We educators face a pressing need for our courses and curricula to turn out more creative people. Unfortunately, most of our undergraduate engineering environments provide few opportunities for students to engage in creative processes. Engineering instructors habitually design courses that are loaded with instructor controls. Faculty tell students what to learn, how to learn it, when to learn it, and why they should care about learning it. The results are often low student intrinsic motivation, lack of individual internalization of learning goals, and limited learner engagement in higher-level cognitive and metacognitive processes, all of which may lead to decreased creativity. One approach to unleashing students’ creative potential may lie in nurturing their selfdirected learning capacities. Creativity research tells us that individual autonomy is a core characteristic of creative people, and that achieving creative potential may require development of a strong sense of self-determination. This paper describes an introductory materials science course built on the premise that student choice and control facilitate engagement, selfmotivation, and creative approaches to learning. The course design leverages existing educational research that suggests strong correlations between self-determination and creativity. By providing students with increasing levels of autonomy – and corresponding increases in creative opportunity – throughout the semester, the project-based learning experiences enable students to connect materials science topics to personal interests and contexts. Students report that the course contributes positively to their creative thinking, and they emphasize the benefits of freedom in choosing topics and learning strategies.
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