Australian electrical engineering curricula and development of creativity skills: How do we rate?

CONTEXT Engineering employers consider the ability to innovate and be creative as useful employment skills. Unfortunately, it has been reported that the creativity skill of some undergraduate engineering students decreases throughout a degree, and that many students are likely to suffer design fixation and stay with the first idea that comes to mind during idea generation, inhibiting their ability to generate creative concepts and develop their abilities. Numerous educators advocate for increased focus on creativity material within engineering curricula; one demonstrated method of enhancing these skills is to directly introduce students to creative problem-solving approaches. This raises the question to what extent existing engineering programs include creativity-related content that aims to overcome these issues, as currently this is not quantifiably understood for Australian engineering programs. PURPOSE To establish the extent to which students are exposed to creativity-related concepts and taught creativity-related heuristics in Australian undergraduate tertiary engineering programs, in order to comprehend whether Australian engineering programs actively assist in providing students with course material that enhances their ability to apply creative approaches and develop alternative solutions to a problem. APPROACH A list of Australian Qualification Framework Level 8 engineering single degrees accredited by Engineers Australia (offered during 2017) with "electrical" in the degree title and which had available program handbooks was compiled, resulting in set of 34 distinct degree programs offered at 25 tertiary institutions. A list of all the core/compulsory courses that a student must complete as part of each program was complied. Each course outline/handbook (including course description, learning outcomes etc.) was then consulted to determine whether the course explicitly (i) discussed the concept of creativity and/or innovation within the field of engineering (ii) included material on the application of creative approaches to aid in developing alternative problem solutions. Courses were evaluated to either meet each of the criteria or not, based upon information in the course outline. RESULTS Of the 34 programs and 919 core courses evaluated, a total of 20 courses at 17 institutions included explicit demonstration or explanation of the concept of creativity and/or innovation within the field of engineering. No programs were evaluated to include courses containing material that explicitly exposed students to, or required of application of, creativity heuristics or techniques. It was also established that very few courses required students to specifically demonstrate creativity and innovation in their stated learning outcomes. CONCLUSIONS Results show an overall lack of curricula material aimed at exposing and teaching creativity skills within Australian undergraduate electrical engineering programs, as well as a widespread lack of curricula material which explicitly discusses the concepts of creativity and innovation within the field of engineering. In order for tertiary institutions to produce students who are able to be more creative and overcome inhibition to develop alternative concepts, it is recommended that programs adapt to incorporate learning outcomes that are specifically aimed at enhancing students' creative thinking skills.