Developing perspective.

Developing understanding, comprehension and interpretation.

Developing thinking, creative thinking, and advanced thinking.

Developing creative problem solving.

Developing interest and expertise.

In working with university students as well as military engineers, sparking creativity is a key development issue. Techniques I have used include:

1. Story telling -- get the person to write out a fictional scenario that spurs the development or solution. A key aspect is requiring people to be included. Use that to start conversations such as "how would that character pick it up/install it/use it." "Why does the person like or dislike the situation and the solution". "Who would try to resist this change and why".

2. Review the wheel. Are we really inventing a novel wheel when a stock wheel or even a formerly obsolete wheel is fits the need? Check the goodness of fit of existing solutions including an active check in the patent database as well as the CPSC or NIOSH (as appropriate) databases for "what not to do". The learning objective is exploit existing solutions for new situations.

3. Favorite invention (or military, "favorite example of technology in military use"). Have them explain what need the invention met, how effective compared to previous and later inventions, some of the 2nd and 3rd order effects it cause, and just the subjecting "why do you think this is cool". The last element is the emotional engagement -- get the person to communicate what excites them and make it clear this is a big part of the assignment. While the other aspects are the intellectual aspects, I put half of the exercise on just whether the person can emotionally sell me on why they like it, even (or especially) when I think it personally may be a bit trivial.

Thanks for the replies so far. I particularly value the “how to” ideas describing specific activities that you’ve tried in class or that you took part in as a student. Please continue to share those

I’ve come across a book called “The Creativity Challenge” that includes 150 concise ideas to develop creativity within several creative areas (e.g. aesthetic, divergent, linear). Each is described in a paragraph and many pages include space to put the idea into practice. The author, Tanner Christensen, also runs a website devoted to creativity which is worth checking out: https://creativesomething.net/

This book has sparked many ideas of short activities to include in class to break up our time together in the classroom. I’m going to try several of them in the coming semester and intend to record some of those experiences here.

I've been thinking, reading, experimenting, and writing about how best to teach creativity skills to engineering students. We'll have a few papers on the topic at the ASEE national conference this summer (assuming abstracts are accepted!).

My colleague and I recently presented a paper at the ASEE Mid-Atlantic Section Fall Conference to encourage engineering educators to incorporate the development of creativity skills in engineering curricula. We would appreciate hearing your thoughts on the subject. We will have results from some ongoing work at the ASEE National Conference this summer.

Conference Paper Inclusive Teaching: A Call for Creativity (WIP: Work in Progress)