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16 May 2002, Armourers' Hall, 81 Coleman Street, London

Overview

This symposium, hosted by The UK Centre for Materials Education together with the LTSN Generic Centre, aims to bring together several of the key thinkers in the area of creativity with representatives of the LTSN and lecturers from the science and engineering community. The aim of the meeting is to discuss the way ahead for creative science and engineering education in the UK.

Background

There is an increasing perception, from industry and Professional Associates (e.g. SARTOR, UK), of the need for graduates of science and engineering to be creative thinkers and innovators. However, it is not clear how creativity can be nurtured or fostered within graduates, nor how it can be assessed.

Many companies throughout the UK are now employing creative thinking techniques such as 'TRIZ' to help their employees think and act more creatively. We are concerned as a nation about 'technology transfer' and 'idea capital', making sure that our creative ideas turn into effective innovations. There has been a great surge of interest in creativity recently and much development in training courses and consultancies for industry, in enhancing creative thinking. Very little of this has reached Higher Education.

Workshop Aims

Questions we are hoping to address include:

  • What are the creative skills that are valued in the subject?
  • What are the creative skills that are valued by employers?
  • What is the nature of creative processes in academic learning contexts?
  • How can opportunities for promoting creativity be included in the curriculum?
  • How can the outcomes of creativity be recognised and assessed?
  • What can we learn from industry?
  • What can the curriculum designers in science and engineering learn from the humanities and arts, and vice versa?

Programme

09:30am Richard Brown
  "Can creativity be engineered?"
10:00am Caroline Baillie
  "Enhancing creativity in science and engineering"
11:00am Graham Rawlinson
  "Innovation, Chance and Choice - the science art and psychology of innovation." This session will include an introduction to the use of Synetics and TRIZ (the theory of inventive problem solving) as processes for innovation, as well as some practice using both methods to generate and evaluate ideas.
   
1:00 pm Lunch
   
2:00pm Chris Wise
  "Time Travel"
2:30pm John Renshaw
  Workshop and discussion on how the methods used to foster creativity with the arts can be applied to science and engineering
   
4:00pm Close
   

  

If you have any further queries please contact the Centre.

 

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