Examining Expansion of Creative Curricular Expression through Students as Partners Classroom Activity

Abstract

This study focuses on how the evolution of the engineering classroom can benefit from bringing additional humanistic techniques into our practice. One classic aspect of traditional classroom operation is the rhetorical essay format of assignments. It is usually the case that engineering documents are performed with rigor to specific standards and while this is of importance to creating regular reporting in industry, it can also limit the amount of creativity a student can display in their analysis of the subject content. This study begins to examine the challenges with allowing students both governance and freedom of their academic expression of engineering content to foster creativity in our student communities. When given the option for a creative presence in their coursework, students chose a creative path but only when their creative efforts did not affect their grades. When examining their final grades there was little correlation between what activity students chose to display their learning, however, there may be some indication that allowing them to find creative ways of using tools introduced in class is where the students gained the most insight from their activity.