Due in part to the increased pace of cultural and environmental change, as well as increased comp... more Due in part to the increased pace of cultural and environmental change, as well as increased competition due to globalization, innovation is become one of the primary concerns of the 21st century. We will present an academic course designed to develop cognitive abilities related to creativity within an engineering education context, based on a conceptual framework rooted in cognitive sciences. The course was held at École Polytechnique de Montréal (ÉPM), a world renowned engineering school and a pillar in Canada's engineering community. The course was offered twice in the 2014-2015 academic year and more than 30 students from the graduate and undergraduate programs participated. The course incorporated ten pedagogical strategies, including serious games, an observation book, individual and group projects, etc., that were expected to facilitate the development of cognitive abilities related to creativity such as encoding, and associative/analytical thinking. The CEDA (Creative Engineering Design Assessment) test was used to measure the students' creativity at the beginning and at the end of the course. Field notes were taken after each of the 15 three-hour sessions to qualitatively document the educative intervention along the semester and students gave anonymous written feedback after completing the last session. Quantitative and qualitative results suggest that an increase in creativity is possible to obtain with a course designed to development cognitive abilities related to creativity. Also, students appreciated the course, found it relevant, and made important, meaningful learnings regarding the creative process, its cognitive mechanism and the approaches available to increase it.
Creativity, being a key competency of engineering, must be taught and assessed. Here, we verify t... more Creativity, being a key competency of engineering, must be taught and assessed. Here, we verify the reliability of the Creative Engineering Design Assessment (CEDA), a psychometric test for engineering students, as well as clarify the assessment process. To test the former, the gage repeatability and reproducibility (R&R) method was applied innovatively. Our findings suggest that the use of the gage R&R method is relevant in a psychometric environment and that the measured total variation is satisfactory. In addition, control charts were used to further analyze the assessment strategy’s reliability. We demonstrated that the assessment process for the two qualitative criteria (Originality and Usefulness) of the CEDA was in control, that is, the values’ variation was caused by unpredictable but normal and inevitable events. The results demonstrate the test’s reliability according to two concepts (repeatability and reproducibility) and allow for the refinement of the assessment process...
Communities of practice are supporting growth, development and collaboration in various environme... more Communities of practice are supporting growth, development and collaboration in various environments. A new Chair in teaching and learning at Polytechnique Montreal, focusing their activities on active learning strategies, perceived useful and relevant to build a community of practice around this widespread academic topic. To achieve this goal, they built a repertoire of active learning strategies to stimulate meetings and encourage exchanges between engineering educators. The ultimate objective is to promote the use of active learning strategies, which are more effective than the traditional ones, to enable in-depth and lasting learning. Many success factors and integration challenges concerning this type of approach have been studied and are considered and addressed with this new instrument. Francophone teachers from all around the world, will be able to share their experiences with active learning in an engineering context as well as learn from and teach to others in the communit...
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA), 2018
Creative and innovative people are recognized for their contribution to society’s wellbeing. Engi... more Creative and innovative people are recognized for their contribution to society’s wellbeing. Engineers are often called upon to produce innovative ideas and thus participate in the improvement of their organization’s products, services, and processes. Not aiming at educating specialists with a degree in creativity, we nonetheless believe future engineers could benefit from a deliberate development of their creative abilities. However, building an effective and valid course to develop participants’ creativity is not without challenges.This paper describes an innovative cognitive approach to enhance creativity as well as the pedagogical strategies underlining a creativity course for engineering students. It also presents the pre-post results measured with a revised version of the CEDA (Creative Engineering Design Assessment). We evaluated the creative performance of 59 students before and after a 45-hour creativity course. Quantitative data shows statistically higher numbers after the...
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA), 2018
Communities of practice are supporting growth, development and collaboration in various environme... more Communities of practice are supporting growth, development and collaboration in various environments. A new Chair in teaching and learning at Polytechnique Montreal, focusing their activities on active learning strategies, perceived useful and relevant to build a community of practice around this widespread academic topic. To achieve this goal, they built a repertoire of active learning strategies to stimulate meetings and encourage exchanges between engineering educators.The ultimate objective is to promote the use of active learning strategies, which are more effective than the traditional ones, to enable in-depth and lasting learning. Many success factors and integration challenges concerning this type of approach have been studied and are considered and addressed with this new instrument.Francophone teachers from all around the world, will be able to share their experiences with active learning in an engineering context as well as learn from and teach to others in the community....
Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on Innovative Design and Manufacturing (ICIDM), 2014
The importance of innovation in the world's economy, now undeniable, draws great attention to the... more The importance of innovation in the world's economy, now undeniable, draws great attention to the need to improve organizations' creative potential. In the last 60 years, hundreds of books have been written on the subject and hundreds of webpages display information on how to be more creative and achieve innovation. Several North American and European universities offer graduated programs in creativity. However, building an effective and validated creativity training program is not without challenges. Because of the nature of their work, engineers are often asked to be innovative. Without aiming for a degree in creativity, could future engineers benefit from training programs in creativity? This article presents the conceptual framework and pedagogical elements of a new course in creativity for engineering students.
Because of the nature of their work, engineers are often asked to be innovative. This implies tha... more Because of the nature of their work, engineers are often asked to be innovative. This implies that they must possess and demonstrate creative abilities However, building an effective and valid course to develop participants' creativity is not without challenges. Not aiming at educating specialists with a degree in creativity, we nonetheless believe future engineers could benefit from a deliberate development of their creative abilities. The goals of this paper are to (1) describe an innovative cognitive/metacognitive approach to enhance creativity as well as the pedagogical strategies underlining a creativity course for engineering students, (2) present the pre-post results measured with a revised version of the CEDA (Creative Engineering Design Assessment). We evaluated the creative performance of 59 students before and after a 45-hour creativity course. The students' scores on four variables measured by CEDA-fluidity, flexibility, originality and usefulness-were statistically higher after the course than before. Students' written comments provided further evidence of the course's relevance and effectiveness. We concluded that students' creativity was increased and that the course enabled a better understanding of creativity and how to foster it. 'Creativity is intelligence having fun.' -Einstein
Due in part to the increased pace of cultural and environmental change, as well as increased comp... more Due in part to the increased pace of cultural and environmental change, as well as increased competition due to globalization, innovation is become one of the primary concerns of the 21st century. We will present an academic course designed to develop cognitive abilities related to creativity within an engineering education context, based on a conceptual framework rooted in cognitive sciences. The course was held at École Polytechnique de Montréal (ÉPM), a world renowned engineering school and a pillar in Canada's engineering community. The course was offered twice in the 2014-2015 academic year and more than 30 students from the graduate and undergraduate programs participated. The course incorporated ten pedagogical strategies, including serious games, an observation book, individual and group projects, etc., that were expected to facilitate the development of cognitive abilities related to creativity such as encoding, and associative/analytical thinking. The CEDA (Creative Engineering Design Assessment) test was used to measure the students' creativity at the beginning and at the end of the course. Field notes were taken after each of the 15 three-hour sessions to qualitatively document the educative intervention along the semester and students gave anonymous written feedback after completing the last session. Quantitative and qualitative results suggest that an increase in creativity is possible to obtain with a course designed to development cognitive abilities related to creativity. Also, students appreciated the course, found it relevant, and made important, meaningful learnings regarding the creative process, its cognitive mechanism and the approaches available to increase it.
Creativity, being a key competency of engineering, must be taught and assessed. Here, we verify t... more Creativity, being a key competency of engineering, must be taught and assessed. Here, we verify the reliability of the Creative Engineering Design Assessment (CEDA), a psychometric test for engineering students, as well as clarify the assessment process. To test the former, the gage repeatability and reproducibility (R&R) method was applied innovatively. Our findings suggest that the use of the gage R&R method is relevant in a psychometric environment and that the measured total variation is satisfactory. In addition, control charts were used to further analyze the assessment strategy’s reliability. We demonstrated that the assessment process for the two qualitative criteria (Originality and Usefulness) of the CEDA was in control, that is, the values’ variation was caused by unpredictable but normal and inevitable events. The results demonstrate the test’s reliability according to two concepts (repeatability and reproducibility) and allow for the refinement of the assessment process...
Communities of practice are supporting growth, development and collaboration in various environme... more Communities of practice are supporting growth, development and collaboration in various environments. A new Chair in teaching and learning at Polytechnique Montreal, focusing their activities on active learning strategies, perceived useful and relevant to build a community of practice around this widespread academic topic. To achieve this goal, they built a repertoire of active learning strategies to stimulate meetings and encourage exchanges between engineering educators. The ultimate objective is to promote the use of active learning strategies, which are more effective than the traditional ones, to enable in-depth and lasting learning. Many success factors and integration challenges concerning this type of approach have been studied and are considered and addressed with this new instrument. Francophone teachers from all around the world, will be able to share their experiences with active learning in an engineering context as well as learn from and teach to others in the communit...
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA), 2018
Creative and innovative people are recognized for their contribution to society’s wellbeing. Engi... more Creative and innovative people are recognized for their contribution to society’s wellbeing. Engineers are often called upon to produce innovative ideas and thus participate in the improvement of their organization’s products, services, and processes. Not aiming at educating specialists with a degree in creativity, we nonetheless believe future engineers could benefit from a deliberate development of their creative abilities. However, building an effective and valid course to develop participants’ creativity is not without challenges.This paper describes an innovative cognitive approach to enhance creativity as well as the pedagogical strategies underlining a creativity course for engineering students. It also presents the pre-post results measured with a revised version of the CEDA (Creative Engineering Design Assessment). We evaluated the creative performance of 59 students before and after a 45-hour creativity course. Quantitative data shows statistically higher numbers after the...
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA), 2018
Communities of practice are supporting growth, development and collaboration in various environme... more Communities of practice are supporting growth, development and collaboration in various environments. A new Chair in teaching and learning at Polytechnique Montreal, focusing their activities on active learning strategies, perceived useful and relevant to build a community of practice around this widespread academic topic. To achieve this goal, they built a repertoire of active learning strategies to stimulate meetings and encourage exchanges between engineering educators.The ultimate objective is to promote the use of active learning strategies, which are more effective than the traditional ones, to enable in-depth and lasting learning. Many success factors and integration challenges concerning this type of approach have been studied and are considered and addressed with this new instrument.Francophone teachers from all around the world, will be able to share their experiences with active learning in an engineering context as well as learn from and teach to others in the community....
Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on Innovative Design and Manufacturing (ICIDM), 2014
The importance of innovation in the world's economy, now undeniable, draws great attention to the... more The importance of innovation in the world's economy, now undeniable, draws great attention to the need to improve organizations' creative potential. In the last 60 years, hundreds of books have been written on the subject and hundreds of webpages display information on how to be more creative and achieve innovation. Several North American and European universities offer graduated programs in creativity. However, building an effective and validated creativity training program is not without challenges. Because of the nature of their work, engineers are often asked to be innovative. Without aiming for a degree in creativity, could future engineers benefit from training programs in creativity? This article presents the conceptual framework and pedagogical elements of a new course in creativity for engineering students.
Because of the nature of their work, engineers are often asked to be innovative. This implies tha... more Because of the nature of their work, engineers are often asked to be innovative. This implies that they must possess and demonstrate creative abilities However, building an effective and valid course to develop participants' creativity is not without challenges. Not aiming at educating specialists with a degree in creativity, we nonetheless believe future engineers could benefit from a deliberate development of their creative abilities. The goals of this paper are to (1) describe an innovative cognitive/metacognitive approach to enhance creativity as well as the pedagogical strategies underlining a creativity course for engineering students, (2) present the pre-post results measured with a revised version of the CEDA (Creative Engineering Design Assessment). We evaluated the creative performance of 59 students before and after a 45-hour creativity course. The students' scores on four variables measured by CEDA-fluidity, flexibility, originality and usefulness-were statistically higher after the course than before. Students' written comments provided further evidence of the course's relevance and effectiveness. We concluded that students' creativity was increased and that the course enabled a better understanding of creativity and how to foster it. 'Creativity is intelligence having fun.' -Einstein
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Papers by Sophie Morin