Electrodermal Activity Experiment to Enhance Divergent Thinking in Engineering Students

摘要

Divergent thinking is one area of problem-solving that engineering students lack in today's classrooms. Students tend to stick to only one solution to a problem, which causes limitations to their problem-solving process. Encouraging divergent thinking to increase creativity has become an enormous challenge for educators. Research indicates that electrodermal activity (EDA) can be used to identify attentional processing among individuals. EDA refers to changes in the electrical properties of the skin, controlled by the central nervous system. However, more research is needed to link EDA with idea generation. If we can have a better understanding of how the ideation occurs, then we can ultimately modify our undergraduate curricula to allow for more divergent thinking. We conducted the Alternative Uses Task (AUT) experiments to evaluate the creativity levels of engineering student subjects. Preliminary results show that there is a correlation between EDA and idea generation when students are exposed to creative problem-solving tasks. Results from this study could lead to more effective teaching strategies, which will enhance creative problem solving among engineering students.