According to the Webster’s dictionary that sits on my desk, Aleatoric means, “characterized by chance of indeterminate elements.”
Aleatoric Creativity:
Aleatoric creativity thus, must mean something that’s the complete antithesis of the kind of creativity required for instructional design, which has to adhere to the instructional framework in order to generate value.
According to this Wikipedia entry on Aleatoricism, the term’s roots can be traced to the latin word “alea”, which means the roll of a dice. Thus, all aleatoric techniques employ the principle of randomness or chance. The Aleatoric methods (where the direction of the creative thought is determined by chance,) are best suited for art, music, and poetry; where creativity doesn’t have to obtain a pre-determined goal by reaching different objectives that have been distilled from the goal.
Let us see how Coffeebeans illustrates Aleatoric Creativity 🙂
Aleatoric vs. Stochastic:
While these two term may appear similar in meaning, they actually are different. While Aleatoric work is “based on the roll of dice/pure chance” stochastic work has a logical basis, but may sometimes have a random/unpredictable outcome. A good example of a stochastic process is the practice of medicine. Different patients may react differently to the same medicine. By the same argument, instructional design processes too can be called stochastic processes, where the eventual learning outcome may depend upon how the audience may react to the content.