An Investigation of the State of Creativity and Critical Thinking in Engineering Undergraduates

Abstract

The goal of an undergraduate engineering education is to provide students with the necessary knowledge and skills needed to solve real world problems. Creativity and critical thinking are two abilities essential for success in the workplace, and are highly sought after by employers. However, there is evidence of decreasing creativity and critical thinking in senior engineering students. This study sought to understand if freshman engineering students are measurably more creative, but less capable of critical thinking, than senior undergraduate engineering students. Creativity and critical thinking were measured using the Test for Creative Thinking-Drawing Production (TCT-DP) and the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (WGCTA), respectively. The data suggest that freshman engineering students were significantly more creative than senior engineering students. However, senior engineering students were found to be no better at critical thinking than their freshman counterparts. When compared to normative data, the senior engineering students underperformed significantly compared to the general population of senior college students. With study limitations in mind, these findings may suggest that senior engineering students are not only less creative, but also less capable of critical thinking, than when they started their engineering program. If this is indeed the appropriate conclusion, then there is a need to understand the underlying issues driving the decline of creativity and critical thinking in engineering undergraduate students.

Divergent thinking and academic performance of students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder characteristics in engineering

“…Atwood and Pretz (2016) found that creative ability was not predictive of first or final year grade point average (GPA) for engineering students, suggesting that it does not play a substantial role in engineering course assessment. Two recent studies (Genco, Hölttä-Otto, & Seepersad, 2012;Sola, Hoekstra, Fiore, & McCauley, 2017) demonstrated that first year students in engineering courses were capable of significantly greater creativity on design and divergent thinking tasks than seniors, suggesting that either more creative students leave engineering programs before their senior year or undergraduate engineering education may actually contribute to a decline in creativity over 4 years of college. The traditional structure of post-secondary engineering education may prove particularly difficult for students who struggle in such environments, including those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; Dipeolu, 2011;Honken & Ralston, 2013).…”

Methodological Design: Effects of a Morphological Approach for Different Students and Professionals

“…Therefor it is important to focus on this phase and to study effects of the method to different students groups as we want to prepare our students in the best possible way to generate added value to the current design practice in industry. The literature review (Ho 2001, Ahmed et al, 2003, Goldtschmidt 2013, Björklund 2013, Seidel and Fixson 2013, Kok et al, 2016, Self et al, 2017, Sola et al, 2017, Mosely et al, 2018, Jagtap 2018, Kierman et al, 2019 suggests a significant difference between both student groups, novice and more experienced ones, therefor made it interesting to further research this aspect. Our main aim is therefor to investigate the effect of the proposed design method to different student groups, especially Bachelor and Master students to see whether the method is more effective for one of the groups.…”

Engineering Creativity: Ideas from the Visual Arts for Engineering Programs

“…After initial ideas are developed in step (3), they are conceptually evaluated before step (4). The prototype is explicitly evaluated in step (6) to quantify how well it meets the design criteria. This is largely an objective evaluation but may include subjective judgment for certain design criteria (e.g.…”

“…Troublingly, however, there is evidence that those graduating from engineering programs are less creative than those who begin. 5,6 One reason for this may be the traditional focus of engineering education on specific procedures applied to wellconstrained problems in which there is a single correct answer. 7 As Surovek and Rassati state, "focusing predominately on developing analytical skills at the expense of variable solution approaches limits the development of the divergent thinking skills needed for innovation."…”

“…5 Another reason may be that there is little formal creativity training within engineering curricula leaving the development of necessary skills up to chance or individual interest. 6 As Sir Ken Robinson, an educator and expert on creativity, wrote: "Simply asking people to be creative is not enough. Children and adults need the means and the skills to be creative."…”