Systematic Review of the Positive and Negative Impacts of Digital Tools on Creativity in Fine Art Education: 2019-2025

Abstract

This study focuses on the relationship between digital tools integration in art education and its impact toward the students. There are numerous studies from literature review in investigating the impact of digital tools integration in art education, however, there are lacking study that focuses on elucidating the effect of digital tools integration toward the creative development of the art students. Moreover, the rationale of the digital tools’ integration is not explained as well. With the potential benefits, the current literature does not address the potential factors in hindering the creativity of art students when using digital tools in their learning. Therefore, current study revealed that the art students agreed that digital tools integration improved their learning efficiency as well as their emotion and satisfaction. This review also categorized multiple factors that are potential to improve and hinder the creativity of the art students when using digital tools in their art education. This outcome deems to be the latest opinion and result by the art students when they are using digital tools in their learning process. With that, the stakeholder can refer to this outcome for further education planning. Objective: The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of integrating digital tools and platforms on fine art education. Specifically, this study targets to understand the perceived advantages by student when utilising digital tools in their art learning process, to evaluate how the integration of digital tools contributes to the creativity and to identify the potential factors that may hamper creativity of the students when using digital tools in art education. Theoretical Framework: Based on the latest technological advances, digital tool is a group of technologies that effectively distribute, preserve, analyse, and display information by integrating the knowledge of multiple disciplines (Jiang, Wang, & Tsai, 2022). It is distinguished by digitalisation, networking, and interaction. As digital tools are perceived to provide numerous benefits to the learning process, its effect on creativity should be studied. Creativity is defined when the combination of originality and effectiveness (Runco & and Jaeger, 2012). However, creativity can be judged in several ways from different perspectives (Walia, 2019). Creativity is one of the important elements in art works, as it serves as a unique expression by an individual. By understanding the relationship between digital tools and creativity in art education, it can provide a clearer perspective in planning blending learning environment among art students. Method: This study applies systematic review method to collect related articles that investigated the effect of digital tools integration in art learning. The searching of articles was done in Scopus, with only research published between 2019 to 2025 were selected. Several inclusion and exclusion criteria were formulated to ensure the consistency of each included articles and to ensure the articles fulfil our research objectives. Then, the included articles were summarised with demographic details and findings. Thematic analysis was carried out to identify the similar findings across the studies, to generate themes that were significant to our study objectives.  Results and Discussion: Our findings showed that integration of digital tools in art education can improve the learning efficiency of the students which, one of them is creativity. This integration also helped to enhance their emotion and satisfaction during the learning process. Moreover, we revealed the potential factors in improving the creativity of the students are the AI features or tools that can help them to explore more idea and design, thus improving their creativity. The learning experience plays vital role in creative development as well. This is because with higher motivation and engagement in the learning environment, students tend to be motivated with idea and exploration. Nevertheless, there are some potential factors in hindering the creativity of students when using digital tools which are moral and ethical issue when creating innovative idea, competency of the teachers and the funding and resources in the art education. Research Implications: Current study provides latest insight on the perceived advantages by digital tools integration in art education. Related stakeholder can utilise the information to plan their learning tools which will help in enhancing the learning process. Moreover, related stakeholder also can avoid the potential factors that hinder the creative development in art students when they understand the underlying reason as proposed by current study. This will assist to maximise the benefits of digital tools integration in art education in future.  Originality/Value: This study serves as an empirical analysis by collecting the data over the world to understand the impact of digital tools integration in art education. The consistency of the result was observed, thus providing the significance to the field in acknowledging the perceived advantages of digital tools integration in art education, and how creative development among students is achieved. Moreover, the concerns that might influence creativity was also addressed across the studies and was highlighed in current study.