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We report on the findings from an exploratory pilot study using the experience-sampling method (ESM) and interviews to examine learning in two undergraduate engineering technology courses designed to promote creativity. Results of the ESM analysis showed that students’ positive experience decreased slightly in the first course and increased slightly in the latter course. Surprisingly, both instructors’ presence caused students to report lower levels of willingness to express a creative idea and feel like other students were really listening. Interviews revealed student perceptions about the importance of creativity as essential to the engineering industry and beliefs about being creative in the classroom during the stages of the design process, which relies heavily on group work. Discussion builds on these themes for facilitating creative classrooms emphasizing work with peers as an integral part of curricular and instructional design.

is a Professor and Department Chair of Electrical, Computer, and Telecommunications Engineering Technology at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He teaches courses technical programming and embedded systems design. His research interests include algorithm development and implementation in Field Programmable Gate Arrays.

The hallmark of Engineering Technology (ET) programs is its student-centered curriculum and hands-on approach to teaching. Many institutions with ET programs now require scholarship of their ET faculty in addition to their teaching duties. In many institutions that have always emphasized scholarship and research, undergraduate student education has often times taken a back seat to research. The question that arises for ET programs as we begin to engage in scholarly activities is: how do we insure that ET scholarship is student-centered similar to ET teaching and curriculum? The benefits of scholarship to ET students include enhancement of their critical thinking, innovative, lifelong learning skills, skills that many ET employers today are looking for in our students. In this paper, the author examines issues relating to the importance of scholarship to ET undergraduate students, barriers to ET student scholarship, mechanisms for embedding scholarship in the ET curriculum, resources required to facilitate ET student scholarship, and feedback from ET student scholars who recently worked on a scholarly project with the author. The author concludes that embedding scholarship in the ET curriculum is very desirable and suggests some ways and means to facilitate and nurture student scholarship in ET.