Impact of Disciplinary Diversity on Perceived Interpersonal Conflicts and Creativity of Design Outcomes in a Project-Based Learning Course of Design Thinking

Abstract

In project-based learning (PBL), a powerful pedological framework in design education, groups of students develop prototypes toward a given design topic. The groups consist of members of different disciplines to stimulate the creativity of design outcomes. However, the impact of disciplinary diversity on outcomes has not been sufficiently investigated, especially in long-term design projects. In this research, we clarified the impact by investigating intragroup conflicts among teams of different degrees of disciplinary diversities in a 1.5-month PBL course whose participants were three highly diverse groups and four low-diversity groups. The intragroup conflicts of each group were evaluated through questionnaires and interviews with group members during the three phases of the course over the periods of the projects. The final design outcomes were evaluated in terms of creativity. The questionnaire results showed that the highly diversified group had a significantly lower degree of interpersonal conflicts than the lower one in the middle phase of the course. It also suggests that a higher degree of conflict significantly leads to a higher quality of design outcomes. However, the degree of disciplinary diversity in a team does not directly have a significant impact on the creativity of design outcomes. The interview results imply that a lower degree of disciplinary diversity created a minority party, which was suppressed from expressing her opinions in the team.