Creativity and inspiration for problem solving in engineering education

Problem solving is a critical skill for engineering students and essential to development of creativity and innovativeness. Essential to such learning is an ease of communication and allowing students to address the issues at hand via the terminology, attitudes, humor and empathy, which is inherent to their frame of mind as novices, without the attempt to have to be the expert. Deep learning of scientific fact can be facilitated by using non-conventional tools for teaching, learning and presentation such as drama, video, posters, model making and other similar means. It may be time to break free of the PowerPoint tradition to generate successful approaches for establishing student engagement and maintaining such engagement.