A Study on Engineering Students’ Creativity through Art-Infused Curriculum

Abstract

At present, to enhance students’ innovative ability is an important research topic to engineering education. Although engineering students can learn hard engineering techniques step by step through instilled teaching methods, process-based learning methods as well as formulated learning, but there is no conducive to idea generation and creativity promotion. While art has the characteristics of raising questions and breaking the existing thinking, this paper hopes to cultivate students’ ability of divergent thinking and enhance their creativity through the implantation of art. In this study, we introduced CAPE teaching strategy, adopted a curriculum of a Taiwan university of science and technology, used case study as main study method to explore art-infused engineering teaching methods and teaching contents. There are four stages of CAPE: inquiry, cooperation, record and reflection. The results show that: (1) The art teachers’ teaching contents are corresponding to the divergent thinking categories (Khandwalla, 1993). (2) Classroom contents enables engineering teachers to focus their teaching from purely technical teaching to the technical application level. When the art teacher and the student discuss their creative techniques and presentation form, it will induce students to challenge old methods and generate different solutions.