A novel creativity and innovation course for engineering students

Abstract

A new engineering entrepreneurship minor program was launched in the College of Engineering in Fall 2008. The first course in this program focuses on Creativity and Innovation. This course has been designed to introduce sophomore engineering students to a variety of creativity and innovation concepts heretofore unfamiliar to them. Differences between creativity and innovation are made clear and then in-class exercises to allow the students to practice different problem solving techniques are used. Guest speakers from various arts fields tell about how they use different creativity techniques to develop their various art forms. Finally, over the 12 weeks of the course, the class is divided into teams with the goal of developing a novel game or toy for kindergartners. The goals of this course are to provide students with tools to provide the students with a clear understanding of the difference between creativity and innovation, to enhance their creative approach to problem solving, to improve their powers of observation and nonlinear thinking, and how to better determine and understand customers' needs. Assessment of course work related to these goals and an evaluation of how well the goals were met are presented in addition to the details of the course content. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2009.