Exploring the Relationships between Artistic Creativity and Innovation Attitudes in Engineering Students

Azadeh Bolhari; Angela R. Bielefeldt; Anvie Gowrishankar; Maya Leizerovich; Shane Gavney; Richard W Saxton

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Conference: 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Portland, Oregon
Publication Date: June 23, 2024
Start Date: June 23, 2024
End Date: July 12, 2024
Conference Session: Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation Division Technical Session 2
Tagged Division: Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation Division (ENT)
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/47442

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Paper Authors

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Azadeh Bolhari University of Colorado Boulder orcid.org/0000-0001-6289-7771

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Dr. Bolhari is a professor of environmental engineering in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering (CEAE) at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her teaching focuses on fate and transport of contaminants, capstone design and aqueous chemistry. Dr. Bolhari is passionate about broadening participation in engineering through community-based participatory action research. Her research interests explore the boundaries of engineering and social science to understand evolution of resilience capacity at family and community level to sustainable practices utilizing quantitative and qualitative research methods.

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Angela R. Bielefeldt University of Colorado Boulder

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Angela Bielefeldt is a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering (CEAE) and Director for the Engineering Plus program. She has served as the Associate Chair for Undergraduate

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Abstract

This research explored potential relationships between the innovation self-efficacy (ISE) of engineering students and their artistic creativity and life experiences revealed on an ice-breaker assignment. In a community-building assignment, students were directed to introduce themselves through cartoon monster drawings that communicated various personal attributes (such as the number of languages they speak, and the number of states visited). Previous research has found that multicultural experiences can shape feelings of self-efficacy concerning innovation and creativity. This pilot study was conducted in a single junior-level course for environmental engineering students. The innovation self-efficacy of participants was measured using a survey that included items from the Very Brief Innovation Self-Efficacy scale (ISE.6), the Innovation Interests scale (INI), and the Career Goals: Innovative Work scale (IW). The drawings were analyzed for Artistic Effort (AE) and Creative Work (CW) by engineering and art evaluators, respectively. The ISE survey results were compared with the AE and CW scores and the correlations with travel, gender, and multilingualism on creativity attributes were explored. A strong correlation between CW scores and AE scores was observed. A negative correlation between CW and ISE.6 was found. The CW scores were significantly different between female and male students, except for black/white shading in the cartoon drawings. There were no significant differences between the AE scores for female versus male students. Our results do not support the existence of a correlation between multilingualism and travel with artistic creativity and innovation self-efficacy attributes. Overall, we did not find that the students’ artistic creativity or life experiences revealed through the self-portrait activity provided insights into innovation attitudes.

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Bolhari, A., & Bielefeldt, A. R., & Gowrishankar, A., & Leizerovich, M., & Gavney, S., & Saxton, R. W. (2024, June), Exploring the Relationships between Artistic Creativity and Innovation Attitudes in Engineering Students Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/47442