Barriers to Creativity in Engineering Education: a Study of Instructors and Students Perceptions

See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/245366675 Barriers to Creativity in Engineering Education: A Study of Instructors and Students Perceptions Article in Journal of Mechanical Design · July 2007 DOI: 10.1115/1.2739569 CITATIONS READS 158 2,294 2 authors, including: Kazem Kazerounian University of Connecticut 69 PUBLICATIONS 938 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Systematic Design and Analysis of Artificial Molecular Machines View project All content following this page was uploaded by Kazem Kazerounian on 21 September 2015. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. Barriers to Creativity in Engineering Education: A Study of Instructors and Students Kazem Kazerounian Professor Fellow ASME Perceptions Stephany Foley This paper studies “creativity” in engineering education, by examining the perception of NSF Graduate Fellow instructors and students. We aim to identify factors that impede a creative environment (creativity blockers). The study entails a review of established research in the fields of Department of Mechanical Engineering, psychology and educational psychology to identify factors which create an educational University of Connecticut, environment conducive to creativity. These factors are formalized in the Ten Maxims of Storrs, CT 06269-3139 Creativity in Education, a set of criteria that constitute an educational environment conducive to fostering creativity in students. These maxims form the basis for our work in examining the contemporary engineering education. Extensive surveys are designed, cre- ated, distributed, and statistically quantified to study the perceptions of engineering educators and students, in comparison to nonengineering educators and students. The results unfortunately show that current engineering students experience almost none of the Ten Maxims of Creativity as part of their academic experiences. ͓DOI: 10.1115/1.2739569͔ 1 Introduction nuclear era, cold war, energy crisis, and emergence of computers began to transform engineering education. More complex applica- Creativity is a prerequisite in any ingenious design: the harvest tions exceeded the limits of the engineers’ intuitions and de- of electricity; the airplane; the Apollo program; the silicon chip; the internet. Time and again, America has proven that creativity manded a superior mastery of the natural and mathematical sci- results in design and technological breakthroughs that change the ences. The paragon of engineering education became one in which course of human history. The history of achievements reveals a students entered a program well-versed in mathematics and sci- process in which knowledge of the mathematical and natural sciences and graduated with an even greater mastery of these areas. ences converged with the skills of critical judgment and creativity, The pendulum had swung to the opposite side, with theoretical an understanding of economics, the adoption of iterative processes aspects of engineering predominating. Engineers were being that embrace failure, and the desire to create technological trained just like scientists. miracles. This amalgamation is now known as “engineering.” To In the late 1980s, experts in industry began to question the foster and further evolve this legacy of engineering ingenuity, it is pedagogical premises of “knowledge transfer.” Their assessment critical that we educate engineers to be creative thinkers and edu- was negative. Engineers, they claimed, generally lacked the skills cators. This fact is repeatedly echoed by educators, industrial needed to excel in an increasingly competitive environment. They managers, professional associations, national academies, and po- cited skills relating to critical thinking, team dynamics, societal litical leaders. If creativity is so central to engineering, why is it and cultural awareness, communication, creativity, problem solv- not an obvious part of the engineering curriculum at every univer- ing, economic analysis, and so on; skills that scientists were rarely sity? Part of the answer might come from reviewing the history of expected to have mastered. In response to these criticisms, educa- engineering education in the United States and Europe. Engineer- tors responsible for designing engineering programs, first in the ing education in Europe and the United States has gone through at United States, then in Europe and finally in other parts of the least three distinct phases in the past 50 years. The nature of these world, renewed their attempts to strengthen the “design compo- phases, in turn, largely defined the perception and implementation nent” of engineering curricula. Executing this transformation of creative thinking in engineering education. proved more difficult than they had anticipated. The “design com- ponents” they introduced were, in most cases, scarcely more than 1.1 The Historical Phases of Engineering Education in exercises in the rigorous synthesis of various applications of the Western Countries. Soon after World War II in the United States same fundamental sciences. Many engineering educators felt very and in Great Britain, large numbers of war veterans with signifi- uncomfortable abandoning a structured and rigorous scientific cant informal, hands-on technical training entered formal engi- paradigm and adopting the more flexible approach required in neering programs and shaped the culture and pedagogical para- “design.” Nowhere was this more apparent than in The Accredi- digms of engineering education. In the 1950s and early 1960s, in tation Board for Engineering and Technology’s ͑ABET’s͒ design the United States and in Europe, engineering education heavily requirements for engineering curricula in the 1980s ͓1,2͔, which emphasized learning by doing and hands-on skills. As a result, ironically spelled out a very rigid ͑and quantifiable͒ method for students emerged from these programs as highly trained engineer- eliciting “creativity.” ing technologists who were able to produce practical, workable In the 1990s, the evolution of engineering education continued. systems and technical machines. Engineering schools in Asia and Over the past decade, ABET advanced a major reform effort de- the Middle East adopted similar approaches. signed to encourage curricular innovation and to improve the ac- In the late 1960s, the 1970s and early 1980s, the space race, creditation process. These efforts have given rise to new criteria for evaluating engineering programs, Engineering Criteria 2000 ͑EC2000͓͒3͔, which have once again shifted the emphasis of Contributed by the Design Theory and Methodology Division of ASME for publication in the JOURNAL OF MECHANICAL DESIGN. Manuscript received October 4, 2006; engineering curricula, this time moving away from using pre- final manuscript received February 28, 2007. Review conducted by Clive L. Dym. scribed measures and toward evaluating student outcomes in a Journal of Mechanical Design Copyright © 2007 by ASME JULY 2007, Vol. 129 / 761 Downloaded 03 Feb 2008 to 213.96.38.176. Redistribution subject to ASME license or copyright; see http://www.asme.org/terms/Terms_Use.cfm process of continuous self-assessment and improvement. Al- taking risks. Without learning to fail, students have an un- though the subject of creativity is not addressed directly in the realistic view of what the engineering profession is truly ͑EC2000͒, these new accreditation criteria have sparked much de- about. bate among engineering educators and have significantly pro- • Curiosity, inherent in those who actually choose to be engi- moted interest in engineering education and its challenges and neers, has been limited to “how something works” rather consequences ͓4–7͔. than the equally important “if something could work” in the school environment. Regurgitating known solutions has be- come the norm without the balance of allowing students to 1.2 Our Hypothesis: Creativity is Not Valued in the Con- keep that sense of wonder. temporary Engineering Education. It is our belief that despite • The majority of the engineering faculty are educated them- the intense efforts toward embracing creativity in engineering selves in very structured programs in which scientific and education in recent years, progress has not been significant. Very mathematical accuracy was the unequivocally dominant fac- often, creative work by the students is viewed by faculty as an tor. The current administrative philosophies in the schools of excuse for sloppy work. They believe that engineering is serious engineering and the evaluation, tenure and reward systems business that demands tedious attention to details and an absolute for the engineering faculty, further encourages such struc- need for accuracy. Often, embracing ambiguity and exercising tured mindsets. flexibility is equated with holding lower standards. Even in the • Women constitute a small minority among the engineering design process in assigned projects, faculty require the students to faculty. According to the American Association of Univer- mostly follow well-proven design techniques that they have cov- sity Women, they constitute between 3% and 15% of the ered in the text books or lectures rather than challenge students to engineering faculty ͓8,9͔. There is solid researched evidence think through a new process or innovate a unique solution. that diversity and creativity of an environment are strongly Further, although we have not

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