Exploring the Relationships between Artistic Creativity and Innovation Attitudes in Engineering Students

Abstract This research explored potential relationships between the innovation self-efficacy (ISE) of engineering students and their artistic creativity and life experiences revealed on an ice-breaker assignment. In a community-building assignment, students were directed to introduce themselves through cartoon monster drawings that communicated various personal attributes (such as the number of languages they speak, and the number of states visited). Previous research has found that multicultural experiences can shape feelings of self-efficacy concerning innovation and creativity. This pilot study was conducted in a single junior-level course for environmental engineering students. The innovation self-efficacy of participants was measured using a survey that included items from the Very Brief Innovation Self-Efficacy scale (ISE.6), the Innovation Interests scale (INI), and the Career Goals: Innovative Work scale (IW). The drawings were analyzed for Artistic Effort (AE) and Creative Work (CW) by engineering and art evaluators, respectively. The ISE survey results were compared with the AE and CW scores and the correlations with travel, gender, and multilingualism on creativity attributes were explored. A strong correlation between CW scores and AE scores was observed. A negative correlation between CW and ISE.6 was found. The CW scores were significantly different between female and male students, except for black/white shading in the cartoon drawings. There were no significant differences between the AE scores for female versus male students. Our results do not support the existence of a correlation between multilingualism and travel with artistic creativity and innovation self-efficacy attributes. Overall, we did not find that the students' artistic creativity or life experiences revealed through the self-portrait activity provided insights into innovation attitudes.