A New Course on Creativity in an Engineering Program: Foundations and Issues

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new creativity course tailored for engineering students, emphasizing foundational concepts and pedagogical strategies to enhance innovation skills within engineering education.

Contribution

It presents a novel conceptual framework and pedagogical approach for integrating creativity training into engineering curricula.

Findings

Developed a comprehensive course framework

Identified key pedagogical elements for teaching creativity

Highlighted benefits for engineering students' innovation skills

Abstract

The importance of innovation in the world's economy, now undeniable, draws great attention to the need to improve organizations' creative potential. In the last 60 years, hundreds of books have been written on the subject and hundreds of webpages display information on how to be more creative and achieve innovation. Several North American and European universities offer graduated programs in creativity. However, building an effective and validated creativity training program is not without challenges. Because of the nature of their work, engineers are often asked to be innovative. Without aiming for a degree in creativity, could future engineers benefit from training programs in creativity? This article presents the conceptual framework and pedagogical elements of a new course in creativity for engineering students.