Integration strategy of creative problem-solving components into engineering curriculum

While engineering programs value creativity as a critical competency required for successful professional practice, instructional strategies for integrating creativity are lacking. To innovate the teaching strategies, we integrate creative problem-solving (CPS) components into engineering curriculum using 'visual representation' activities that allow students to capture or transform engineering problems into visual forms in a speedy but creative way. Particularly, visual representation using digital drawings and paintings is designed to include five essential stages, namely fact-finding, problem-finding, idea-finding, solution-finding and acceptance-finding. A series of CPS exercises in engineering classrooms start with critical reflection in which students identify the problem (fact-finding); reflect on what they have already learned, and then undertake active inquiry and deep research on subject matter (problem-finding); brainstorming (idea-finding) that propels imaginative and divergent thinking from different perspectives; visualization and creation of unorthodox creative solutions (solution-finding); and contextualization linking between creative ideas and the underlying principle of the subject (acceptance-finding). Thus, visual representation-based CPS strategy highlights a divergent thinking phase in which one generates lots of ideas, and then facilitates a convergent thinking phase in which only the most promising ideas are selected for further exploration. We will discuss multilayered advantages when CPS is adapted to classroom settings, including i) flexible implementation into engineering courses and into diverse classroom settings without rigorous modification of existing course teaching methodology, ii) daily practice of creative and authentic products in diverse settings that can increase students' creativity and motivation to pursue non-routine creative solutions and iii) engaging, challenging, and inspiring classroom setting, adapted to today's engineering students who are more visually literate and tend to feel more comfortable in image-rich environments than with text. Also, we will discuss our initial outcomes and highlight visual representation as a creative component in engineering curriculum.