program is already very dense.
Still, we decided to promote a special panel on Friday, immediately after the “Community Meeting”, 14-15:30, in the main room.

Anna Jordanous accepted to chair this pannel (thanks Anna).

We all look forward to a very interesting and useful discussion.

Amilcar

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Computational Creativity Forum" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to computational-creativ...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to computational-c...@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/computational-creativity-forum.
> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/computational-creativity-forum/87h9dw60oe.fsf%40gmail.com.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Joan Sali]

Hi there,

Learning Computational Creativity via flipped classroom model is great. For sure students will gain the necessary knowledge before class. 

Joan Sali

Cloud Computing Conference manager

DIPECC2016

[a.k.jordanous]

Just to follow up - I'm really looking forward to this panel session, thanks Amílcar and the rest of the ICCC organisers. 

If we can bring with us examples of the syllabus we use, assessments, exam papers, teaching materials, etc, that would probably be very useful - especially for promoting discussion on what is/isn't appropriate to use!

Looking forward to this discussion on teaching CC. 

anna

On Wednesday, 18 May 2016 17:59:04 UTC+1, F. Amílcar Cardoso wrote:

Dear all,

Thanks Hannu and Carlos for rising this theme, thanks everybody for the relevant contributions. This is being an inspiring discussion.

Following a suggestion that some of you make, the organisation of the ICCC 2016 analysed the possibility of promoting a discussion session about this theme during the conference. As you know, the number of submissions and the accepted papers increased a lot this year. As a consequence, the program is already very dense.
Still, we decided to promote a special panel on Friday, immediately after the “Community Meeting”, 14-15:30, in the main room.

Anna Jordanous accepted to chair this pannel (thanks Anna).

We all look forward to a very interesting and useful discussion.

Amilcar

> On 17/05/2016, at 18:42, Joe Corneli <j.co...@gold.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> Cf. Ashok Goel in recent news:
>
> «A really fun thing in this class has been once students knew about Jill
> they were so motivated, so engaged. I’ve never seen this kind of
> motivation and engagement.  What a beautiful way of teaching artificial
> intelligence.»
>
> From:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/05/11/this-professor-stunned-his-students-when-he-revealed-the-secret-identity-of-his-teaching-assistant/
>
> Some folks in the G+ discussion where I found this link questioned how
> this work would/could generalise:
>
> «I teach writing. None of my work can be automated in this way. Of
> course, maybe SOMEDAY they will invent a grammar checker that is not
> total crapola. That would be nice. [...] I teach appx. 80-90 students
> every semester, and I'm responding with detailed feedback to their
> formal writing every week.» -Laura Gibbs
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Computational Creativity Forum" group.

> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to computational-creativity-forum+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to computational-creativity-fo...@googlegroups.com.

[Joe Corneli]

Joan, that looks thoroughly irrelevant, please don't waste people's
time by replying.

But @Anna, this does remind me to ask you to upload the audio of our
session in France when you have time!

-Joe

On Tue, Aug 9, 2016 at 3:20 AM, Joan Sali <joan....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Conference on Digital Information Processing, E-Business and Cloud Computing
> might help. More information here: http://sdiwc.net/conferences/dipecc2016

>
>
>
>
> On Thursday, April 21, 2016 at 9:30:33 PM UTC+8, Carlos León wrote:
>>

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Computational Creativity Forum" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an

> email to computational-creativ...@googlegroups.com.

> To post to this group, send email to

> computational-c...@googlegroups.com.

> Visit this group at
> https://groups.google.com/group/computational-creativity-forum.
> To view this discussion on the web visit

> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/computational-creativity-forum/8a04fc05-7150-4274-9f6f-3cc8d74c0a6b%40googlegroups.com.

[a.k.jordanous]

Thanks for the reminder Joe!

I've uploaded the audio recording of the panel discussion at ICCC this year, on teaching computational creativity. Audio quality not too bad, I haven't done anything to make it more audible so it could probably be enhanced if needed. https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/akj22/materials/res/teachingCC.mp3 

Also, I was asked if I could share our resources for teaching computational creativity at Kent: our module spec is here: https://www.kent.ac.uk/courses/modules/module/CO659 and our reading list is here: http://resourcelists.kent.ac.uk/lists/92F2F66A-9721-631D-9092-842212A433EE.html 

The Moodle pages we have for students on the module are unfortunately password-access only, but I've made available a [rather messy] PDF of the main Moodle page for the module. (Colin, hope this is ok!) For now, if there are any particular lab classes or lectures you'd like to see, please let me know and I'll send you them directly if I can. https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/akj22/materials/res/2015co659.pdf 

This is the first year we have run the Computational Creativity module at Kent, and we will almost certainly move things around a bit next time given what we've learned from the first year (and from the discussion in Paris), but it gives an idea of how we taught things last year. Colin (cc-d) and I would welcome feedback! 

Perhaps (ACC committee people, particularly Carlos): would it be possible to have a page on the ACC website for an index of teaching resources? We talked at ICCC about sharing practical classes and exercises, and I'd certainly be happy to share materials I've produced.

Anna

> email to computational-creativity-forum+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

> To post to this group, send email to

> computational-creativity-fo...@googlegroups.com.

[Carlos León]

Dear Anna, all,

This is very interesting indeed. The whole ACC site will be fully updated
soon, and including these resources would certainly be great for the
community.

Thanks for sharing. We will publish a "call for links and resources" soon,
and I'm sure the community will be glad if we could include yours.

Best wishes,
Carlos

[Tristan Strange]

I just spotted this event focussed on teacher training for Generative Art and felt it might be relevant to those with an interest in this stuff: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/generative-art-teacher-training-goldsmiths-university-tickets-27122256399

Maybe the content would be a little too introductory to be helpful for CC types, focus on arts students perhaps makes it OT... just thought I'd point out that it was occurring and was thinking it might be a good forum to discuss related ideas? I'm tempted to get myself a ticket.

Cheers,

Tristan

> email to computational-creativity-forum+unsub...@googlegroups.com.

> To post to this group, send email to

> computational-creativity-forum@googlegroups.com.

> Visit this group at
> https://groups.google.com/group/computational-creativity-forum.
> To view this discussion on the web visit
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/computational-creativity-forum/8a04fc05-7150-4274-9f6f-3cc8d74c0a6b%40googlegroups.com.
>
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Computational Creativity Forum" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to computational-creativity-forum+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to computational-creativity-fo...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/computational-creativity-forum.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/computational-creativity-forum/557eaa7d-6d8e-425f-aa28-1c65d483e87c%40googlegroups.com.