Improving student creativity through digital technology products: A literature review

•Six categories of digital technology products are used in the classroom.•Studies have measured students’ creativity using four methods.•Digital technology products influence students’ creativity in five ways.•Digital technology's effect on creativity depends on teaching and learning behaviors. Teachers have increasingly included digital technology products in their curricula to improve students’ creativity. In order to understand the most widely used digital technology products and their impact on students’ creativity, 61 articles indexed by the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) were reviewed. Our review revealed that the articles investigated six categories of digital technology products (information saving-sharing, digital gaming, digital design, digital writing, robotics, and virtual learning environment), used four methods to measure students’ creativity (students’ creative characteristics, outputs, process, and learning environment), and analyzed five ways that digital technology products influence students’ creativity (increasing motivation, professional activities, higher order thinking, creative cooperation, and cognitive load). Our analysis of the literature indicates that the impact of digital technology products on students’ creativity is mixed and depends on teaching strategies and learning behaviors. We identify research challenges and important areas for future research.