Technology-Enabled Nurturing of Creativity and Innovation: A Specific Il-lustration from an Undergraduate Engineering Physics Course

摘要

There is general agreement that creativity and innovation are desirable traits in the toolbox of 21st century engineers, as well as in the future workforce in general. However, there is a dearth of exemplars, pedagogical models, or best practices to be implemented in undergraduate engineering education to develop and nurture those talents. In this paper, we use a specific example of a classroom activity from a course designed to help bridge the transition from learning the fundamental principles of engineering physics in introductory courses to being able to creatively and innovatively apply them in more advanced (and less academic) settings, such as senior capstone projects and on-the-job challenges in the future workplace. Application of techniques for generating and evaluating ideas are described. To enhance the benefits of group creativity and facilitate real-time electronic brainstorming in the classroom, we use InkSurvey with pen-enabled mobile computing devices (iPads, tablet PCs, Android devices, etc.). This free, web-based software was developed for collecting real-time formative assessment of learning, but using it in this setting effectively mitigates many of the social issues that typically plague brainstorming in a group setting. The focus, instead, is on paying attention to the ideas of others while encouraging fluency, originality, and honing positive critical thinking skills. This emphasis is reflected as the group creates a metric to evaluate their potential solutions. A specific case from undergraduate and graduate level engineering physics courses is described to illustrate how the extensive work done in this arena in psychology, marketing, and business environments can be applied to STEM education. Students were presented with the problem of how to measure the mass removed from a quarry. The classroom process is outlined and actual student results are presented to illustrate the method for other instructors who might be interested in employing similar activities in a non-threatening, low-stakes learning environment.