Balancing Academic Rigor and Creative Thinking: A Transformational Approach to Teaching Senior Design.

Innovation arises from creativity. "Thinking outside the box" has long been seen as a necessary precursor to innovation and invention in engineering. However, creativity is rarely part of traditional engineering curricula. In 2015, our group began to explore integrating theater-based creativity methods into bioengineering capstone design. Evaluation of student outcomes was encouraging, so we continued to develop the course in 2016 and 2017. As we worked to refine the pedagogical process, we discovered tensions (real or perceived) between providing academic rigor and allowing students to embrace their creativity; for instance, we experienced some resistance from engineering faculty and students toward adopting methods they viewed as "artsy" or lacking academic rigor. Here, we discuss the tensions we observed offer potential ways to mitigate such tensions and begin to consider how to expand on our successes.

When Theater Comes to Engineering Design: Oh How Creative They Can Be.

The creative process is fun, complex, and sometimes frustrating, but it is critical to the future of our nation and progress in science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM), as well as other fields. Thus, we set out to see if implementing methods of active learning typical to the theater department could impact the creativity of senior capstone design students in the bioengineering (BE) department. Senior bioengineering capstone design students were allowed to self-select into groups. Prior to the beginning of coursework, all students completed a validated survey measuring engineering design self-efficacy. The control and experimental groups both received standard instruction, but in addition the experimental group received 1 h per week of creativity training developed by a theater professor. Following the semester, the students again completed the self-efficacy survey. The surveys were examined to identify differences in the initial and final self-efficacy in the experimental and control groups over the course of the semester. An analysis of variance was used to compare the experimental and control groups with p < 0.05 considered significant. Students in the experimental group reported more than a twofold (4.8 (C) versus 10.9 (E)) increase of confidence. Additionally, students in the experimental group were more motivated and less anxious when engaging in engineering design following the semester of creativity instruction. The results of this pilot study indicate that there is a significant potential to improve engineering students' creative self-efficacy through the implementation of a "curriculum of creativity" which is developed using theater methods.