Creativity Development in a Freshman Level Engineering Graphics Course — An Application

Abstract

The ability to solve problems is a skill that is highly valued and sought after by employers in many areas of industry.  Graduates of engineering and engineering technology programs that come into the workforce with the training to provide solutions to problems are, therefore, in high demand.  To provide students with this ability to look at issues in novel, inventive, and ingenious, ways, educators must include creativity-enhacning, inventiveness-developing exercises for the students into their curricula on a regular basis.

Much research has been done on creativity development and creative problem solving applications, and many solutions have been proposed for educational situations, including directed design projects, junior- and senior-level design groups, team applications, semester projects, and 'open-ended' problem sets.  Unfortunately, most of these high-end solutions are focused on upper division or senior-level students.  This paper proposes a simple approach for including exercises into the freshman level classroom, to help first and second semester students approach problems and problem solving in novel and inventive ways.  By working through these opportunities, the students' creative abilities begin to be developed, providing a stepping stone to more involved creativity developing exercises and projects, and resulting in early, confidence-building success in the problem solving area.  Examples of typical exercises will be discussed, as well as student feedback to the exercises.