TY - JOUR
T1 - An exploratory study of student perceptions of creativity and its importance in their leadership development
AU - Johnson, Princy L.D.
AU - Jablokow, Kathryn W.
N1 - Funding Information:
Dr Princy Johnson is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Engineering at Liverpool John Moores University. She received her PhD from King’s College London, sponsored by the Commonwealth Scholarship. Her research interests include energy-efficient protocols for wireless sensor and mobile networks, Optimisation tools for Data Analysis, intelligent algorithms for personalised interface for healthcare and transport applications, and leadership skills for engineers. Dr Johnson is a registered PRINCE2 ©R practitioner and an avid collaborator. She has put together a cohesive collaborative team from across Europe and coordinated the consortium through research activities and various UK and EU funding calls. Her collaboration with Penn State University in the area of leadership skills was funded by the LJMU’s collaborative research fellowship.
Funding Information:
This research materialized as a result of a collaboration between Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) and Penn State University (PSU). The first author was funded by a Research Collaborative Fellowship from LJMU to carry out this study and her visit to PSU in 2018; the authors wish to acknowledge this generous support. The authors are also grateful to Dr. John Marsland, Head of the Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering at LJMU, for his support of this project.
Publisher Copyright:
© American Society for Engineering Education, 2019
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2019/6/15
Y1 - 2019/6/15
N2 - Creativity is essential for success in the engineering field at all levels of individual development, from novices to experts and from early career engineers to experienced engineering leaders. Some global technical organizations go to extraordinary lengths to develop working environments that hone the creative skills of their employees, while an increasing number of academic institutions strive to deliver curricula focused on creativity from a variety of perspectives. Despite these efforts, engineering professionals and academics continue to debate the best ways to embed and facilitate creativity in engineering programs. In this exploratory study, we investigated how engineering students perceive creativity and whether we could positively influence their acceptance of creativity as part of their leadership development. We analyzed a sample of graduate-level engineering students' perceptions of the importance of creativity to their professional and leadership development. Then, we explored whether those perceptions could be influenced through activity-based learning. Specifically, we embedded creativity concepts and practices within a masters-level engineering course focused on professional and leadership skills at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU). Creativity was introduced through a dedicated 3-hour lecture session and several activity-based learning sessions throughout the course. We captured the students' awareness and perceptions of creativity at multiple points throughout the course using a combination of assessments, including tailored questionnaires, the Belbin team roles instrument, self-reflection questionnaires, peer feedback questionnaires, and peer reviews. The students' progressive changes in awareness and perceptions of creativity, if any, were then extracted and analyzed using these datasets. The outcomes of this exploratory study indicated that the influences of cultural background and work training were some of the reasons for students' apathy towards creativity. We also found that careful design and delivery of creativity-related sessions could positively influence their perceptions and improvement in the demonstration of creativity skills.
AB - Creativity is essential for success in the engineering field at all levels of individual development, from novices to experts and from early career engineers to experienced engineering leaders. Some global technical organizations go to extraordinary lengths to develop working environments that hone the creative skills of their employees, while an increasing number of academic institutions strive to deliver curricula focused on creativity from a variety of perspectives. Despite these efforts, engineering professionals and academics continue to debate the best ways to embed and facilitate creativity in engineering programs. In this exploratory study, we investigated how engineering students perceive creativity and whether we could positively influence their acceptance of creativity as part of their leadership development. We analyzed a sample of graduate-level engineering students' perceptions of the importance of creativity to their professional and leadership development. Then, we explored whether those perceptions could be influenced through activity-based learning. Specifically, we embedded creativity concepts and practices within a masters-level engineering course focused on professional and leadership skills at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU). Creativity was introduced through a dedicated 3-hour lecture session and several activity-based learning sessions throughout the course. We captured the students' awareness and perceptions of creativity at multiple points throughout the course using a combination of assessments, including tailored questionnaires, the Belbin team roles instrument, self-reflection questionnaires, peer feedback questionnaires, and peer reviews. The students' progressive changes in awareness and perceptions of creativity, if any, were then extracted and analyzed using these datasets. The outcomes of this exploratory study indicated that the influences of cultural background and work training were some of the reasons for students' apathy towards creativity. We also found that careful design and delivery of creativity-related sessions could positively influence their perceptions and improvement in the demonstration of creativity skills.
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M3 - Conference article
AN - SCOPUS:85078745055
SN - 2153-5965
JO - ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings
JF - ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings
T2 - 126th ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition: Charged Up for the Next 125 Years, ASEE 2019
Y2 - 15 June 2019 through 19 June 2019
ER -