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Abstract:

Software development is a complex field that changes rapidly and above all is very technical. Therefore, much research is devoted to technical aspects (e.g. cognition), while non-technical skills (e.g. creativity) are given less attention. Our recent work has shown that expert software engineers in industry deem creativity as a crucially important problem solving skill. Yet, we also found that creativity is mentioned in less than 5% of the learning outcomes in computing-related courses across European universities. This shows a clear gap in skill requirements between education and industry. Our aim is to further explore the role of creativity in software engineering, investigating ways to assess and ultimately enhance the creative problem solving skills of computing students in higher education. In this seminar, we will discuss the results of a focus group study and explain the current state of affairs on the development of a new creativity self-assessment metric that we hope to employ to measure students’ creative performance pre and post intervention.