Why don't students recognize creative learning opportunities in a biomedical science program?

Abstract

Creativity is a uniquely human trait and it is the force behind many modern advancements. Due to the rapid changes seen across the economy and society, creativity has become highly valued and is in increasing demand by employers. To prepare students to meet this demand, many education stakeholders (such as Monash University) have incorporated creativity into their ethos. However, preliminary analysis of the learning objectives of the Bachelor of Biomedical Science degree (program) at Monash University identified little reference to creativity, even though one of its Graduate Attributes is to become a "creative scholar." The aims of this study were to ascertain the biomedical science students' perception of creativity in the program and to evaluate the program's core units (subjects) for creative learning opportunities. The data shows that students perceived a lack of creativity in the program. However, using Bloom's taxonomy's definition of create, an evaluation of the creative learning opportunities in the core Biomedical Science units identified the presence of a variety of creative opportunities. This discrepancy between student perceptions and learning opportunities lead to the question: Why do not students recognize creative learning opportunities? From the survey responses and mapping data, three reasons were identified: students' lack of awareness of a Graduate attribute, a lack of explicit reference to creativity at the program and unit level, and students' lack of understanding of creativity. © 2019 International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 47(6):656-668, 2019.