Những con đường sáng tạo trong kỹ thuật- Creative Ways of Knowing in Engineering

Diana Bairaktarova · Michele Eodice
Editors

Creative
Ways of
Knowing in
Engineering


Creative Ways of Knowing in Engineering


Diana Bairaktarova  •  Michele Eodice
Editors

Creative Ways of Knowing
in Engineering


Editors
Diana Bairaktarova
Department of Engineering Education
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA, USA

Michele Eodice
University of Oklahoma
Norman, Oklahoma, USA

ISBN 978-3-319-49351-0    ISBN 978-3-319-49352-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-49352-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016961694
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Foreword

At their most creative, engineers envision sustainable ways to provide communities
with the essentials for life—water, food, shelter, energy, and security—as well as
the necessary resources and support services like transport, physical and electronic
infrastructure, and healthcare that enable well-being. Through imaginative design
and inventive ways of making things, engineers shape our built environment through
the provision of new products, processes, and systems. Working in interdisciplinary
contexts, they help create objects of both utility and beauty, enabling individuals
and multicultural communities to meet their diverse needs and to achieve higher

personal and collective aspirations.
This timely book explores a variety of innovative pedagogical strategies for
engaging students in creativity-enhancing ways of experiencing what means to
engineer. Being serenaded in song about the virtues of thermodynamics or composing a poem about a dry scientific law or making a fun video about an engineering
concept or being part of a conductor-less orchestra is not what first comes to mind
when we think of a day in the life of an engineering student. Yet these are amongst
the eclectic range of learning performances that are discussed in this book.
Engineering is not a narrow technical pursuit. It is both an art and a science, drawing on many types of knowledge and divergent ways of understanding the world. The
successful application of technical knowledge depends critically on enabling knowledge about the human condition; knowledge from the social and behavioral sciences,
the liberal arts, and humanities. Engineering is a profoundly human endeavor. Success
as an engineer depends vitally upon being self-aware, emotionally intelligent, empathetic, an active listener and a nuanced communicator with diverse groups, persuasive both orally and in all manner of written styles, trustworthy and collaborative, and
able to perform in structured teams as well as ad hoc groups that emerge in the course
of a project. These essential professional abilities are sometimes referred to as “soft
skills,” but this is a misnomer. While engineering has a reputation for being a difficult
discipline to master due to the emphasis on the “hard” sciences and mathematics, the
truth is these knowledge domains are relatively easy to distil and transmit as compared to the messy process of formation of professional knowledge and skills and the
development of character, judgement, insight, and ultimately wisdom.
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Foreword

This book reminds us that the most enlightened engineering education has always
fostered an appreciation in our students that to engineer is to be a creative agent
engaged in the most pressing local, national, and global conversations of the day. In
the enthusiastic embrace of the engineering sciences half a century ago, much of
engineering education lost sight of the nontechnical dimension of the profession. In
this process even the defining art of the engineer, design, almost vanished from curricula. It is pleasing to see that the balance between the art and the science in engineering is being restored. A critical dimension of this restoration is having a deep

appreciation of the professional skills being integral to the education of an engineer.
This process of rebalancing implies that engineering educators, who are themselves engineers, must engage in meaningful conversations with their peers in the
arts and humanities and indeed education on how best to accomplish a more holistic
engineering education experience. These conversations must be predicated on an
openness to discovering there are other ways of knowing, a willingness to learn
about alternative modes of inquiring into the world and a better understanding of the
epistemological foundations of our own discipline. The critical need for such conversations should not be underestimated. Engineering academics have an unfortunate tendency to be all wise and assume they can master all there is to be known
about professional skills and how best to incorporate the development of these skills
into courses and curricula. On the contrary, the creation of learning experiences that
blend technical and professional knowledge and skills in new ways needs to be a
collaborative effort, an interdisciplinary partnership based on mutual respect and
appreciation for what different nonengineering perspectives can bring to the table.
Such an interdisciplinary collaboration is exemplified by the editors of this book,
Diana Bairaktarova and Michele Eodice. I have long argued that we need radical
new approaches in engineering courses and curricula to re-establish a more appropriate balance between technical knowledge, know-how and skills, and the formation of professional abilities. The imaginative design of co-created, interdisciplinary
courses must be founded upon relationships of trust and respect between academics
from vastly different intellectual traditions. This co-creation may also involve students from the different disciplines. Building such relationships takes time and a
sustained commitment; they cannot be rushed or planned out on a rigid timetable.
Often serendipity plays a major part; being open to unexpected opportunities that
arise or simply being mindful, being present in the moment, is an essential ingredient. This work requires initiative and resourcefulness, taking professional risks and
showing personal courage, a strong determination to succeed, and persistence in the
face of opposition, obstacles, and setbacks. In short it requires grit.
Formal education tends to privilege particular types of knowledge and empirical
ways of knowing. Our educational system, based as it is on a nineteenth-century
industrial conception of production, has a tendency to suppress imagination. This
can be very discouraging for those who learn differently or use ways of knowing
that do not fit the prevailing analytical paradigm or conventional assessment regime.
Yet the apparent misfits in the current educational system may be the very people
we need to take up a career in engineering, in order to truly diversify the profession.
For engineering to reach its full potential, we need to attract and retain a broader

Foreword

vii

range of people, people who look at the world in different ways and people who
deviate from our current ways of thinking.
Engineering needs to be more inclusive of individuals from groups in society that
are currently underrepresented in its ranks but who possess the abilities that our current system of engineering education values and is designed for. But more than that
we must diversify our student body in terms of those from currently represented and
underrepresented groups who bring other types of skill and knowledge, contrarians
who exhibit nontraditional attributes that will enrich engineering education and
transform professional practice through enlarging what it means to engineer. Many
of the pedagogical experiments described in the book point to ways we might open
the doors to a broader participation in engineering in both these ways.
Engineering is a global profession. Its practice may involve engineers and other
disciplines drawn from many national and ethnic backgrounds, educated in different
countries yet its impact is felt locally, in a particular socio-cultural, economic, and
political context. Likewise engineering education is a major global export, where
tens of thousands of students from many nations are educated as engineers in countries other than their own and in a language that is not their mother tongue.
Engineering courses and curricula are exported to countries that may have quite
different cultural precepts, philosophical understandings, and social mores to those
where the learning was designed. There is no universal model for how engineers
might be best educated; one size does not fit all. As one of the chapters in the book
illustrates, we need to be thoughtful and employ cultural sensitivity in translating
educational practices.
The most prized possession of any professional is their integrity. In your dealings
as an engineer, who you are as person is far more important than what you know or
what you can do. Accordingly, engineering educators have a solemn responsibility

to their students and to the communities they serve to help their students to know
themselves, to understand the obligations of being professional, to explore their
innate moral compass as well as become knowledgeable about various ethical precepts and frameworks, and to provide them with useful tools for critical self-­
reflection to guide them throughout their career. In earlier eras, when most
engineering academics had experience working as an engineer and design was still
a central plank of engineering education, communicating the import of what it
means to be a professional and how you might prepare to accept sometimes awesome responsibilities was an osmotic process that took place over an extended time.
The wisdom of the years was imparted over the student’s drawing board through
numerous exchanges with instructors based on personal accounts, “war stories,” and
discussions about notable engineering failures. A variety of ethical questions were
explored through these exchanges, and the moral dilemmas of engineering practice
were ever present in the shadow of the then recent events of WW II and the tensions
of Cold War. Many professors modeled what it was difficult to be a “reflective practitioner,” even though reflection was not formally part of the curriculum.
We live in quite different era. The underlying educational assumptions have
changed, the curriculum is very different, most academics have not had the benefit
of practicing engineering, the classroom experience is being transformed, the sheer


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Foreword

scale of the engineering education enterprise is grown considerably, and every student has instant access at the fingertips to global informational resources on a previously unimaginable scale. So educators must now be more intentional about
incorporating instruction and learning experiences that actively foster identity
development, to expose students to the legal and ethical dimensions of engineering
and to develop the ability to critically reflect. This book provides numerous ideas
and innovative approaches as to how we might enhance all three of these elements
of professional formation appropriate to contemporary conditions of engineering
education. Some of these approaches are quite radical, even confronting. All the
more reason to engage with them and to challenge our implicit assumptions about

what learning to engineer might look like.
The book also highlights the need to develop critical thinking in engineering
students. This is the foundation for developing effective decision making under
uncertainty and with incomplete information, essential attributes for a professional
engineer. It helps students become more comfortable living with ambiguity rather
than relying on the false certainty and illusory confidence afforded by neat and tidy
closed form problems with simple solutions. Engineers work on “wicked problems”
and are called upon to make life and death judgment calls. In the academy, the
development of critical thinking skills has historically been seen as the province of
the liberal arts and humanities where there are no simple answers to complex questions and positions are arrived at on the basis of reasoned arguments. This way of
thinking and working makes many engineers, engineering educators, and engineering students at best uncomfortable and skeptical and at worst, incredulous, cynical,
and even dismissive. This is why universities and colleges with engineering schools
must also have a vibrant liberal arts community, valued on its own intellectual terms.
The sorts of deep interdisciplinary insight needed to foster authentic critical thinking in engineering programs depend profoundly upon founts of disciplinary excellence beyond engineering and respectful boundary crossing in both directions by
academics of good will.
The coeditors of this book, Diana Bairaktarova and Michele Eodice, are such
boundary agents. They have developed a strong professional working relationship
and rapport based on a deep appreciation for what the other can bring to the conversation. This relationship led to the creation of this eclectic collection of papers written by fellow travelers on this journey of exploration of Creative Ways of Knowing
in Engineering. My hope is that the example set by these pioneers will encourage
other engineering educators to reach out and partner with colleagues on the other
side of campus in the liberal arts and humanities, education, and the other social and
behavioral sciences to explore innovative and fun ways of stimulating the artist in
their engineering students.
Swinburne University of Technology, 
Hawthorn, VIC, Australia
Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

David F. Radcliffe

Acknowledgements

This work is the outcome of the combined efforts of many people—most especially
the creative students and teachers who talk at length and with great passion about
their creative ways of knowing in engineering. This book has, in a manner of speaking, been less than a year in the making, and there are more people to thank for the
ideas reflected here than can possibly be named. Regardless, we must make an
attempt.
We thank David Radcliffe, whose interdisciplinary work through the years as
well as the work of many other leaders in the STEM education field has paved the
way for current efforts to include the arts in STEM.
In describing her own journey, Diana wants to mention especially the influence
of her Professor, Dr. William Graziano, whose mentorship has been uplifting and
inspiring. Life has strange way of changing the paths we take and sometimes introduces us to people we feel we have always known. Professor Graziano, who has
inspired Diana to care about her students and to creatively search for new knowledge, embodies and exemplifies an academic soul very similar to Diana’s father’s.
Through these influences, Diana built confidence that she can motivate and inspire
her students to strive to do their best work. We dedicate this book to Dr. William
Graziano, and to all the creative teachers across this country and the world, whose
innovative and cross disciplinary work encourages creative thinking and work in
education.
Diana owes a bigger debt of gratitude than she can ever express to her friend,
colleague, and coeditor, Michele Eodice. Michele was a great inspiration for this
edited collection and a source of many flourishing ideas of creative ways of knowing in engineering.
Cheryl Cohen was heroic in her editorial assistance with an early draft of the first
chapter of this book, and Desen Ozkan was unfailingly supportive and helpful in
every imaginable way. We hope Desen, a future engineering educator and researcher,
will continue to passionately enact a shift back to artistry in engineering education
in order to successfully bridge the humanities and engineering.
Diana thanks her husband Michael and her son Nikola for being the inspiration
and constant support for her work.
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Acknowledgements

Michele would like to thank Diana Bairaktarova for her friendship and for the
opportunity to learn more about teaching from an excellent teacher. When Diana
opened her classroom and curriculum to Michele and to others, they had a chance to
see and share the “goodness” of students, and their excitement for learning as a
reminder of why we work in higher education. Thanks also go to Kami Day for her
support, editorial and otherwise.


Contents

 he New Renaissance Artificers: Harnessing the Power
T
of Creativity in the Engineering Classroom����������������������������������������������������   1
Diana Bairaktarova
 he Engineers’ Orchestra: A Conductorless Orchestra
T
for Our Time ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   23
Diana Dabby
 cience Fiction as Platform for Problem-Based Learning
S
and Teaching Writing as Design ��������������������������������������������������������������������   59
Heather Marcelle Crickenberger
 riting as Knowing: Creative Knowing Through Multiple
W

Messaging Modes in an Engineering Technical
Communications Course ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������   99
Jennifer L. Herman, Lynn Hall, Deborah Kuzawa, Leah Wahlin,
and Mary Faure
 he Engineering of a Writing Assignment: Optimizing
T
the Research Paper in an Introductory Chemical Engineering
Course in the United Arab Emirates��������������������������������������������������������������  121
Lynne Ronesi
 reativity and Identity in the Construction
C
of Professional Portfolios����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  151
Lisa D. McNair, Marie C. Paretti, and Christopher Gewirtz
 neasy Stories: Critical Reflection Narratives
U
in Engineering Education��������������������������������������������������������������������������������  173
Gillian Epstein and Yevgeniya V. Zastavker

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Contents

Ethical Dilemmas in the Engineering Writing Classroom ��������������������������  197
Kevin C. Moore
 reative Ways of Knowing and the Future of Engineering Education������������  219
C
Cassandra Groen, Christopher Gewirtz, Adetoun Taiwo, Lindy Cranwell,

and Rabih Younes
Afterword ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  233


About the Authors

Diana Bairaktarova  is an assistant professor of Engineering Education at Virginia
Tech and the Director of the Creativity Inspiration Engineering Design Aptitudes
and Abilities (CIEDAA) Lab. She holds an M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering,
an M.B.A., and a Ph.D. in Engineering Education from Purdue University.
Bairaktarova’s ongoing research interests span from engineering to psychology to
learning sciences, as she uncovers how individual performance and professional
decisions are influenced by aptitudes and abilities, personal interests, and manipulation of physical and virtual objects.
Diana joined the Department of Engineering Education in the fall of 2015 after
being an assistant professor of engineering practice at the University of Oklahoma’s
College of Engineering. She taught several fundamental and engineering design
courses in the School of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, where the design
of artifacts was addressed from a multidisciplinary perspective that includes opportunity determination through inspiration, ideation, and implementation using a
design thinking framework. She is a past recipient of the University of Oklahoma
Presidential Dream Course Award for her course “User-Experience Design: From
Renaissance Engineering to Design for Innovation.” At the University of Oklahoma,
Diana was also the proud faculty advisor of the Sooner-Off Road student-led team.
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About the Authors

Diana has over 15 years of experience working as a Design and Manufacturing

Engineer. By providing applications of problem- and project-based learning in the
exploration of new designs that stimulate creativity, Dr. Bairaktarova aims to prepare her students with innovative thinking and a desire to acquire new skills and
knowledge, preparing them to face rapidly changing technologies. Ranging from
the exploration of humanly made objects to the education of her students, she strives
to enhance her students’ ability to explore and express their creativity, discover their
own potential talent, and ultimately bring their ideas to fruition.

Michele Eodice  is the Associate Provost for Academic Engagement and Director
of the OU Writing Center at the University of Oklahoma. She earned a Ph.D. in
English, writing her dissertation on coauthoring and collaborative writing in the
classroom. Eodice’s ongoing research interests include coauthoring, collaborative
writing, adult and higher education, developing faculty writing at universities, and
student engagement and learning through writing practices.
From 1998 to 2006, Eodice was the founding director of the writing center at the
University of Kansas. Currently she is a professor of writing at the University of
Oklahoma and as a program director and associate provost is involved with writing
across the curriculum and other initiatives, such as academic service learning and
community engagement.
At the University of Oklahoma, Eodice also holds affiliate faculty appointments
with the Department of English and with the Adult and Higher Education program
in the Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education.
For many years Eodice was in leadership roles within the International Writing
Centers Association, serving as president from 2007 to 2009. During that timeframe
she traveled to several countries as a consultant in developing writing centers
abroad. For 6 years she was a cochair and facilitator for the IWCA Summer Institute
for Writing Center Directors and Professionals.
Eodice has been a director of a writing center and a leader in the field of writing
centers for 20 years; she currently serves as editor of The Writing Center Journal,
the primary research journal of the International Writing Centers Association
­(writingcenterjournal.org).

About the Authors

xv

Among her publications, two books are the products of important collaborations,
(First Person)2: A Study of Co-Authoring in the Academy (2001), written with Kami
Day, and The Everyday Writing Center: A Community of Practice (2007), written
with Anne Ellen Geller, Frankie Condon, Meg Carroll, and Elizabeth H. Boquet.
Eodice works extensively with faculty and graduate student writers and facilitates writing groups, camps, and retreats across the country. With Anne Ellen Geller
as coeditor, she published Working with Faculty Writers (2013), a book that details
the range of national best practices in programmatic support for faculty writers.
Several contributions to collections have expanded a career-long theme of work
that combines understanding writing practices and students’ learning of writing
with collaboration and coauthoring. One chapter, “Creativity in the Writing Center,”
written with Elizabeth Boquet, appears in a 2009 award winning collection, Creative
Approaches to Writing Center Work. Her interest in creativity extends to other fields
as well, including engineering.
Also, with co-researchers Anne Ellen Geller and Neal Lerner, she published The
Meaningful Writing Project: Learning, Teaching, and Writing in Higher Education.
This study of student writing experiences and faculty connections to writing development across the disciplines continues to invite participation (see: meaningfulwritingproject.net).
Currently at OU she focuses on supporting graduate student and faculty writers
and forwarding the goals of the Writing Enriched Curriculum program.


Contributors

Diana  Bairaktarova  Department of Engineering Education, Virginia Tech,
Blacksburg, VA, USA

Lindy  Cranwell  Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia
Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA
Heather  Marcelle  Crickenberger  University of North Carolina at Charlotte,
Charlotte, NC, USA
Diana Dabby  Franclin W. Olin College of Engineering, Needham, MA, USA
Gillian Epstein  Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, Needham, MA, USA
Mary  Faure  Department of Engineering Education, The Ohio State University,
Columbus, OH, USA
Christopher  Gewirtz  Department of Engineering Education, Virginia Tech,
Blacksburg, VA, USA
Cassandra  Groen  Department of Engineering Education, Virginia Tech,
Blacksburg, VA, USA
Lynn  Hall  Department of Engineering Education, The Ohio State University,
Columbus, OH, USA
Jennifer  L.  Herman  Department of Engineering Education, The Ohio State
University, Columbus, OH, USA
Deborah  Kuzawa  Department of Engineering Education, The Ohio State
University, Columbus, OH, USA
Lisa D. McNair  Department of Engineering Education, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg,
VA, USA
Kevin C. Moore  University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

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Contributors

Marie C. Paretti  Department of Engineering Education, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg,

VA, USA
Lynne Ronesi  American University of Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
Adetoun Taiwo  Department of Engineering Education, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg,
VA, USA
Leah Wahlin  Department of Engineering Education, The Ohio State University,
Columbus, OH, USA
Rabih Younes  Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Tech,
Blacksburg, VA, USA
Yevgeniya  V.  Zastavker  Franklin W.  Olin College of Engineering, Needham,
MA, USA


The New Renaissance Artificers: Harnessing
the Power of Creativity in the Engineering
Classroom
Diana Bairaktarova

Engineering of the Future
The 2020 initiative proposed by the National Academy of Engineers called for creativity and interdisciplinary thinking for our engineering graduates. These skills and
abilities were identified as critical for this new century as companies seek graduates
who possess an increasingly broader set of skills—what the National Academy of
Engineers termed renaissance engineers. These are technically proficient engineering graduates whose education extends beyond conventional engineering education
in both technical and nontechnical ways, including the development of creative
skills (National Academy of Engineering, 2004).
In the fall of 2016, we started teaching the cohort that will graduate in 2020. Are
we ready to graduate the first cohort of renaissance engineers? Changes in engineering education are taking place across universities. A new discipline, called engineering education, and many new schools of engineering education were created. Our
best programs now foster experiential learning and encourage multidisciplinary
teams, offering learning experiences different from those in a traditional engineering curriculum. However, these innovative approaches are not happening in all engineering schools and not all at the same rate (Ottino & Morson, 2016). ArtScience
Labs are flourishing around the world, acting as a stimulating catalyst for innovation
by fusing the creative processes of artists and scientists alike. Regardless, David

Radcliffe states “these are exciting developments, but we need to foster organic
interdisciplinary collaborations between scholars and practitioners across all
STEM disciplines and the liberal arts” (Radcliffe, 2015).
We are presented with the challenge of creating an educational space that can
successfully combine art, technology, and science as a united phenomenon to ultiD. Bairaktarova (*)
Department of Engineering Education, Virginia Tech, 865 Prices Fork,
Blacksburg, VA 24060, USA
e-mail:
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017
D. Bairaktarova, M. Eodice (eds.), Creative Ways of Knowing in Engineering,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-49352-7_1

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D. Bairaktarova

mately transform our classrooms into workshops and studios bursting with activity.
To prepare the renaissance engineers of the future we look to the past, where renaissance artificers embraced art, technology, and science. This phenomenon was not
isolated, but rather the supremely creative culmination of a long process. Throughout
this chapter, I invite you to take a journey with me to the past.

Renaissance Engineering
The period of greatest flowering of modern Western thought is the Italian renaissance. The Italian renaissance was characterized by paradigm shifts in both art and
science. Common across the disciplines of art and science was an emphasis on
observation of the natural world. Inventiveness reflected great interest in nature,
figures were three dimensional, and shadows and lighting were heavily considered.
These innovations emphasized the virtues of intellectual freedom and individual

expression where the instinct of curiosity was vigorously cultivated (King, 2003).
Drawing and sketching were tools that enabled (or developed) the practice of
observing nature. Thinkers/artists recorded their observations in drawings that
allowed them to test and refine their ideas about the natural world. For example,
Galileo Galilei used his drawing talent and refined knowledge of perspective to
make watercolor images of the moon. His models of the moon (informed by his
mastery of perspective knowledge) allowed him to refine Copernican theories about
the rotation of the earth around the sun. Galileo continued to use his mastery of
perspective in drawing to translate three dimensions into two dimensions by manipulating the light and shadows of geometric forms.
In his book Renaissance Engineers, Paulo Galluzzi, director of the Museum of
History of Science in Florence, provides us with the opportunity to reassess the
Renaissance. His book examines the work of four great artist-engineers of the
Italian Renaissance: Filippo Brunelleschi, Taccola, Francesco di Giorgio, and
Leonardo DaVinci, and features large-scale reproductions of their drawings and
designs of “mechanical marvels,” which were the most significant technological
achievements of that time. Among these engineering artifacts featured by Galluzzi
are the dome of the Florence Cathedral (engineered by Filippo Brunelleschi) and
engineering manuscripts that illustrate harnessing water, conducting warfare, potential machines, and the energy source for machines (created by Taccola and Francesco
di Giorgio).
In the last section of the book, Galluzzi keeps a special place for DaVinci’s work
on machines and mechanisms: the anatomy of machines, the human body as a wonderful machine, his lost robot, the body–earth analogy, and the machine—building.
DaVinci’s most innovative contribution was that he was the first one to look at
machines as a system assembled from many individual parts, which he referred to
as “elements of machines” (Galluzzi, 1996). He analyzed the performance and characteristics of these elements by measuring force and motion.


The New Renaissance Artificers…

3

DaVinci applied the same systematic method to study the human body and the
internal organs he regarded as highly sophisticated mechanical devices. DaVinci
was not only an engineer, mathematician, anatomist, and inventor but he was also
painter, sculptor, musician, and writer. Because of his many talents, his vision of the
anatomy of machines and of humans was enshrined in a series of masterly drawings
that mark the birth of modern scientific illustration (Galluzzi, 1996).
Galluzzi refers to the multidisciplinary work of DaVinci and other renaissance
creators as the universal intellectual experience—embracing art, technology, and
science (Galluzzi, 1996). Galluzi believed that the multidisciplinary talents of
Renaissance artists were not an isolated phenomenon, but rather part of a long process that renewed technical knowledge and persisted throughout the Renaissance.
He referred to these skilled artist-scientists as “artificers,” who were “instrumental in defining and subsequently winning recognition for a new breed of professional
the artist-engineer- architect-author” (Galluzzi, p. 4).
When examining the work of those expressively talented people, there is a general consensus that the Renaissance culture displays a fusion of the creative processes of artists and scientists. Is it the time period that naturally engenders this
universal intellectual experience—embracing art, technology, and science? Or is it
the artificers’ expression of individuality and curiosity, looking for the truth in
nature? One may argue that the DNA of those talented and advanced-for-their-time
people is very close to the Innovator’s DNA of the twenty-first century.

The Innovator’s DNA
In “The Innovator‘s DNA,” Dyer, Gregersen, and Christensen (2011) build on what
we know about paradigm shifts to characterize the behaviors of the world’s best
innovators. The authors conducted research on 500 inventors compared to close to
five thousand executives and identified five inventive skills that distinguish innovative leaders from ordinary leaders: associating, questioning, observing, networking,
and experimenting. Dyer and colleagues argue that innovators use associative thinking to synthesize and make sense of discovery by making connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas. This phenomenon is described by
Frank Johanssen, a writer, entrepreneur, and scientist, as “the Medici effect.”
Johanssen, with an interdisciplinary background himself, refers to the fusion of the
creative processes of artists and scientists in Florence to the time when the Medici
family brought together creators from a wide range of disciplines—sculptors, scientist, poets, philosophers, painters, and architects (Johansson, 2013). The message
Johanssen has been delivering through his books, leadership, and public speaking is
that breakthrough innovations happen at the intersection of diverse disciplines, cultures, and ideas and not being afraid to be creative and thinking outside of the box.

Early research on creative abilities provides empirical evidence that thinking
outside of the box is not genetic but rather malleable. Reznikoff, Domino, Bridges,
and Honeymon (1973) completed a comprehensive study studying creative abilities


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D. Bairaktarova

in 117 pairs of identical and fraternal twins. Their findings revealed that only about
30 % of the performance of identical twins on a battery of ten creativity tests could
be attributed to genetics. In contrast, 85 % of the twins’ performance on general
intelligence (IQ) tests was attributed to genetics. This study supports the hypothesis
that general intelligence (as measured by IQ tests) is genetically endowed but creativity is not (Reznikoff et al., 1973). Consequently, we can see that creativity is a
learned practice and we need to shift our educational practices accordingly.

Teaching and Learning Creativity
Recently, the call for innovation has garnered a greater interest in creative aptitude.
Increased efforts are encouraging universities to produce graduates with creative
thinking skills, who are flexible, adaptable, and able to solve problems in order to
face the challenges of the twenty-first century (Grainger, Barnes, & Scoffham,
2004). Despite this increased insistence that creativity is a ‘good thing,’ it is poorly
understood and difficult to define (Coate & Boulos, 2012). Some scholars question
its role in education and its relevance across cultural and societal contexts (Craft,
2003). Craft argues that there are paradigm shifts in the concept of creativity from
extraordinary creativity to ordinary creativity. Furthermore, creativity is now understood as a culturally specific phenomenon as opposed to a universal quality. In “The
Limits to Creativity in Education: Dilemmas for the Educator” Craft contends that
creativity is not a universal concept; the author poses a set of dilemmas for educators (social, environmental, ethical, and cultural) arguing that challenging creativity
through these limitations and dilemmas is necessary to provide learners with an
education grounded in the twenty-first century context and demands (Craft, 2003).

Creativity is not only central to the social and economic development of society
but to the progress in knowledge. It is important to nurture everyday creativity and
develop more creative approaches in teaching, to empower our students to not only
be innovators and creators of artifacts, but cocreators of knowledge. To best further
creativity in education, we must not stick to a standardized pedagogy and assessment of creativity potential. Collard and Looney suggest that we need to be reflexive
in our teaching in order to establish creative partnerships with students that allow
better access to the creative process (Collard & Looney, 2014). Traditionally viewed
as a fixed trait assessed via summative assessments, creativity is now perceived as a
skill that can be nurtured in open learning environments that promote the structuring
of knowledge.
Julio Ottino, who once studied art, is now the Dean of Robert R. McCormick
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Gary Morson is a professor of Slavic
languages and literature, but once intended to study physics. In their recent post in
The Chronicle of Higher Education, both argue that educational practices that merge
the humanities and sciences create “whole-brain engineers and scientifically
inspired humanists.” They suggest that these types of educational practices will foster more than just innovation, as these experiences will help individuals be more


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flexible and adaptable to global changes (Ottino & Morson, 2016). Ottino and
Morson suggest that providing courses that bring different modes of thinking will
cultivate the “whole-brain” experience.
Other scholars talk about interdisciplinary practices to unlock creativity (e.g.,
Including Art in STEM, Daniel, 2015). For example, Bradley found value in promoting transformative learning, where through creative experiences students self-­
discover and explore their ‘inner emotional worlds’ (Bradley, 2012, p. 130). Newell
and Kleiman trust that when students are engaged in learning experiences where
they feel safe to take risks, to collaborate and play, stimulate students’ creativity

(Newell & Kleiman, 2012). These creative experiences are discussed too from the
authors of the Innovators DNA—experiences that promote associations, questioning, observation, networking, and discovery. Regardless of the need for flexibility of
our educational systems that would facilitate these processes, there are not many
engineering schools that provide learning environments for self-discovery, risk taking, exploration of ‘inner emotional worlds’ (Bradley, p. 130), or freedom in creative expressions. There is a vast amount of literature on developing and enhancing
students’ creative skills but these studies mainly examine design courses and capstone projects (Ottino & Morson, 2016). While assignments of a creative nature are
more widespread than the formal literature currently indicates, difficulties lie in
capturing publishable data under common standards of rigor. Recent conference
papers offer numerous “creative” assignments for fundamental engineering courses,
although many of these do not have well-documented outcomes (Bairaktarova &
Eodice, 2017).
In their work on creativity and education, Csikszentmihalyi and Wolfe argue that
creativity takes a long time and it happens within a system of cultural rules and with
the support of experts (Csikszentmihalyi & Wolfe, 2014). In the case of creativity in
education, the authors claim that creativity is a joint result of “well-presented knowledge, interested students, and stimulating teachers” (p. 181). Another tenet of the
situated learning perspective, particularly applicable in engineering education (Johri
& Olds, 2011), is that knowledge is constructed in practical activities of groups of
people as they interact with each other and their material environments (Greeno,
2011). According to Greeno, this construction of knowledge is based on our experiences, guided by opportunities to explore, discover, construct, and create. While we
learn and gain knowledge, we also find and shape ourselves. Through the discovery
process, we also learn who we are and what we are good at. Nurturing discovery is
helping individuals to find and express their true selves. The time we live in, the
places we were born, and the people who raised us influence our values and ways of
seeking the truth, or push us to be individually creative while seeking the new and
undiscovered.
Many describe creativity as a mysterious process, a flow (Csikszentmihaly), a
production of novel and appropriate responses to an open-ended task (Amabile,
2012). Personally, I have experienced periods of creativity when I reached a crossroad and needed to make sense of who I was and of the world around me—of what
I have and what I have lost.

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D. Bairaktarova

Reflection on Creative Experiences
I grew up in Bulgaria in the last decades of the Communist regime, in a political
system that did not allow ideas and opinions to diverge from the communist doctrine. I feel beyond fortunate to have parents who showed me the truth behind the
regime and provided me with many opportunities for self-discovery—singing in a
choir, playing the accordion (still in my parents’ house attic), making art with charcoals. . . all while also playing in the streets until dark (acting out and cooking with
mud meatballs for the neighborhood grandmas), writing poems. It was through
such unstructured play that I first fell in love with the shape and nature of objects.
Each object I found in the attic—a pottery wheel, textbooks covered with dust, an
unknown antique—signaled a new understanding of who my predecessors were
and what they might have been interested in. Writing poetry was like playing with
objects, virtually, making an imaginary connection in my mind; discovering that
rhyming words and matching simple objects is something magical and complex.
Later, at the Special High School of Mathematics, that love of objects transformed
to the love of geometry, drawings, visual arts, and reasoning. My desire to study all
poetry, visual art, and drawings prompted me to make my first important life choice.
I had won many Bulgarian poetry competitions and was encouraged to join the oldest university in Bulgaria—the University of Sofia—to major in Bulgarian language and literature. But, I wanted to study Theater design and stage craft, however
because of a school admission policy during that time (the communist regime) I
was not allowed to apply to that school.
I speculated about what other programs I could enter. While my friends and family thought I would go into art and creative writing, I went to study mechanical
engineering instead. After learning that mechanical engineering involved drawing
and graphic design, I enrolled in my first year technical drawing class. I quickly
learned that engineering drawings had nothing to do with my sketches, graphic
design, and white and black charcoal artistic drawings. My education at the
Technical University of Sofia not only provided me with a completely new set of
skills, but more importantly, allowed me to explore and further my love for objects,
geometry, and drawings thereby garnering a more holistic relationship with the

world around me. The first sparkle of influence I had was when my professor of
Solid Mechanics at the final exam asked some of us to open a box, pick up a part,
and talk about the chosen object and what it does. The students who could not
describe the mechanical objects and their function, although they may have performed well on answering the exam’s theoretical questions, failed the exam. At that
point on I was interested not only in the geometry and shape of humanly made
objects but became eager to explore another world of engineering design where
decisions are made about materials, functionality, and effectiveness of new products. I was also eager to know more how these tactile and tangible objects help us
learn and practice engineering.
I will never regret my decision to study mechanical engineering. I view my engineering degree as a huge accomplishment. Becoming an engineer enabled me to


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interact with humanly made objects as a creator who brings them into existence in
a variety of shapes and nature. My education in mechanical engineering gave me the
knowledge and confidence to transform abstract ideas into tangible objects. My love
for tinkering and playing with words slowly transformed into the love of tinkering
with things. Working as a design engineer has allowed me to continually hone my
visual reasoning and artistic skills while solving complex engineering problems.
Most of my experience has been in working in interdisciplinary teams, locally
and globally, with people with different cultures, fields, backgrounds, and education. I have observed how my engineering colleagues use their “other” skills along
with their technical skills. I thrived in these environments, thinking I had reached
my full creative potential.
Then fortune required me to make another life choice when in the summer of
2009 my father passed away. My father was my inspiration in life. He studied psychology and was a pottery and clay technology teacher in the School of Ceramics
in my home town for more than 30 years. Following my father’s death, I learned
about the Engineering Education PhD program at Purdue University and decided
to pursue the degree in honor of my father. At the end of 2009, I left my design

engineer position to join the School of Engineering Education. I considered
this life changing move a creative one; becoming an engineering educator and
researcher brought me even closer to my father—by sharing the same life experiences as he had, I now feel that I have him back. His influence reaches to so many
of his students’ lives. Furthering my education with graduate studies enables me to
work toward understanding what motivates us to learn and how the material world
helps in this learning process. Now, as an engineering educator and researcher, I
feel privileged to have my father’s life experience to reflect and build upon through
all facets of my personal and academic research. Ranging from the exploration of
humanly made objects to the education of my students, I strive to enhance their
ability to explore and express their creativity, discover their own potential talent to
ultimately bring their ideas to fruition. In a perfect symbiosis now, I play with both,
and equally love tinkering with words and things, experiencing flow, while creating
manuscripts or objects. I have found ways to do what inspires me most to do my
best in life.

The Experience of Flow in Education
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is the Distinguished Professor of Psychology and
Management at Claremont Graduate University, and the author of the highly cited
book Flow. In his research Csikszentmihalyi investigates the question “What makes
a life worth living?” He has found that pleasure and lasting satisfaction in activities
bring us to a state of flow, a type of intrinsic motivation. When a person is completely involved in what they are doing, when the concentration is very high, when
the person knows moment by moment what the next steps should be is considered,


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D. Bairaktarova

that person is in state of flow (Csíkszentmihályi, 2008). On the other hand, extrinsic
motivation refers to doing something because it leads to a separable outcome (Ryan

& Deci, 2000). Intrinsic motivation refers to doing something because it is inherently interesting or enjoyable, which, Ryan and Deci argue, results in high-quality
learning and creativity.
Csikszentmihalyi represents the field of positive psychology, which investigates through scientific inquiry the strengths that enable individuals and communities to thrive. This field is founded on the belief that people want to lead
meaningful and fulfilling lives, to cultivate what is best within them, and to
enhance their experiences of love, work, and play. However, many of the tasks that
we want our students to perform are not inherently interesting or enjoyable.
Knowing how to support active and volitional (versus passive and controlling)
forms of intrinsic motivation becomes an essential strategy for successful teaching (Ryan & Deci, 2000) and an opportunity for our students to freely express
themselves in creative environments. According to Csikszentmihalyi, we are in
flow experience when engaged in an activity that is appropriately challenging to
our skill and confidence level, often resulting in task immersion and concentrated
focus. He also states that flow can result in deep learning and high levels of personal and work satisfaction.
When investigating students’ engagement based on the flow experience of 526
high school students, Shernoff, Csikszentmihalyi, Shneider, and Shernoff (2003)
found that students were more engaged when the perceived challenge of the task
and their own skills were high and in balance, the instruction was relevant, and the
learning environment was under their control. Participants also reported high concentration, interest, and enjoyment (e.g., flow) when they work on individual and
team projects as opposed to being lectured or taking exams.
If we examine the current undergraduate engineering curricula, the project-based
approach is one that presents opportunities for students to work on projects where
flow can be eventually achieved. However, in many engineering programs, students
do not experience project-based learning until their last year of college in the form
of capstone projects. In contrast, students in the liberal arts, for example, do not learn
and master only their course material in the first 3 years of university—instead, from
early on in the curriculum, they engage in their own unique ways of thinking to grasp
opportunities that can contribute distinctive elements in their field. What can we
learn in engineering education from the humanities to enable our students and ourselves to open the door to flow? Experiential learning is an educational approach
where, through the exploration of real-life activities and challenges, s­tudents are
involved in hands-on, collaborative, and reflective learning. Through learning from
the process, students “take ownership” of the development of their new skills and

knowledge. Learning environments rich with tasks that improve students’ motivation and stimulate their creativity can also invite work that crosses disciplinary
boundaries. In engineering education, experiential learning is mainly viewed as simply hands-on experiences. In reality, there is much more that we can learn from other
disciplines when trying to design learning environments that improve students’
learning, motivation, creativity, and appreciation of the subject matter.