Impact of team-based learning on promoting creative thinking in undergraduate engineering students

Abstract

Creative thinking is one of the professional skills desired in engineering students. Empirical evidence suggests that active learning strategies can have a positive impact in the development of professional skills required in the engineering field. Team-based learning (TBL) is a type of active learning that may be able to promote creative thinking in undergraduate engineering students. The purpose of this study is to determine if TBL has an impact on creative thinking in undergraduate engineering students. An experiment was conducted in which 106 undergraduate engineering students were randomly assigned to a TBL or traditional lecture-type learning condition, respectively. Students in the TBL environment were randomly assigned to teams of 5 participants each. The experiment was conducted over a 16-week semester. A post-test will be administered by the end of the semester in order to measure creative thinking in both groups to measure possible differences.