How can we Develop Students’ Creativity? : Redesigning a Creativity Program based on Flow Theory

To produce highly creative students, engineering education must develop both problem recognition skills and the ability to solve problems independently. Chonnam National University has been developing a creativity program in which students identify and solve problems themselves. Initially, the primary focus was on solving problems, but this was unsuccessful at attracting the students’ interest. To overcome this, we adopted Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory in our creativity program, much like the way this theory is used in computer games. As a result of adopting flow theory, we achieved our goal. Thus, in this paper, we will introduce Chonnam National University’s creativity program (designed based on flow theory), which we will call the Self-Directed Creativity-Upgrade Program. Furthermore, we will discuss the impact of this program based on statistical analyses.