Perspectives on the use of Serious-Storytelling for Creative Thinking Awareness in Engineering

Abstract

This Research-to-Practice Full Paper discusses the use of the Serious-Storytelling approach for enhancing soft skills that are decisive for the development of new job opportunities for young engineers. Multifarious international organizations, in their recent reports, emphasize the need to include new cognitive tools for developing the soft skills that Gen Z engineers need due, on the one hand, to the strong consolidation of social media, which shows an unexpected difference in the way recent graduates view the world and define themselves; and on the other hand, to the exponential development of the technology that was made accessible to them. Serious-Storytelling cognitive tools were adapted for the design of critical reading and critical writing co-curricular activities and were included as active learning experiences in different engineering programs. The research was conducted based upon a 4-group Solomon methodology with a quantitative design. To assess creative thinking competencies, different evaluation instruments were used for PreTests and PostTest, including several fluency and originality tests, as well as storytelling articulateness ability tests and modified VALUE rubrics of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U).The obtained results showed that the designed Serious-Storytelling approach promoted a better understanding of scientific concepts in engineering subjects, a higher capability to develop rising demand skill sets and a stronger creative thinking competence awareness.