Is the Engineering Lab a Place to Foster Creativity? A Study on Students' Creative Achievements in a Conventional Forming Technology Lab

For a considerable time, creativity is classed to be one of the key 21st century skills, especially in the context of Learning and Working 4.0. However, common engineering degree programs hardly foster engineering creativity, if at all. Although state of the art instructional laboratories have the potential to provide a vast variety of novel opportunities to foster creativity in engineering education, the commonly deployed verification laboratory type does not. The paper presents results of an exploratory study deploying participant observation and a content analysis of observation protocols on current creativity fostering aspects of a well-established lab course in manufacturing engineering at a German university of technology. The study identified a significant lack of learning outcomes regarding creativity. As a main result, it can be stated that the lab course mainly fosters creativity aspects like curiosity and motivation, self-reflective learning, and learning by doing. However, the most important qualities of creativity, such as independency, multiperspectivity, and especially reaching for original ideas, are not in focus yet. To tackle this challenge, remote and virtual labs unfold additional potentials to foster the perceived missed opportunities of engineering creativity. Above all, it is necessary to rework lab courses with regard to creativity fostering learning objectives. With this, it will be possible to contribute to a future skills oriented instructional redesign of engineering curricula.