Assessing creativity in engineering students

Creativity has been studied extensively since 1956 when the NSF sponsored the first national research conference on creativity (Taylor, 1962). Within engineering education, one often hears the call for the development of creativity in engineering students. As part of the IDEAS grant (DUE-0836861), we examined the relationship between domain specific hypothetical challenges and opportunities, and engineering students' self-reported attitudes and behavioral intentions designed to measure creative self-efficacy in engineering. Our concept of creative self-efficacy in engineering was designed to assess one's confidence in their ability to be creative within the engineering domain. Using factors analysis procedures, we have identified four factors that appear to be novel indicators of creative self-efficacy in engineering: Cognitive Approaches, Cognitive Challenges, Cognitive Preparedness, and Impulsivity in problem solving.