The purpose of the study was to understand and describe the level of nonverbal
creativity and its relation to cognitive and learning styles of engineering
and computing students. This might possibly provide engineering educators with
knowledge of the above three factors and their adaptation to teaching and
learning. The study was an exploratory-comparative study with one independent
variable (engineering versus computing students) and three dependent variables
[the Non-Verbal Test of Creative Thinking (Mehdi, 1973), The Group Embedded
Figures Test, (Witkin et al, 1971); the Visual, Auditory, Read and Write Kinesthetic
VARK Questionnaire , (Fleming, 1992) ]. The study aimed to compare the level of
non-verbal creativity and influence of other attributes on the creativity of students
of engineering and computing science. Additional aims were to see if there were
significant differences in cognitive and learning styles of students from
engineering and computing science. Data were collected by administering the
three tests to engineering and computing students in three colleges in Bangalore
(N=105). Data analysis was conducted using t-test, ANOVA, MANOVA and
Pearson correlation coefficients. Findings indicated that engineering and
computer students have above average levels of non-verbal creativity. Engineering
students are more field-independent compared to computing students. Computing
students are field-dependent in their cognitive style. Engineering and computer
students focus more on the kinesthetic learning style. The implications of these
findings for the education of engineering and computing students are discussed
