TEACHING ENGINEERING STUDENTS CREATIVITY: A REVIEW OF APPLIED STRATEGIES

Recent studies have emphasized the necessity of educating creative engineers. This paper aims to provide a literature review by answering what strategies can be applied to develop creativity in engineering education. As the literature demonstrates, creativity has been studied by a diversity of perspectives such as psychology, social psychology and sociology. Studies on engineering creativity indicate the importance of problem-solving skills for engineers. For developing creativity, strategies such as using thinking tools, learning by solving problems and building learning environment conductive to creativity have been suggested in engineering education. Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is a strategy of developing creativity. So characteristics of PBL, learning cycle in PBL and methods for enhancing group dynamics in PBL are discussed in this paper. In addition, Aalborg University in Denmark is introduced as an example of PBL strategy.