creativity "misrules": first year engineering students’ production and perception of...
TRANSCRIPT
CREATIVITY “MISRULES”
First Year Engineering Students’ Production &Perception of Creativity in Design Ideas
Colin M. Gray1, Seda Yilmaz1, Shanna R. Daly2,Colleen M. Seifert2, & Richard Gonzalez2
1 IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY 2 UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
CREATIVITY & ENGINEERING
• Increase in design activities for first-year engineering students (Dym & Little, 2004; Ogot & Okudan, 2006)
• Pedagogical tools and strategies have been developed to increase creative potential (Dym et al., 2005; Tolbert & Daly, 2013)
Specific barriers students face in learning how to be creative are unclear (Csikszentmihalyi, 1988; Tolbert & Daly, 2013)
KNOWN BARRIERS
• Fixation as one diagnostic outcome of the lack of creative ability (Purcell & Gero, 1996)
• Tools can be used to effectively discourage fixation and increase capability (Daly et al., 2010; Smith & Linsey, 2011; Smith, Linsey, & Kerne, 2011)
• Inaccurate beliefs about creativity slow the development of creative ability
“MISRULES”
• Inaccurate beliefs have been studied in other educational domains as “bugs” or “misrules” (Brown & VanLehn, 1980; Engelmann, 1993)
• Such beliefs are deeply held, and difficult to document or change without deep knowledge of how beliefs are built and systemically altered (Carnine & Becker, 2010)
We are assuming that students’ tacit biases about creativity shape their labeling of designs as “creative,” and may serve as a barrier to their creation and recognition of truly novel and useful concepts
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1. Where do first-year engineering students identify their “most creative” idea in an idea generation activity, when compared with all generated concepts?
2. What characterizes the relationship between a participant’s espoused belief about creativity and their ordering of creative concepts?
3. Does Design Heuristics as a pedagogical tool have an impact on the student’s perception of a concept’s creativity?
DESIGN HEURISTICS
DESIGN HEURISTICS
Provides prompts to help designers generate
alternatives that vary in nature, discouraging fixation and encouraging divergent
patterns of thinking
(Yilmaz, Daly, Seifert, & Gonzalez, 2011; Yilmaz, Seifert, & Gonzalez,
2010)
Derived from empirical evidence of industrial and
engineering designs
(Daly et al., 2012; Yilmaz, Christian, Daly, Seifert, & Gonzalez, 2012;
Yilmaz & Seifert, 2010)
Validated through a range of product analysis, case studies, and protocol
analyses, in both educational &
professional contexts
(e.g., Yilmaz & Seifert, 2009; Yilmaz et al., 2011; Yilmaz et al., 2010; Yilmaz et al., 2013; Yilmaz, Daly, Christian,
Seifert, & Gonzalez, 2014)
METHOD
• 156 first-year engineering students• Two-day design-build-test activity prior to
matriculation at a large research university• 85-minute idea generation session, using
brainstorming and Design Heuristics methods• Survey on beliefs about creativity,
ranking their concepts from most to least creative
EXPERIMENTAL CONDITIONS
DESIGN PROBLEMbike rack
FIXATION SOURCEexisting solution
DESIGN PROBLEMbike rack
FIXATION SOURCEself-generated solution
DESIGN PROBLEMspill-proof coffee cup
FIXATION SOURCEexisting solution
DESIGN PROBLEMspill-proof coffee cup
FIXATION SOURCEself-generated solution
IDEATION SESSION
BRAINSTORMING
30 MINUTES
DESIGN HEURISTICS
30 MINUTES
Generate as many ideas as possible
INSTRUCTION
Generate as many additional ideas as
possible
RELATIVE LOCATION OF “MOST CREATIVE”
CONCEPT
Subset (Method)
Participants (% male)
Most Creative Concept (Least)
M (BS)
M (DH)
I (BS) 21 (38.1%) -0.76 (0.05) 4.19 2.76
II (BS) 54 (70.4%) -0.30 (-0.27) 4.91 3.10
III (DH) 50 (60.0%) 0.37 (-0.32) 3.72 2.68
IV (DH) 31 (80.6%) 0.77 (-0.31) 4.55 3.06
TOTAL156 (65.4%)
0.06 (-0.25) 4.36 2.91
FOUR CASES
FOUR CASES
EXAMPLE CASE: BROOKE (I)
A section of the roof of the car can be brought down so it is in the back seat or the floor when the seats are down. The bikes can be attached to the roof on clamps that are located on the roof already. Once attached, controls lift the roof back into place, with the bikes already
secured.
MOST CREATIVE LEAST CREATIVE
EXAMPLE CASE: LINDA (IV)
MOST CREATIVE LEAST CREATIVE
The bike is fastened to a rack that is just above ground level (attached with locks like any
normal bike). The ground-level rack collapses to a rack sticking
off the back of the car, and then the rack collapses in so
the bike is above the car.
CREATIVITY “MISRULES”
Creative Concepts Must Never Have Been Thought Of Before
Creative Concepts Must Be As Little Like Shipping Products as
Possible.
Creative Concepts Are Generally Impractical
Creative Concepts Must Be Completely Creative
DESIGN HEURISTICS TO COMBAT MISRULES
Creative Concepts Can Be Based
on Existing Ideas
Creative Concepts Can Improve
on Shipping Products
Creative Concepts Can Be Practical
Ordinary Concepts Can Have Creative Components
THANK YOU
This research is funded by the National Science Foundation, Division of
Undergraduate Education, Transforming Undergraduate Education in Science,
Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (TUES Type II) Grants # 1323251 and
#1322552.
COLINGRAY.ME
DESIGNHEURISTICS.-COM