Assessing Creativity In Engineering Students: A Comparative Between Degrees and Sudents In First And Last Year

An online open access test (CREAX self-assessment) has been used in this work so that students from degrees in engineering in the Universidad Polite¿cnica of Madrid (UPM) could self-assess their creative competence after several classroom activities. Different groups from the first year course have been statistically compared using data from their assessment. These first year students had different professors in the subject ?Technical Drawing? and belonged to several degrees in the UPM. They were as well compared regarding sex and a group of first year students was also compared to another last year group of the degree so as to observe possible differences in the achievement of this competence. Only one difference was detected concerning sex in one of the degrees. Among degrees, the higher marks obtained by students who had done specific exercises for the development of creativity in class is highlighted. Finally, a significantly high mark was observed in students during their last year of degree with respect to first year students. The tool CREAX has become very useful in the assessment of this competence in the UPM degrees in which it has been implemented

The use of heterogeneity to improve the learning process of large groups of students

Students start university with a high heterogeneity, both in knowledge and abilities to cope with the different subjects. Traditional teaching methods are based on unidirectional transmission of knowledge, from teachers to students, causing problems when the aforementioned heterogeneity is high. Some new methods try to homogenize the students before the start of the course. As an innovative approach, this study tries to use the heterogeneity to improve the final learning. Continuous assessment, collective intelligence and the use of web 2.0 have been applied to encourage collaboration and horizontal share of knowledge. Results show how the mixture of students with different knowledge or abilities can be effective, probably because of motivational forces that initiate in the doubts of low level students and in the incentive of high level students to teach and share their knowledge