Teaching risk-taking to engineering design students needs risk-taking

Abstract

Creativity is essential in the engineering design process to achieve innovative results. However, research has consistently shown that among the many factors that foster creativity in engineering education, one of the most central requirements is risktaking, which is not widely covered in engineering design education. This article attempts to understand the risk-taking approach in an engineering design education environment both from the students’ and the instructors’ perspective by conducting a qualitative comparative study in an Australian University. Overall, the study finds that instructors’ teaching method has an influence on students’ approach towards risk-taking. The evidence shows that engineering instructors are risk adverse and hesitate to adopt new approaches in education. However, fostering creativity in education requires a creative approach, which is possible through risk-taking. Encouraging engineering students to adopt a risk-taking approach during the design process is not possible until the engineering instructors and engineering faculties are willing to take risks in their own teaching methods. keYwords risk-taking engineering design engineering education creativity teaching approach design process 06_ADCHE_18.1_Tekmen_67-80.indd 67 06/04/19 11:37 AM Yasemin Tekmen-Araci 68 Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education inTroducTion Engineering is ‘the design and development of technological solutions to problems’ (Cropley 2015: 2). It is the ability to solve problems with a creative process (Zhou 2012a). Cropley and Cropley (2010) describe creativity from an engineering perspective as ‘functional creativity’ to indicate the importance of functional requirements in the engineering field. Creativity ‘helps engineers with complexity, it helps shape new knowledge, find new solutions to problems, engage in technologically innovative activities and lead to new designs’ (Zhou 2012b: 99). This study, building on the works of many others, reviews and offers a definition of creative thinking (Amabile 1983; Cropley and Cropley 2010; Kazerounian and Foley 2007; Williams et al. 2010): Creativity empowers the engineer with ingenuity to tolerance for the unconventional so as to generate original and non-obvious alternatives, which ultimately lead to better, innovative and worthwhile solutions to design problems. It is argued that education plays a role in relation to creativity (Cropley and Cropley 2010). However, teaching creativity to engineering students can be a challenging endeavour (de Vere 2009) and many researchers (Kazerounian and Foley 2007; Williams et al. 2010; Zhou 2012a) agree that it is still an issue to be addressed. Researchers believe that the best way to teach creative thinking skills is through the problem-solving processes (Kazerounian and Foley 2007; Williams et al. 2010). Research has shown among the many factors that foster creativity in engineering education, risk-taking is one of them. Risk-taking enables students to try new things, which is crucial to the creative process (Piirto 2011; Treffinger et al. 2002). It is important to encourage risk-taking to foster creativity in engineering education (Kazerounian and Foley 2007). Piirto (2011) believes that risk-taking is a personality trait, and it might be difficult to encourage it, but it should not be discouraged by educators either. Sternberg (2007) also suggests that encouraging students to take risks also means not punishing them for making mistakes. Liu and Schonwetter (2004) described ‘fear of failure’ as a block to creativity. Risk-taking should become more common and it should be encouraged in the engineering educational context (Sahlberg 2009). Not all disciplines treat risk-taking in the same way. Akin (2001) compares architecture and engineering in terms of risk-taking and argues that architects take risks, while engineers are not allowed to make any mistakes, which leads to the lack of risk-taking. Engineers believe that they cannot take risks like artists or musicians because they are building automobiles or bridges that can have profound life-changing consequences (Kazerounian and Foley 2007). When making risk-involving decisions, engineers are particularly concerned about safety (Ross and Athanassoulis 2010). In an educational context, an essential factor that influences students’ creative thinking and enhances risk-taking is the approach taken by instructors. The relationship between creative thinking, risk-taking and teaching strategy has been widely investigated. Some researchers believe that it is the responsibility of the educators to stimulate creative thinking among students (Kazerounian and Foley 2007; Richards 1998). However, this is not an easy task. This is because an instructor’s teaching practices are shaped, in part, by their beliefs. For some, beliefs held around creativity need to be modified. Such a change is only possible by encouraging educators to develop new teaching methods (Henderson et al. 2011). Elisondo et al. (2013) argue that an 06_ADCHE_18.1_Tekmen_67-80.indd 68 06/04/19 11:37 AM Teaching risk-taking to engineering design ... www.intellectbooks.com 69 unexpected teaching and learning context must be sustained as a strategy to promote creativity in education. This requires breaking the established practice or improvisation. ‘Generating creative educational contexts also involves decisions and risks’ (Elisondo et al. 2013: 14). In his article, Serago describes the teaching method of Nadia Kellam, ‘the role of risk-taking in the classroom’ and examines ‘how sustaining a mind-set of risk-taking in the classroom can produce engineering graduates ready and excited to tackle society’s most pressing challenges’ (Serago 2016). Professor Kellam believes that risk-taking ‘prepares students to ask critical questions and produces graduates who pursue careers that promise to make an impact after graduation’ (Serago 2016). Assessing creativity in education is also worthy of consideration. Methods of assessment are abundant for assessing creativity. Treffinger et al. (2002) suggest a list of ‘creativity characteristics’: ‘Generating ideas, digging deeper into ideas, openness and courage to explore ideas and listening to one’s inner voice’. A well-known and highly cited assessment method by Besemer and O’Quin (1986), the Creative Product Semantic Scale, measures product creativity by three scales: Novelty, Resolution and Elaboration & Synthesis. Another well-known creativity assessment method by Amabile (1983), the Consensual Assessment Technique, aims to ask people whether a product is creative or not. Charyton et al. (2011) provides a reliable and valid practical application in engineering education through their Creative Engineering Design Assessment, which assesses a person’s design ideas expressed by sketching. Cropley’s (2015) Creative Solution Diagnosis Scale (CSDS) is one of the newest creativity assessment methods and is easy to understand. It measures the ‘kind of creativity’ and ‘amount of creativity’ of engineering design products (Cropley 2015). First, the solution needs to be ‘relevant and effective’. Second, the ‘novelty’ criterion leads to originality, which measures the newness of the solution. The third criterion ‘genesis offers new possibilities for the situation’. Finally, ‘elegance is concerned with aesthetic aspects of the product’ (Cropley 2015: 67–68). Visser et al. (2017) evaluate the impact of feedback to support confidence and creativity from a graphic design perspective and they highlight the importance of informal class discussions and one-on-one feedback for effective learning. Ardington and Drury (2017) also underline the importance and positive impact of formative feedback and proper guidance in helping students learning their creative process in a design studio. In an engineering design subject, where students are expected to come up with a creative work is no different. Making feedback more explicit through dialogue should advance the way towards a more successful pedagogy (Ardington and Drury 2017: 167). de Vere (2009) highlighted the importance and relevance of Product Design Engineering (PDE) pedagogy for a response to the current educational issues and expectations of other engineering disciplines. de Vere (2009) suggests that engineering faculties (or departments) should see design pedagogy as a model for fostering creativity. Welch and Loy (2013) highlight that one of the most important teaching issues in design is finding a way to instil creative thinking in students’ problem-solving process without overloading them with old approaches. To do this, ‘a holistic approach to thinking, teaching and assessment is prerequisite’ (Welch and Loy 2013: 92). As risk-taking is not taught in any other subjects in the engineering curriculum, the design subjects are thought to be appropriate places to allow students to take risks. However, teaching risk-taking requires a different 06_ADCHE_18.1_Tekmen_67-80.indd 69 06/04/19 11:37 AM Yasemin Tekmen-Araci 70 Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education approach. This article argues that the engineering instructors should be involved in more risk-taking processes in their teaching and assessment approaches to enhance the risk-taking approach of their students. 1. meThods and research design The aim of this study is to shed new light on the instructor and faculty approach through an examination of engineering students’ risk-taking habits in the classroom. In addition, the study aims to show the differences between the pedagogical approach of two engineering disciplines – Mechanical Engineering (ME) and Product Design Engineering (PDE) – and their approach to creativity and risk-taking. Therefore, this study makes a significant contribution to and review of engineering design education. A qualitative approach was adopted for this study. The main data collection methods were classroom observations, surveys and interviews, allowin