Nurturing creativity and design teaching: Are we doing all we can?

In this paper, we report on the results from a qualitative study of six exemplary engineering programs focusing on the ways and the extent of nurturing creativity in engineering students. The study (P360: Prototyping the Engineering of 2020) included data collection from students, faculty, and administrators at the six institutions. This data collection focused mainly on three student outcomes, including design and problem solving. Creativity and how creativity was nurtured, both inside the classroom and outside, often emerged as a major theme. We also support our qualitative findings with quantitative data. Overall, the results indicate that although students improve their creativity in design settings, this result is mostly a by-product of design teaching, and creativity is not taught per se. Quantitative results show that program emphasis on creativity and innovation significantly correlates to skill levels in design problem solving, interdisciplinarity, contextual awareness, and recognizing perspectives. Qualitative data provide supporting evidence for this.