Dynamics of Engineering Education: Creativity and Innovation through Design

A special issue of Education Sciences (ISSN 2227-7102). This special issue belongs to the section "STEM Education".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (5 May 2023) | Viewed by 1563

Special Issue Editors

The Business School, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4QJ, UK
Interests: design creativity; data-driven design; AI in design; design neuro-cognitions; engineering education

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Guest Editor
School of Engineering and The Environment, Kingston University London, London SW15 3DW, UK
Interests: design innovation; data-driven design; robust engineering design and IP

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Guest Editor
College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310013, China
Interests: data-driven design; creative computing and education; design creativity; human-computer interaction; design engineering education

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Creativity and innovation are crucially important skills needed to tackle the rapid societal changes and emerging problems of the modern world. Despite the great demand for creative and innovative engineers, these words are typically not often used to characterize this occupation. In other words, there is a disconnect between creativity, innovation and engineering. Engineering education is believed to be one of the root causes of this divide, as it focuses primarily on technical knowledge and neglects creative thinking and skills. However, engineering education provides the best opportunity to foster creative and innovative engineering students. Design is considered to be the bridge connecting creativity, innovation and engineering. Some engineering programs have increased the proportion of design activities carried out to cultivate students’ creativity capabilities. However, conventional creativity tools, such as brainstorming and mind mapping, remain dominant in design projects, limiting the students’ creative potential. In addition, students often find these methods to be “time-consuming”, “useless” and “cumbersome”. It is, therefore, necessary for engineering, design and pedagogy researchers to address this issue so engineering students’ creativity can be fostered, preparing them to be innovative engineers.

This Special Issue seeks research studies supporting creativity and innovation in engineering education through design activities. Innovative contributions focusing on conceptual, theoretical and empirical aspects are all welcome. Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Creativity and innovation in engineering education;
  • Best practice of creativity and innovation teaching/learning;
  • Creativity tools for students;
  • Utilization of digital technologies;
  • Design activities in engineering programs;
  • Toolkits for enhancing creativity;
  • Personalized teaching and learning ;
  • New pedagogy of engineering education.

Dr. Ji Han
Dr. Pingfei Jiang
Dr. Liuqing Chen
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • engineering education
  • design education
  • creativity
  • innovation
  • idea generation
  • idea evaluation
  • creativity tools
  • digital education
  • interactive education
  • technology readiness
  • artificial intelligence and education
  • personalised education

Published Papers (1 paper)

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12 pages, 1770 KiB  
Brief Report
Designing Engineering Courses with Embedded Virtual and Real Experimentations
by Ashanthi Maxworth
Educ. Sci. 2023, 13(6), 610; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13060610 - 15 Jun 2023
Viewed by 1087
Abstract
Engineering requires solid mathematical knowledge in addition to hands-on experience. At the same time, finding the right balance between mathematics and applications is challenging. This paper presents the implementation of virtual and real experiments in three math-heavy engineering courses at the University of [...] Read more.
Engineering requires solid mathematical knowledge in addition to hands-on experience. At the same time, finding the right balance between mathematics and applications is challenging. This paper presents the implementation of virtual and real experiments in three math-heavy engineering courses at the University of Southern Maine. These courses were Communications Engineering, Antennas, and Plasma Engineering. Furthermore, the virtual experiments implemented were MATLAB R2022b simulations, HFSS simulations, and videos. The real experimentation included antenna building, a software-defined radio project, a 3D printing project, and a case study analysis. These virtual and real experiments were distributed between the aforementioned three courses. Based on student feedback, having these virtual and real experiments aided their learning process and students enjoyed having hardware experiments embedded in a course. Full article
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