Creativity on the teaching agenda

Abstract

In the rapidly changing modern world there is a special need for engineers to be responsive to the differing demands of their physical, technical, social and economic environments. To do this effectively, they need to be able to think and act creatively. The typical engineering student is characteristically not particularly creative. This makes it all the more important that they are encouraged to develop whatever creative conceptual skills they have and to learn techniques that can enhance their creativity. This paper describes a start that has been made to teaching creativity to undergraduate civil engineering students using a set of examples and puzzles that are designed to highlight mental traps that we create for ourselves, and tricks to try to circumvent them.

Notes

Piaget wrote that ‘most researchers tend to neglect the central role played by language and concept in thought’ and suggested that poor communication skills will inhibit conceptual thinking skills, thus emphasizing the importance of good communication skills amongst students.

An excellent discussion of these various techniques can be obtained in Thompson and Lordan (1998).

The civil engineering students at The University of the West Indies have to do a final-year design project as a group, with individual assignments and design elements and group and individual assessment. They have to manage their interactions and the way they work themselves. Unfortunately, the students are rarely creative in the solutions they put forward, usually settling for the obvious, conventional approach without a second thought, i.e. they design buildings as boxes that are easy to analyse.

Some commentators believe that appropriate forms of assessment help students to be creative; see Berglund et al. (1998).

‘You are to design a single dwelling for a seaside site in Formby, nr Liverpool. The clients are a couple, one of whom is the composer of the piece of music you have selected off the project CD … The house should be a reflection of the composer as characterised by the music’. University of Liverpool (2003).

This was another project used by the University of Liverpool Department of Architecture a few years ago.

I am indebted to one of the reviewers of this paper for this example.

Again I am indebted to the unknown reviewer for the suggestion that this example could be used.