Take this Waltz on creativity: The engineering students' conceptions

The definition of creativity is not simple, because there are different conceptions, which are also in constant changing. This paper presents a study on the conceptions of creativity in students of the first year of university, in the engineering area. This study considered the answers of 67 undergraduates originating from four different courses to an open question available online on Google Drive - “What is creativity?”. Data were collected in the first semester of the 2014/2015 among students at a Portuguese university in the Linear Algebra program. The analysis of the students' answers focused on the content analysis using the categories of Vernon's definition of creativity; we considered the variables gender and undergraduate courses into the analysis. The results show that gender and the undergraduate courses were independent from the analyzed group categories. However, the descriptive analysis by gender showed that the predominant group was the implicit group category (using the terms creation, imagination, and originality) while in the undergraduate course it prevailed the explicit group category (using the terms inventions, innovations and thinking). This exploratory study leaves clues on the approach to other definitions and constructs of creativity, as well as their implementation for teaching in higher education.