Integrating the Creative Process into Engineering Courses: Description and assessment of a faculty workshop

No one doubts the need for engineers to be creative and innovative. However, while some work has been done in engineering education on how creativity and innovation can be integrated into engineering design courses, little research has been done on how the creative process can be integrated into non-design engineering courses. The purpose of this paper is to describe a workshop offered in May of 2011 within the College of Engineering at the authors' institution. The interactive workshop, entitled, "Integrating the Creative Process into Engineering Courses" was led by an industrial/organizational psychologist whose area of expertise is creativity. Participants included nine faculty from the College of Engineering and seven faculty and staff from a teaching and learning center located in the College. The following topics were discussed during the two-day workshop: 1) What is creativity? Why is creativity important in engineering? 2) What is the "creative process?" 3) What are the antecedents and requirements for creativity? 4) What is known about enhancing creativity in others, i.e. our students? 5) How can creativity be assessed? The workshop consisted of a series of lectures, discussions, and interactive activities. Participants were given "homework," before and during the workshop. Results indicate that participants were pleased with the workshop, particularly in regards to the following: learning a more formal approach to incorporating the creative process within their courses, the applicability of creativity research to engineering education, discussion of idea generation in the classroom, and ideas for specific classroom exercises. A working group of the involved faculty was launched during the Fall 2011 semester to further explore this topic.