UK Centre for Materials Education
Working with you to enhance the student experience
Working with you to enhance the student experience
The aim of the day was to look at, and experience, some of the approaches that are used in industry and other disciplines to enhance creative thinking.
Richard Brown, Chief Executive of the Council for Industry and Higher Education (CIHE) (http://www.cihe-uk.com), opened the symposium by giving a view on industry's requirements from new graduates and the necessity to produce students who are initiated into a professional way of thinking - capable of solving complex problems which don't have a 'right' answer. He drew particular attention to a report on employability conducted by the CIHE which is available on the CIHE website (http://www.cihe-uk.com/employability.htm).
This set the scene for the series of workshops and talks which followed, highlighting several very different ways of enhancing creative thinking. Caroline Baillie, from the UK Centre for Materials Education, took us through the 'creative process' from defining a problem, through purging preconceived ideas to generating and evaluating new ideas. Her presentation can be found at (http://www.materials.ac.uk/events/creativepres.pdf - Adobe Acrobat format, 5,200Kb)
The LTSN will soon be issuing a reprint of the publication CASE: Creativity in Art, Science and Engineering (Dewulf and Baillie, 1999, DFEE). If you would like to be informed when this publication is available, please contact the UK Centre for Materials Education (http://www.materials.ac.uk/about/contact.asp).
This generation and evaluation stage was taken up in a workshop facilitated by Graham Rawlinson which worked through two scientific methods of the generation and evaluation of ideas: TRIZ - the theory of inventive problem solving, which was invented by a Russian Naval Officer in 1920 and Synectics a more modern method which can be used to assess ideas generated and progress them systematically. Further information about TRIZ and Synectics and can be found through Graham's bibliography (http://www.materials.ac.uk/events/creativebiblio.asp).
After lunch Chris Wise gave a fascinating insight into how creativity is fostered amongst design engineers as well as some views on the huge 'fuzzy' areas of learning which traditional curricula do not address. Chris is a Professor of Creative Design at Imperial College, London and a co-founder of Expedition Engineering (http://www.expedition-engineering.com).
A wonderful example of the way in which we can learn from the traditionally creative arts subjects was John Renshaw's drawing workshop (http://www.materials.ac.uk/events/creativeart.pdf - Adobe Acrobat format, 49Kb) introducing some of the techniques he uses with fine art students at Chester College.
The mix of perspectives from academics, industrialists and practising engineers led to a lively plenary debate and hopefully provoked some interesting thoughts on how to adapt our science and engineering curricula.
By way of follow up to this meeting, the UK Centre for Materials Education is the lead partner in a newly funded project - The Creative University (http://www.materials.ac.uk/projects/creative.html).
Ellen Packham
