IGE: Creative Interdisciplinary Research in Graduate Education (CIRGE)

创造力是创新的核心，然而STEM研究生课程很少明确地教授创造性实践和解决问题的策略。相反，研究生往往很难自己培养创造性思维能力。研究生培训通常也在学术孤岛内进行，这限制了学生接触其他学科方法和跨学科问题解决。这项授予德雷克塞尔大学的国家科学基金会研究生教育创新(IGE)奖将测试在跨学科空间内有目的地将创造性思维和问题解决融入STEM研究生课程。该项目将测试这种方法是否可以提高创造力和协作解决问题的技能，超越课堂和个人学科的界限。其目标是通过提供解决团队过程和人际关系问题的多才多艺的技能来培训学生进行基于团队的研究的最佳实践，并促进协同作用，以达成超越个人集合所实现的创造性解决方案。两门研究生课程将开发创造性，明确地让学生在跨学科团队空间内接触创造性实践和解决问题的策略。这两门课程将让学生了解创意研究和实践的最新进展。在课程期间，学生将通过设计基于团队的解决方案来解决STEM相关的社会问题，并创造性地改进学生的论文研究，从而应用这些原则。该项目有一个实施部分，以确保各大学学科之间的顺利整合，还有一个研究部分，用于评估课程在提高创造力、解决问题和团队实践方面的成效。研究部分将使用混合方法、纵向方法来检查学生、同龄人和教师利益相关者，以生成形成性和终结性评估。其目标是为增强创造性实践和改进问题解决提供一套基于证据的学习经验。这些成果的传播可能会为其他机构提供一个适应的平台。研究生教育创新(IGE)项目专注于研究生教育的研究。IGE的目标是试验、测试和验证研究生教育的创新方法，并产生将这些方法推广到更广泛社区所需的知识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Creativity is at the heart of innovation, and yet STEM graduate courses are rarely devoted to explicitly teaching creative practices and problem-solving strategies. Instead, graduate students often struggle to develop creative thinking skills on their own. Graduate training also typically takes place within academic silos that limit students' exposure to other disciplinary approaches and cross-disciplinary problem solving. This National Science Foundation Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) award to Drexel University will test the purposeful infusion of creative thinking and problem solving into the STEM graduate curriculum within an interdisciplinary space. The project will test whether such an approach can enhance creativity and collaborative problem-solving skills beyond the boundaries of the classroom and beyond an individual discipline. The goal is to train students in best practices for team-based research by providing a versatile skill set to address team processes and interpersonal issues and foster synergy towards arriving at creative solutions that exceed those achieved by a collection of individuals.Two graduate courses will be developed in creativity to explicitly expose students to creative practices and problem-solving strategies within an interdisciplinary team space. The two courses will allow students to discover recent advances in creativity research and practice. During the courses, students will apply these principles by devising team-based solutions to STEM-related societal problems and by creatively improving student thesis research. The project has an implementation component to ensure smooth integration across university disciplines and a research component that evaluates the effectiveness of the courses in enhancing creativity, problem-solving and team practices. The research component will examine student, peer, and faculty stakeholders using a mixed-methods, longitudinal approach to generate formative and summative assessments. The goal is to arrive at an evidence-based set of learning experiences for enhanced creative practices and improved problem solving. Dissemination of these results may provide a platform for other institutions to adapt.The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) program is focused on research in graduate education. The goals of IGE are to pilot, test and validate innovative approaches to graduate education and to generate the knowledge required to move these approaches into the broader community.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.