An Experimental Investigation of the Innovation Capabilities of Undergraduate Engineering Students

Genco, Nicole; Hölttä‐Otto, Katja; Seepersad, Carolyn Conner

doi:10.1002/j.2168-9830.2012.tb00041.x

Cited by 125 publications

(112 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…The results from this longitudinal 4-year concept generation study indicate that creativity of engineering students increases during a mechanical engineering program. This is opposite of what was concluded from a prior study 36 . From the between group results, there is no significant difference between freshman and senior in the mean quantity of ideas (Mann-Whitney test, U = 1480, p = 0.40).…”

Section: Longitudinal Studycontrasting

confidence: 99%

Changing Creativity through Engineering Education and Bio-Inspired Design

Durand

Kim

Henao³

et al.

2015 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Proceedings

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Joanna Tsenn is a Ph.D. student studying Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University, with an anticipated graduation date of August 2015. She received her B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2010. Her research interests include bioinspired design and engineering design methodology. Her dissertation topic relates to the development of a text mining tool to automatically identify biological materials' structure-property relationships, which can aid in the design of bioinspired materials. Changing Creativity through Engineering Education and Bio-Inspired Design AbstractWith today's increasing competition and desire for innovation in our society, engineering schools must also improve students' creativity. However, according to a prior study (Genco, Holtta-Otto, Seepersad, 2012), the creativity of mechanical engineering students decreases over the course of an engineering program as measured through the originality of ideas for a design problem outside the mechanical engineering domain. In this paper we seek to answer two questions. First, how does the creativity of mechanical engineers change over time, as measured against four standard metrics of creativity -quantity, quality, variety, and novelty? Second, how do different bio-inspired design methods enhance student performance? This paper provides a high level summary of the project.To answer the first question, we provide evidence from two data sets: a within-subjects and between-subjects longitudinal study that analyzes and compares students who have generated solutions for the same design problem during their freshman and senior years. For both the within-subject and between-subject data, there is an increase in the variety of solution and the number of high quality solutions. In contrast to the prior study, using a slightly different quality metric, we observe a decrease in average quality likely due to the participants searching a larger portion of the solution space. Also in contrast to the prior study, we observe no change in average novelty and an increase in the number of highly novelty solution found by seniors. The design problem within this study is clearly within the domain of mechanical engineering so it may be that students learn to be more creative as they progress through the engineering curriculum within their domain, but decrease in creativity for design problems outside their domain.To answer the second question, we provide evidence from a biologically-inspired design course. This study, conducted over two semesters, evaluates the effects of a senior level Bio-Inspired Design course and various methods of performing bio-inspired design. Students learn 5 methods: Directed Method, Case Study, AskNature.org, BioTriz, and Functional Basis Keyword. Each method is compared through the quantity of ideas, quality, and number of solutions generated. The results show various strengths and weaknesses associated with each tool. The students were also given Carberry et al's Engineering Design Self-Efficacy su...

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Section: Longitudinal Studycontrasting

confidence: 99%

Changing Creativity through Engineering Education and Bio-Inspired Design

Durand

Kim

Henao³

et al.

2015 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Proceedings

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“…Three percent of those statements were coded jointly with the second coder as described before. The remaining 17% were coded independently and inter-rater agreement measured by computing Cohen's kappa coefficient, a commonly accepted method of assessing inter-coder reliability [29]- [31]. An agreement was defined as both coders assigning the same code to a transcript segment.…”

Section: Validitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating Pattern in Design Performance of Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Engineering Student Teams

McFarland¹,

Bailey²

2015 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Proceedings

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INTRODUCTIONOver the last 5 decades, the average engineering curriculum has largely been based on an "engineering science" model in which the analytical and mathematical elements of engineering are strictly of focus [1]. This implies that all challenges faced in engineering can be condensed and modeled as solvable math equations. This model, however, poses a threat to the current methods of engineering practice by giving the notion that all serious engineering is done in the language of mathematics [2]. While the engineering science model approach has a clear role in a design process, the model neglects to show that engineering also involves "working between technical and non-technical considerations … and managing trade-offs where solutions are judged by interdisciplinary criteria" [3]. Therefore, in instituting this model in engineering curricula, those factors that make engineering design as much of a social activity as a mathematical process are neglected [2]. Neglected factors include the "systems methodology" and "engineering design" related processes such as need identification, problem formulation, development of alternatives, and analysis and decision-making using prototypes and judgment. Also neglected are social aspects such as cultural and environmental influences and processes such as working with a group of individuals. All of these factors, plus many more, are what drive the demands of technology and product innovation today. These demands have evolved the current practice of engineering in such a way that there now exists disconnect between engineering education and engineering practice. This disconnect has resulted in today's engineering students lacking the key skills needed to be successful engineers [4] and resulted in many prominent calls to reduce the distance between engineering education and engineering practice. The most notable call is perhaps from the National Academy of Engineering's Engineer of 2020 project [5], [6] which calls for the inclusion of interdisciplinary knowledge and teamwork skills into engineering curricula. As a result, engineering education is starting to change.One major area of change in engineering education is in design. Although design is widely considered as the most distinguishing and fundamental activity of engineering [1], most curricula have it either isolated in the senior year or sometimes also in the first year. Now, as the engineering curriculum has progressed, first year design courses, known as the cornerstone engineering courses, and fourth year design courses, referred to as capstone courses, have seen increased development as well [1]. However, these capstone courses serve as the only standard opportunity across engineering education for undergraduate engineering students to showcase their engineering education. This traditional way of approaching engineering education does not compare to modern engineering practice in which interdisciplinary teamwork and design are centrally important. This disconnect between engineering education and The interdis...

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“…Another term for this creativity-innovation barrier is design fixation which may be defined as an "unintentional adherence to set of ideas or concepts limiting the output of the conceptual design" 29 . The ominous word in that sentence is "unintentional" because it reminds us that we may unknowingly or habitually rule out a fresh perspective.…”

Section: Minimize the Left-brain Driven Einstellung Effectmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neuroscience 101: Might Your Teaching and Their Learning Benefit?

Walesh¹

2016 ASEE Annual Conference &Amp; Exposition Proceedings

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This paper's purpose is to explore the idea that if faculty members acquire significant knowledge of brain basics, much of which has been discovered and/or documented in the past few decades, they can be even better teachers. They can use that knowledge to improve student advising --show students how to be more effective and efficient --and, when opportunities arise, enable students to achieve higher levels of creativity and innovation.The presentation begins with a summary of brain features and functions, not at a brainsurgery level of detail, but rather from the perspective of immediate application outside of medicine and inside of engineering education. Building on that foundation, many practical advising and teaching suggestions are offered.The paper then describes whole-brain methods discovered by the author, that is, methods available to assist individuals or teams engage both cranial hemispheres and their conscious and subconscious minds. Suggestions, reinforced with examples/exercises, are offered for ways in which faculty can use the whole-brain tools to help students, especially student teams, be morer creative, innovative, and entrepreneurial.

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An Experimental Investigation of the Innovation Capabilities of Undergraduate Engineering Students

Cited by 125 publications

References 51 publications

Changing Creativity through Engineering Education and Bio-Inspired Design

Changing Creativity through Engineering Education and Bio-Inspired Design

Investigating Pattern in Design Performance of Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Engineering Student Teams

Neuroscience 101: Might Your Teaching and Their Learning Benefit?

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