IGE: Creative Interdisciplinary Research in Graduate Education (CIRGE)

创造力是创新的核心，然而STEM研究生课程很少专门用于明确教授创造性实践和解决问题的策略。相反，研究生往往很难培养自己的创造性思维能力。研究生培训通常也发生在学术孤岛，限制学生接触其他学科的方法和跨学科的问题解决。 这个国家科学基金会研究生教育创新（IGE）奖给德雷克塞尔大学将测试创造性思维和解决问题的有目的的注入到STEM研究生课程在跨学科的空间。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能力，超越课堂的界限，超越个人的纪律。我们的目标是通过提供一套通用的技能来解决团队流程和人际关系问题，并促进协同作用，以达到创造性的解决方案，超过那些由个人的集合，培养学生在团队为基础的研究的最佳实践。两个研究生课程的创造力将开发明确暴露学生创造性的做法和解决问题的策略在一个跨学科的团队空间。 这两门课程将让学生发现创造力研究和实践的最新进展。在课程中，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，并通过创造性地提高学生论文研究来应用这些原则。该项目有一个执行部分，以确保各大学学科之间的顺利融合，还有一个研究部分，以评估课程在提高创造力、解决问题和团队做法方面的效力。研究部分将使用混合方法，纵向方法来检查学生，同行和教师的利益相关者，以产生形成性和总结性评估。目标是达成一套基于证据的学习经验，以增强创造性实践和改善问题解决。研究生教育创新（IGE）计划的重点是研究生教育的研究。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的社区所需的知识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

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.