Prior knowledge and student performance in idea generation

Context: Engineering graduates are expected to possess sound skills in generating creative ideas to open-ended problems. Belski and Belski (2016) recently compared the performance of undergraduate engineering students from four countries using an identical idea generation experiment and established that students enrolled in engineering degrees from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) performed statistically significantly below their international counterparts. Belski and Belski (2016) associated the established lag in performance with lack of knowledge in science that is caused by weak entry prerequisites to enter the majority of engineering programs in Australia. They have also proposed to reconsider entry science requirements in order to ensure that students accepted to engineering degrees in Australia are better prepared for the engineering profession. Purpose: This paper presents the outcomes of the same idea generation experiment that this time was conducted at the University of Melbourne (UoM). It was anticipated that prior knowledge in science possessed by students accepted into undergraduate engineering systems degrees at the UoM exceeded that of their RMIT counterparts. If it were the case and the idea generation performance of the UoM students exceeded that of RMIT students, concerns raised by Belski and Belski (2016) would be validated and would require urgent attention by engineering educators. Approach: Ninety three students who have just enrolled in engineering systems degrees at the UoM were involved in an identical experiment to that conducted by Belski, Hourani, Valentine, and Belski (2014). Ideas generated by these students were assessed by two independent assessors that used the same evaluation criteria as the earlier study (Belski et al., 2014). In order to make a more accurate judgement of students' science knowledge they were also asked to identify their secondary school choices of the science subjects. Results: The number of independent ideas and the breadth of these ideas generated by students from the University of Melbourne exceeded that generated by RMIT students. Students from the UoM Control group outperformed RMIT counterparts statistically significantly. Their performance was in line with the performance of students from Czech Republic and Russian Federation. Also, idea generation performance of students from the UoM Control group moderately and statistically significantly correlated with the number of science subjects they studied at secondary school. It was found that experimental treatment influenced idea generation more than prior science knowledge. Conclusions: The findings partly support the conclusion of Belski and Belski (2016). For the Control group students, who were not influenced experimentally, prior science knowledge did matter; thus, the concerns raised by Belski and Belski (2016) stand. As such, it seems wise for Australian engineering educators to reassess the need for more stringent entry science requirements for engineering degrees. Further research is required to establish the influence of science knowledge and experimental treatment on idea generation.