Developing Instrumentation for Assessing Creativity in Engineering Design.

A perceived inability to assess creative attributes of students’ work has often precluded creativity instruction in the classroom. The Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT) has shown promise in a variety of domains for its potential as a valid and reliable means of creativity assessment. Relying upon an operational definition of creativity and a group of raters experienced in a given domain, the CAT offers the field of engineering education an assessment method that has demonstrated discriminant validity for dimensions of creativity as well as for technical strength and aesthetic appeal. This paper reports on a web-based adaptation of the CAT for rating student projects developed during a weeklong engineering camp. Images of resulting scale models, technical drawings, and poster presentation materials were displayed on a website which was accessed by a team of seven independent raters. Online survey software featuring a series of Likert-type scales was used for ratings. The raters viewed project images on larger computer screens and used iPads to input their assessments. This effort extended the accessibility of the CAT to raters beyond limitations of geographic location.

[1]  T. Lewis.  Creativity: A Framework for the Design/Problem Solving Discourse in Technology Education , 2005 .

[2]  Ngss Lead States.  Next generation science standards : for states, by states , 2013 .

[3]  Edmund A. Marek,et al.  Relationships among informal learning environments, teaching procedures and scientific reasoning ability , 2001 .

[4]  J. R. Landis,et al.  The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data. , 1977, Biometrics.

[5]  A. Cropley.  Definitions of Creativity , 2020, Encyclopedia of Creativity.

[6]  Laura M. W. Martin,et al.  An emerging research framework for studying informal learning and schools , 2004 .

[7]  John Baer,et al.  A Comparison of Expert and Nonexpert Raters Using the Consensual Assessment Technique , 2008 .

[8]  T. M. Amabile.  The social psychology of creativity , 1984 .

[9]  Matthew D. Lammi,et al.  Pre-service Teachers' Modeling as a Way of Thinking in Engineering Design , 2013 .

[10]  Jennifer Buelin-Biesecker,et al.  Can Pedagogical Strategies Affect Students' Creativity? Testing a Choice- Based Approach to Design and Problem-Solving in Technology, Design, and Engineering Education , 2013 .

[11]  Thinking for the Future: Developing Higher-Level Thinking and Creativity for Students in Japan--and Elsewhere. , 1999 .

[12]  S. Lau,et al.  Peer Status and Perceived Creativity: Are Popular Children Viewed by Peers and Teachers as Creative?. , 1996 .

[13]  M. Lorenzen.  Creativity in context : Content, cost, chance and collection in the organization of the film industry , 2009 .

[14]  M. Hickey,et al.  An Application of Amabile's Consensual Assessment Technique for Rating the Creativity of Children's Musical Compositions , 2001 .

[15]  Gretchen Hein,et al.  Assessing creativity in engineering students , 2011, 2011 Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE).

[16]  Mary Besterfield-Sacre,et al.  Informal learning in engineering education: Where we are — Where we need to go , 2011, 2011 Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE).