PBL Intervention for Fostering Creativity in First-Year Engineering Students

Contribution: This research presents a project-based learning (PBL) approach for fostering creativity in first-year students with differential characteristics in the course execution. The first course considered remote teaching during a pandemic period; the second one used 50% of the weeks with remote teaching and the rest with face-to-face interaction. Background: Fostering creativity has become a significant challenge for engineering education. This work focuses on harmonizing a creativity framework and a PBL approach (PBL + C) as an alternative to motivate creative thinking. Intended Outcomes: The PBL + C approach can improve first-year engineering students' creativity and innovation skills and learning outcomes. Application Design: In the intervention, the project execution considers the creative process and its phases. Likewise, it takes all elements of an aligned curriculum model, such as teaching and learning activities, types of problems, project progression, support resources, creative tools, learning environments, facilitation strategies, and student assessment and course evaluation. Regarding the last elements, researchers define an assessing protocol, which involves pre- and post-tests, participant observation, analysis of student portfolios for monitoring the work progress, and specific questionnaires on variables related to the curricular design. Findings: Evidence collected shows an increase in creativity factors, such as fluency and flexibility, which are critical aspects of the "Person" element of the creative process. Likewise, the modality of the course (remote or in-person) influences the conditions for its development. For example, in the mixed course, researchers found that students had more interaction with each other, which is reflected in better elaborated solutions than in the remote teaching course.