Creativity in STEM education: Reshaping the creative project

The use of creativity-based assignments to assess student learning is not as common in STEM classrooms as perhaps it is within those of other disciplines. On the other hand, there is a great demand for creative and innovative thinkers in STEM. While scientists and engineers are often perceived as only being concerned about hard facts and numerical data and computations, a great deal of creativity is required. Creativity is not something that normally comes to mind when characterizing a scientist or engineer. The fact that it takes a great deal of creativity when performing tasks within the STEM domains is often overlooked. This fact is overlooked not only in terms of perceptions, but also within the formal STEM curriculum. Perhaps it is because the curriculum is already so over-packed with technical courses that there is just no room for creative projects. In this paper, a strategy developed to incorporate creativity into a science course taken by both majors and non-majors will be outlined. The course is entitled Changing Views of the Universe and is often taken to satisfy the university's general education requirements towards graduation. Following a brief description of the Changing Views course, the creative project activity will be outlined. Next, the mechanism used to assess student learning as a result of the creative project will be shared. Examples of the students' creative projects will be illustrated. One student's end-product will be briefly showcased to help illustrate how student learning can be assessed. This paper aims to demonstrate that a creative project activity can provide an alternative and correspondingly robust assessment of student learning in comparison with more conventional tools such as traditional homework and summative exams.