Fostering Creativity In The Capstone Engineering Design Experience

Can creativity be fostered during the capstone engineering design experience? What promotes the creativity of undergraduate seniors in mechanical engineering? The ideal venue to answer these questions is Youngstown State University’s mandatory capstone design course sequence of two semesters, the goal of which is to prepare senior engineering students to become project leaders in industry. The capstone sequence includes a combination of lectures, case studies, visiting speakers, and team projects. Oral presentations and written reports promote the required communication skills for project leadership. Expectantly, improving creativity skills in project leaders will impact future engineering designs. This capstone design class consisted of nine student design teams that synthesized, analyzed, manufactured, tested, and evaluated various projects for industry and other clients. Aspects of TRIZ, a Russian acronym for the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving, were incorporated into the existing capstone design instruction. The emphasis was on encouraging the students to think creatively using convergent methodology. Many real-world problems encompass multiple fields of engineering science involving open-ended problems and various possible solutions. The capstone design experience utilizes team projects to solve real-world problems through the application of TRIZ. Fostering creativity helps students to think in broader terms and enables them to become more innovative in finding solutions. This research has two objectives: 1) to study the teaching of creativity in the capstone design experience and 2) to assess the effectiveness of the creativity instruction with pre-tests and posttests using the Torrance 12,13 Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) for adults. The results of the first year of this three year, outcome-oriented, process study are presented and discussed in this work.