Complete thesis - Murdoch University

(Rittel and Webber, 1984). However, problem development requires enhanced creativityskills – superimposing a goal (ie a solution) too early in the process inhibits the necessarycreative thinking required (Boden, 1997). This is confirmed in the work of Thomas et al(2002) regarding structuring failure in early design.Gardner (1999) argues that creativity is a coincidence of many factors, which includes thediscipline to master a domain and a lack of hindrance from the fear of failure. However, aproblem requiring a creative solution is likely to be challenging, and therefore may createmotivational problems, particularly in an educational setting. In addition, challenging learningenvironments favour students who are deep learners and therefore could be said to fail toaddress the diversity of learning approaches in the student cohort.Establishing a creative environment, based on authentic problem scenarios in a ProblembasedLearning context which incorporates creativity-enhancing processes seemed an appropriateapproach for both challenging student preconceptions and focussing on the insightdrivenopportunistic nature of the RE process, as well as potentially tackling the issue ofworkload perceptions.The choice of PBL over other situated and action learning models was made on the basis ofsome familiarity with the model (it had been applied for two years, at this time, in a follow-onunit in SE), its seeming appropriateness for tackling issues in the discipline (despite a paucityof literature for PBL in the IT discipline generally and SE specifically) – as well as having adefined process to provide the discipline to assist students in mastering the domain, and thepotential for the model to integrate with creativity-enhancing approaches. In addition, PBLappeared to address wider engineering education issues, such as generic skills and life-longlearning. These are discussed in greater detail in later sections of this thesis.This chapter describes how the issues identified above were addressed: how the interventionwas planned, what actually occurred and possible interpretations for findings of the cycle.As for Cycle 1, two distinct evaluations are proposed: implementation of the model and itssuccess and the effect of the intervention on the student cohort.In summary, these evaluations suggested that the process-driven characteristics of PBL wereat some odds with the characteristics of the discipline, in particular the opportunistic natureof problem solving in RE. While the environment appeared to facilitate creativity-enablingactivities by embedding these within the process, the process itself acted as a deterrentto student motivation to study (and hence on deep learning), and to the creativity beingnurtured – opportunism was difficult within the process and hence flexibility inhibited. Ineffect, a focus on process detracted from the ‘authenticity’ of the environment. Some of thefindings of this cycle have been published. Section 7.2.5 provides details.275