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This research shows an experiment using systematic creativity tools, challenge-based instruction and active learning methods with freshman mechanical engineering students during the course Introduction to Engineering at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Monterrey Campus. The objective is to identify ways of impacting on the creative profile and learning ab...
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... for the capacity for self orientation in these two groups (Fig. 4), it was found that in the experimental group the highest average was obtained in component 3: independence and autonomy, which means that the students show willingness to learn and/or to obtain what interests them. They show willingness to assume responsi- bility for their acts, besides having a suitable concept as apprentices and individuals. Compo- nent 1: planning and selection of strategies was the second place in preference. Component 4: use of experience and critical conscience was in third (Fig. 5). In the control group only 5 students obtained values of`veryof`very creative', while 43 students had valuesàbove average'. Of the 51 students in the control group, only 3 students received average values (39, 38, and 31 points). When the results of the test of creativity as percentages are compared, it is possible to deter- mine that only 9.8 % of the students in the control group were in thèvery creative' category whereas in the pilot group this category included 18.3 % of the students. The categoryàbove average' was reached by 84.3 % of the control group and by 80 % of the pilot group. Of the students in the control group, 5.3% were categorized asàverage', compared to only 1.6 % in the experimental ...
Context 2
... for the capacity for self orientation in these two groups (Fig. 4), it was found that in the experimental group the highest average was obtained in component 3: independence and autonomy, which means that the students show willingness to learn and/or to obtain what interests them. They show willingness to assume responsi- bility for their acts, besides having a suitable concept as apprentices and ...
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Citations
... The results of experiment on the influence of TRIZ knowledge on engineering student's creativity is the subject of [78]. This is the model study in terms of experiment setting and result interpretation. ...
The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) is a toolkit of methods to support systematic creativity. The latter has been the focus of many studies since late 90s, when innovations became a recognized resource for wealth in modern world. The review is based on SCOPUS papers containing “TRIZ” in abstract, title or among keywords. About 1200 retrieved publications where briefly analyzed by co-appearance of other popular and more known tools or terms. Then the detail analysis of 100 most cited papers takes place. The review reveals the most popular TRIZ application fields (product design, information processing), the most popular TRIZ instruments (contradiction analysis) and the most typical way it is used in the reviewed studies (integration to other tools or application/adaptation for a specific field).
... The study shows how TRIZ way of thinking reflects the learning approach of a majority of students and this allows to suppose that Altshuller's theory can represent a prolific tool to improve creative idea generation. The results of an experiment on the influence of TRIZ knowledge on engineering student's creativity are reported in [67]. Differences are highlighted between a control group with no exposition to TRIZ and a sample of trained students. ...
The development of the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) has not followed the usual patterns of scientific validation required by engineering methods. Consequently, its outreach within engineering design is interpreted differently in the scholarly community. At the same time, the claimed powerful support in tackling technical problems of any degree of difficulty conflicts with TRIZ diffusion in industrial settings, which is relatively low according to insights into product development practices. The mismatch between ambitious goals and moderate spill-over benefits in the industry ranges among the various open issues concerning TRIZ, its way of thinking, its effectiveness, the usability of its tools. In order to provide a general overview of TRIZ in science, the authors have attempted to analyse reliable and influential sources from the literature. The performed survey includes the top 100 indexed publications concerning TRIZ, according to the number of received citations. Variegated and poorly interconnected research directions emerge in the abundant literature that tackles TRIZ-related topics. The outcomes of the investigation highlight the successful implementation of TRIZ within, among the others, biomimetics and information processing. The traditional borders of mechanical and industrial engineering have been frequently crossed, as the use of TRIZ is also witnessed in the domain of business and services. At the same time, computer-aided platforms represent diffused attempts to boost TRIZ diffusion and applicability.
... It should be noted that many events can take place during the time gap between the workshop and the survey to influence the outcomes of the survey. While investigating learning styles, Rovira et al. (2008) found that freshmen mechanical engineering students who were given an introduction to TRIZ were scored as more creative than those who did not learn about TRIZ. Ogot & Okudan (2006) reached a similar conclusion studying first year students in an 'Introduction to Engineering Design' course placed into groups. ...
Innovation Engineering (IE) is an educational training program that presents tools and advice on product innovation in three main categories: Create, idea generation; Communicate, communicating ideas; and Commercialize, selecting ideas to invest in further. The concepts taught in IE include common suggestions for early-stage product innovation. This paper addresses a challenge of implementing the IE program, specifically that it does not provide peer-reviewed sources or adequate data to substantiate its approach. This lack of substantiation limits effective implementation at companies. This paper also takes a step in examining IE’s claims that it is ‘a new science’ and a ‘new field of academic study’, a topic motivated by the Design Science Journal’s aim to serve as the archival venue of science-based design knowledge across multiple disciplines. This paper provides a compilation of academic literature that has tested the tools and advice espoused by IE. Almost all included papers contain test-versus-control experimental evidence. A mix of supporting and refuting evidence was found. Overall, the work provides a useful compilation of evidence-of-effectiveness related to common innovation and design practices that spans different design stages and is applicable for multiple disciplines and industries. This evidence comes from a variety of sources, including design, engineering education, psychology, marketing, and management. The work can also serve as an approach to evaluate overarching approaches to design in general, specifically, testing the foundations by vetting related test-versus-control experimental studies.
... Engineering innovation is a key economic development engine for any nation in a rapidly changing technology-oriented world. As part of the innovation process, design engineers must use their creativity to generate ideas; hence, creativity can be considered as an essential skill for any engineer [1,2]. Given the increased competitive pressures, perhaps it is not surprising that industrial employers point to deficiencies in graduating engineers' key design synthesis capabilities such as: problem solving, generation of alternatives, evaluation and decision-making [3]. ...
... Success stories of TRIZ involving established companies exist (e.g., see Ref. [18,25] for comprehensive studies of TRIZ usage at Ford and Hewlett Packard). In a relevant study done by Okudan 1 Word English Dictionary, accessed online at dictionary.reference.com ...
The objective of this paper is to present experimental results of a specific ideation method TRIZ (an abbreviation of a Russian acronym of “Teoriya Resheniya Izobretatelskikh Zadatch” meaning theory of inventive problem solving) as compared to ad hoc methods used by students. It is critical to understand how and why TRIZ works as it can lead to improvements on how to teach this method, and also how to analyze ideation methods in general. Our hypothesis is that TRIZ improves the creativity level of subjects using it as observed in the produced design outcomes. The experiments were conducted simultaneously at two institutions: University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) and University of Maryland (UMD). The results were analyzed as part of an existing research partnership with Pennsylvania State University (PSU). The ideation task present here has been used in all three institutions; it is the redesign of a traffic light that uses light-emitting diodes (LED) instead of incandescent bulbs leading to snow build-up on the lights in certain climates as LED's generate less heat to melt the snow. UTEP and UMD student groups were tasked with redesigning the LED traffic lights to resolve this issue. The assessment was performed on the outcome (i.e., ideas generated) using quantity, novelty and variety as metrics. Numerical results of these metrics are shown along with conclusions based on observations of the experimental process. Data presented in this paper conclude that TRIZ does improve the ideation effectiveness metrics Novelty and Variety while slightly reducing Quantity when compared to a control group using ad hoc ideation methods.
... At this stage in young engineers' coursework, they have had several industrial encounters through internships as well as several design projects, so they have already built digital models of functional solutions. In other studies dedicated to freshmen [13] or first year students [14], the condictions were obviously different. Pre-requisite results have therefore been sufficiently acceptable for them to move beyond simple abstract designs to produce explicit and credible models for technologically plausible solutions. ...
The industry is undergoing a transformation that is guiding it from the quality era to that of innovation. This transformation necessarily involves changing design practices, the foundations of which currently rest on an optimization mentality. An innovation oriented approach would require that the bases of the design action contain other rules of invention where creativity and problem solving would have priority. In order to address these requirements, some teaching institutions have initially resorted to teaching creativity methods by simply stimulating the ideation phases of standard design processes. Having reached the limit of what creativity methods could contribute; TRIZ appears as a likely alternative to such methods by providing greater structure and more results. However, the first experiments in teaching TRIZ rapidly revealed an incompatibility between the time needed for effectively using it and the time generally allotted for teaching a new method. This article presents the results of an experiment in introducing new TRIZ software and the way in which it was implemented in engineering students’ coursework at INSA-Strasbourg over the past three years. These results lead us to state that the use of software improves quality in the TRIZ teaching process, especially with regard to the number of skills dealt with and acquired by engineering students in project situations.
... In the days that engineering curricula is changing from providing mainly technical skills to applying creative solutions to new emerging engineering challenges, creativity is becoming an essential skill to be acquired by students [1]. The ability to react to a rapidly changing world and propose efficient engineering solutions depend now more than ever on the ability to be creative [2]. ...
Concept maps are graphical tools for organizing and representing knowledge. The fundamentals of concept mapping are in Ausubel's learning theory which is based on the assumption that meaningful learning occurs when the new concepts are linked to familiar concepts existing in the learner's cognitive structure. Creativity can be seen as a very high level of meaningful learning. Database Principles is a compulsory subject studied in the second year of the Computer Engineering degree at the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU. The study presented in the paper was designed pursuing a twofold goal: (1) to introduce engineering students the Concept Mapping technique as a way to promote meaningful learning, and (2) to involve engineering students in both a creative and collaborative learning experience using concept maps. Final exam marks showed significant statistical differences among the experimental group and the control group. In addition, participants admitted that the use of the concept mapping technique to fulfill the objectives of this study is applicable to other domains, situations and problems.
... Some comparable studies on PBL and the traditional approach were examined in the meta-analyses in [23] but all the experiments included in the investigation dealt with PBL in the field of medicine, except one in vocational education and one in economics. In general, only a few scientific articles have been published dealing with the comparison of the PBL approach and more traditional approaches in engineering [6,8,14,18,[27][28][29]. The authors in [8] and [27] reported differences in students' knowledge measured before and after the PBL innovation incorporated in the traditional approach. ...
... The authors in [8] and [27] reported differences in students' knowledge measured before and after the PBL innovation incorporated in the traditional approach. Analyses in [18] and [28] showed differences in skills improvement in both educational formats, [14] showed differences in motivational beliefs, self-regulations and study strategies, the study in [29] showed differences in creativity. Only one study [6] examined knowledge gathered in both educational formats. ...
In this comparative study, we examined the level of basic discipline knowledge and problem-solving abilities in problem-based learning (PBL), incorporated into a traditional curriculum in an introductory statistics course. Progressively less structured, less familiar and more open problems were presented to engineering students. Engineering problems triggered the learning of new statistical contents and activated small group problem solving. Students as a group determined the learning goals, individually searched for information, and together analysed the information collected. Such a problem-solving process with real-world problemsis often seen as unstructured and time-consuming. Anexperiment was carried out to find out whether this approach yields adequate basic statistical knowledge and improves problem solving. Two randomised groups of students from the same engineering programme were compared: one group used PBL and the other followed the traditional method of instruction. The results of statistical analysis showed that engineering students with the PBL approach acquired sufficient basic statistical knowledge and were better able to solve statistical problems from the field of engineering than the students who followed the traditional way of instruction. Some characteristics of the implementation of the course are discussed, as well as some limitations of the study.
... While (1) and (3) are personality traits, (2) and (4) must be learned. Traditional idea generation methods such as brainstorming rely heavily on (2). Accordingly, these methods fall short when used as the main vehicle for creativity. ...
... Results indicated that the degree of student acquired core knowledge did not differ between the instructional techniques, but students in the inquiry-based course demonstrated significant improvement in "innovative thinking abilities." These observations were corroborated by Leon-Rovira et al. 9 ; the authors also found that student creativity was enhanced as a result of integration of active/inquiry-based techniques. Problem-based learning approaches have also been employed and resulted in positive student feedback. ...
... Examples of nontechnical applications of TRIZ can be found in Zhang et al. (2005) and Vincent et al. (2005). León-Rovira et al. (2008) also conducted an empirical study that tested the impact of TRIZ training on engineering students. ...
This paper provides a brief introduction to the field of creativity studies. After more than 60 years of scientific study, there is much that has been learned about how to teach and facilitate creative thinking. We review some of the well-known methods for fostering creativity on demand, as well as the research that has explored the efficacy of these approaches.
