Enhancing creativity in music education through VR: development of convergent and divergent thinking

The article addresses the development of creative abilities among music students using a virtual reality system based on the simulation of convergent and divergent thinking approaches. To this end, an original program, “Virtual Creative Boom,” was developed, which involved modeling various situations and approaches to their resolution. The Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT) was employed to assess the level of creative thinking among students both before and after the study. The results confirmed the hypothesis of a positive impact of the original model on the level of creative thinking. The experimental group of musicians showed an increase in average TTCT scores (from 41.836 to 67.099), with a statistically significant difference between the control and experimental groups within the same university (p = 0.000), despite both groups demonstrating unsatisfactory test results at the outset of the experiment.