Group Creativity in Biomedical Engineering Education

Aim: The present study focuses on a group creativity approach tested during a 5-day interdisciplinary seminar involving 12 members of the teaching team, a creativity facilitator and 87 students from various nationalities enrolled in 4 specialities of a Biomedical Master. Approach: 15 multidisciplinary teams of 5 to 6 students were formed according to their background and specialities. Questionnaires were used to assess students' thinking styles and teamwork capability. Students were introduced to the six thinking hats technique and to an adapted version of Human Centred Design. During the creativity sessions, students were encouraged to think about things that have frustrated them lately, to find an idea, define what the problem is and "solve" it. The last day, students voted for each project in terms of originality, impact and feasibility. A jury of experts gave a mark (out of 20) to each project. Results: All the projects involved the development of a smart technical device to diagnose, detect, monitor, cure or prevent a health problem such as diabetes, sleep disorder, sudden death syndrome, snake bite, epilepsy, bed sore, posture or hormonal issues. Jury marks were positively correlated with the peer feasibility and impact votes but not with the originality of the projects. The dominant thinking style of the students was "Pragmatist" (42% of student with score ≥60). The team who received the highest number of votes and the highest jury mark (18 out of 20) included students with different thinking styles (Synthesist, Pragmatist, Realist and Analyst). The 6 teams in which there was at least one member with "Realist" dominant thinking style obtained 63% of peers' feasibility votes. The lowest jury mark (14 out of 20) was awarded to the team including members with only 2 different thinking styles, "Synthesist" and "Idealist". Students with preference for "Synthesist" thinking style perceived their teamwork as less efficient. Conclusion: The approach used was well received by students and the outcome was very satisfactory. Feasibility and impact are favoured over originality by the students and their mentors. Teamwork seems to be influenced by the diversity of the thinking styles of the teams ‘members. The main guidelines developed to improve the teaching of creativity tools concern a) the composition of innovation teams: in addition to the diversity of backgrounds and specialities a more structured approach to form teams should involves measuring team member's thinking preferences before forming a team and balancing it accordingly, b) thinking style awareness: it could be interesting that one identifies each strategic thinking to leverage strengths and to reinforce or modify those thinking styles.