Finding creativity in the extrinsically motivated environment of architecture students

ABSTRACT

Researchers have found both that rewards decrease creativity and that rewards such as money/pay increase creativity. Higher education arts and STEM faculty acknowledge that their environment is often a pedagogical transmission system in which students are given final stress-evoking exams which typically result in little creativity growth and feedback on creativity goals. Given the dominant focus of educators and students on grade-based extrinsic rewards, we focus on how the main curriculum ‘capital’, namely grades, is affecting creativity in architecture students. To measure creativity as product, design projects of freshmen architecture students were assessed for creativity using the Consensual Assessment Technique. To measure motivation, we used Amabile’s Workplace Preference Inventory. We found that even with a schedule of formative assessments, extrinsic motivation caused students to focus on technical more than creative skills. We suggest that high-level formative assessment with its emphasis on developing intrinsic motivation may improve creativity skills in architecture students.

KEYWORDS:

• Creativity
• higher education
• formative assessment
• motivation
• rewards
• extrinsic motivation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pamela Watters

Dr. Pamela Watters currently serves a dual role as a research data analyst at Harvard Medical School (HMS) Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Community Partnership (DICP) and as statistical consultant at Molloy College in New York. At HMS, Dr. Watters examines bibliometric faculty networks, and how they contribute to advancement and productivity of faculty from diverse populations. At Molloy College, she advises faculty and graduate students in the design and statistical analysis of their research.

With attention on the importance of supporting creativity through alternative forms of student assessment, Dr. Watters authored an opinion piece on the impact of standardized testing upon creativity in the International Journal of Innovation, Creativity and Change (Nov. 2015). Dr. Watters received her PhD in Education and her MS degrees in Statistics and Computer Science from the University of Rhode Island.

Jayson Spas

Dr. Jayson Spas Associate Professor of Psychology at Rhode Island College. Dr Spas is a professor of research methods, applied clinical psychology, abnormal psychology and psychological assessment. He received his PhD in Psychology from the University of Rhode Island and did his postdoctoral fellowship at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University.

Dr. Spas has authored six documents in research journals examining addiction, alcohol and substance abuse. He is committed to a biobehavioral research career with interests in clinical psychology and behavioral medicine. His current NIH-funded project (Project SWISS) aims to develop and test a novel intervention that simultaneously targets both smoking cessation and weight loss, the first and second leading causes of preventable deaths in the United States.