ICERI 2022 PRESENTATION

In Sevilla, Spain to present:

DESIGNING FOR CREATIVE RESEARCH IN GRADUATE EDUCATION

T. Hurwich, D. Nicholas, F. Fleming, P. Gondek, J. Katz-Buonincontro, D. King, E. Perignat

Drexel University (United States)

Abstract

Developing competence with creativity is critical to graduate students’ training but is often unaddressed in graduate education. Creativity is an essential 21st Century skill necessary to graduate students’ training. Addressing the need for student training requires a preliminary step of sharing the experiences of designing courses and training programs in creativity to support student training. An instructional team consisting of a design expert, two educators, a social scientist, and a scientist/humanist used research- based best practices from literature on design thinking, creative thinking, and teaching to facilitate the innovative approaches of approximately 30 student researchers over four years. The team designed, trained, and iterated two courses: one surveying team-based creativity principles and procedures and the other focusing on enhancing the creativity of individual research projects.

The courses’ goals were to:

(1) provide students with a deeper understanding of the nature of creativity in research. (2) equip students with strategies and tools to develop their creative processes.

(3) provide students with firsthand experience in understanding how diverse disciplines approach creative research—and research in general, and give students opportunities to draw from disparate fields to find innovative strategies to employ in their research.

(4) help students work effectively in interdisciplinary teams and gain tools to address some challenges created by working together.

Findings in this paper, based on focus groups, planning documentation, project reports, and student- and instructor-generated artifacts, were used to determine the courses’ successes and challenges. Methods used to arrive at the insights in this paper include formal document analysis, participant reflective writing, and qualitative coding of existing research and production artifacts. Explicitly discussing and teaching multiple ways to understand creativity along with diverse creative practices led to students who were better able to gauge their creative ability and gained an understanding of how to leverage the skills taught in the courses to their research. Students reported that the courses added nuance to their understanding of creativity and their own creative processes that allowed them to understand how to continue to improve their creative output. The paper additionally shares struggles in designing and implementing an interdisciplinary program, particularly with regards to recruiting students to enroll in the courses and helping instructors manage their overall work load. The case study aligns with emerging higher education trends with respect to graduate experience due to the fact that students found the explicit teaching of creativity and creative practices to be beneficial, while professors require institutional support that addresses interdisciplinary enrollment, and a reward system for collaborative teaching. The paper provides data and experience that is likely of benefit to future endeavors to foster graduate students’ creativity, teamwork, and interdisciplinary research.

Keywords:

Interdisciplinary Design thinking, Creative Teams, Graduate Education, STEM Education,