An empirical study of industrial engineering and management curriculum reform in fostering students’ creativity

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of a creativity-fostering program in industrial engineering and management (IE&M) curriculum reform. Fostering creativity in students has become a crucial issue in industrial engineering education. In a survey of previous studies, we found few on IE&M curriculum reform. In particular, no study has dealt directly with fostering students’ creativity. In this study, we propose an IE&M curriculum reform program. The core of this program is intended to enhance students’ creative problem solving ability. Based on this concept, three required courses were developed: industrial communication, creative problem solving, and scientific research methodology. To investigate the effectiveness of this curriculum reform program, we conducted a two-year follow-up study. One hundred seventy-seven IE&M undergraduates from Yuan-Ze University participated this study, and Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) were used to measure changes in their creativity. The results showed that the students, after completing this reformed curriculum program, had significantly improved their creativity.

Keywords:

• IE&M curriculum reform
• Creativity
• Creativity-fostering

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the National Science Council, Republic of China (Taiwan) (NSC-91-2511-S-155-001). Special thanks are extended to Dr. Jing-Jyi Wu and his associates for their contribution to this research.