College students’ views of creative process instruction across disciplines

Abstract

Learning about the “creative process” helps students as they undertake creative activities within a discipline. Instruction about how to create may involve a variety of pedagogical approaches across disciplines. Our study documents how college students learn about creative process through a study of their reported course experiences. We surveyed over 450 university students in nineteen different courses across five different disciplines: the Arts, Education, Engineering, Humanities, and Social Sciences. We focused on students' perceptions of their educational experiences, the perceived contributions of specific pedagogical components, and their assessment of the course's impact on their own creative development. We performed both quantitative and qualitative analyses of the students' reports. The main finding was a high degree of commonality in students' perceptions of effective learning experiences across disciplines. Common themes included open-ended projects, practice on exercises, and instructor feedback. Analyses revealed a greater perceived impact of instruction in the humanities, social sciences, and the arts compared to engineering and education. The results of the study document the qualities of learning experiences in university classrooms during creative process instruction. Suggested improvements of pedagogy include building a repertoire of successful works within a field, and self-reflection about the creative process.

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