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 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 ...

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