CHEP, Virginia Tech, 2020
A mixed methods research design was used to explore how the creative design ability of undergraduate student designers developed over the course of a 15-week semester. Surveys, design journal entries, and interviews were used to gather data from the 25 student participants as they identified, designed, and delivered the individual projects that focused their work in the course. Several contextual factors characterized the development of students’ design creativity, and the most prominent were (a) tool exploration, (b) prototyping, (d) community, (d) motivation, and (e) creative agency. Research methodology, findings, and recommendations for future course design and research will be presented.
A mixed methods research design was used to explore how the creative design ability of undergraduate student designers was shaped over the course of a 15-week semester. An extensive review of the creativity and design literature generated a coding scheme that was integrated into an activity system analysis (Engeström, 2014; Jonassen, 2002) of the project-based learning course in this study. Surveys, design journal entries, and interviews gathered data from the 25 student participants as they conducted course work. A pre/post survey (Blizzard et al., 2015) was used to measure changes in participants’ design thinking traits during the semester.
This research identified five prominent contextual factors that characterized the development of students’ design creativity, which were the following: (a) tool exploration, (b) prototyping, (d) community, (d) motivation, and (e) creative agency. These factors were reciprocal with each other as they expanded, and a sequential timing was found in the establishment of participant motivation and the growth of the course community.
Journal and interview data suggested granting participants a high degree of autonomy in their course work facilitated their motivation and engagement. Without strong motivation, it is doubtful participants would have engaged the varied design ambiguities of project work as extensively and persistently as they did. It appeared that establishing motivation early in the course was a key to the other gains they experienced as a result of their sustained efforts.
Once participants settled on project topics, the remaining four factors emerged as a cluster of actions and affect. Tool exploration involved participants identifying design tools and making choices about which ones to use and how to use them. This action was closely bound with prototyping action, in which participants made their abstract design ideas concrete to share them with peers and the course instructor. The presenting and sharing actions involved with tool exploration and prototyping were regular in-class occurrences and facilitated growth of the course community, which emerged as one of the most influential factors that shaped participants’ design creativity. The course community emerged as a design tool that participants used to iterate and improve their design ideas. In this way, participants’ design methodologies expanded from individual to collective orientations as a result of their course experience.
Creative agency (Karwowski & Beghetto, 2018; Royalty, Oishi, & Roth, 2014) was the affective outcome participants reported most frequently and was also linked with the most prominent actions (i.e., tool exploration, prototyping, and community interactions) found in course activity.
Creative agency (Karwowski & Beghetto, 2018; Royalty, Oishi, & Roth, 2014) was the affective outcome participants reported most frequently and was also linked with the most prominent actions (i.e., tool exploration, prototyping, and community interactions) found in course activity. Several participants explained that in addition to feeling more creative as individuals, they appreciated creativity in others because they used peer and instructor feedback to improve their own design ideas. In this way, participants’ development of creative agency expanded from individual to collective orientations. A set of practical guidelines for project-based instruction and suggestions for the most productive future research will be also be presented.
This deck was for a presentation given at CHEP 2020 and some slides might not make sense outisde of their intended context.