Group Creativity Development by Solving Real-life Project in Engineering Education

In recent years, problem and project based learning (PBL) has been employed by a growing number of educational institutions to foster creative engineers. Among the diverse pedagogical practices of PBL, there has been an emergence of real-life project for students. Based on literature of creativity research, PBL theories and the social theory of learning, this paper analyzes and discusses four major dimensions of project work - problem analysis and solving, group learning, interdisciplinary learning and project management - as the factors in constructing creative learning environments. We think group creativity can be developed by the mutual function of the four dimensions under the positive facilitation of supervisors. A case study was carried out with a student satellite project in the department of electronic systems at Aalborg University in Denmark. Multiple methods including interviews and observation were employed in this case. The analysis of the empirical data leads to the findings that learning through reallife projects may frame the creative learning environment by facilitating motivation and skills such as collaboration, communication, group development management, and social networking along with the learning activities etc., which are necessary for group creativity development in engineering students