Creative and reasoning skills are low among health sciences students who rely mostly on memorized templates: An Australian case

Creativity is an important skill that graduates of medical and health science courses require to address challenges of their professions. This study used a non-traditional special tool to test skills of creativity, learned prediction and reasoning of undergraduate students of health sciences in an Australian university. It was the questionnaire with one multiple choice type and two open-ended questions. Answers were scored independently by three experienced university educators. Correlations of scores the educators assigned indicated good reliability of the tool. Eighty-four undergraduate students attending medical and health sciences courses in the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Adelaide, Australia were tested. Results indicate that less than half (48%) of students were acceptably creative while nearly 2/3 (64%) were adept at learned prediction. Less than 10% of students achieved high creativity scores. Only 1/3 of students achieved good scores for reasoning. It appears that undergraduate students are reasonably good at “learned prediction”, that is at repeating what they have learned earlier, while their reasoning and creative abilities are inadequate

Framing Open Design through Theoretical Concepts and Practical Applications: A Systematic Literature Review

This study reports on the results of a systematic literature review on ‘open design’ in academic fields including and beyond design and HCI. The review investigates how studies are framed as open design and open-source design (including ‘open hardware’): how researchers contribute to conceptual theorizing about open design or study its practical operationalization, in do-it-yourself ‘making,’ manufacturing and practices in-between these domains. Most of the papers reviewed were empirical studies from diverse fields. Open design was analyzed not only as contributions and solutions, but also as open-to-participate processes, openly shared processes, and open, closed, and modular (open and closed) outcomes. Various research fields presented an open design framing as an alternative to the status quo: new ways to do business and/or to foster socio-environmental sustainability. On the manufacturing side, open design was sought especially to accelerate innovation cycles; on the making side, it was espoused to fosterdemocratization. However, the studies reviewed indicated that companies do not appear to develop much beyond business-as-usual. From the research perspective, the conceptual potential of open design to promote sustainability saw little practical exploration. Additionally, issues around open design community governance and ownership, safety and reliability of open outcomes require further investigation.Peer reviewe