Development of Creativity of Engineering Students: A Cause for Concern?

This research paper describes the study of how instruction in the use of an idea generation heuristic may differently influence the creativity performance of first year, third year, and postgraduate students from the same institution. Innovation and creativity are increasingly becoming important skills for engineers, but some students suffer design fixation and are unable to effectively produce solution ideas. An experiment was devised whereby students received instruction in use of an idea generation heuristic, and then spent time generating ideas to a real-world engineering-related problem. Results showed that first year students performed better than third year students, who in turn performed better than postgraduate students. These outcomes suggest that if idea generation heuristics are to be introduced to curriculum, they may be most effective if introduced in first year of study when students may be more willing to accept and utilise such creativity techniques.