Board 88: Visual Representation Based Creative Problem Solving (CPS) for Microelectronic Course

Microelectronic technologies become the basis for many modern revolutions and require technological innovation and creative transformation of new knowledge into products. This demands our engineering students to be more innovative and creative than ever. It also requires solid resources and strategies to cultivate higher-order thinking skills for engineering students. Presently, microelectronic course covers a wide range of topic areas, including basic semiconductor, pn junction diode, metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET) and bipolar junction transistor (BJT) circuits. A traditional teaching strategy in a typical educational setting encompasses instructors delivering lectures to teach the basics and principles of microelectronic devices and circuits, followed by students participating in laboratory sessions. To innovate the teaching strategies, we integrate creative problem-solving components into microelectronic course using ‘visual representation’ activities that allow students to capture or transform engineering problems into visual forms in a speedy but creative way. Particularly, visual representation using digital drawings and paintings is designed to include five essential stages, namely fact-finding, problem-finding, idea-finding, solution-finding and acceptance-finding. A series of CPS exercises in the classroom start with critical reflection in which students identify the problem (fact-finding); reflect on what they have already learned, and then undertake active inquiry and deep research on subject matter (problem-finding); brainstorming (idea-finding) that propels imaginative and divergent thinking from different perspectives; visualization and creation of unorthodox creative solutions (solution-finding); and contextualization linking between creative ideas and the underlying principle of the subject (acceptance-finding). Thus, visual representation-based CPS strategy highlights a divergent thinking phase in which one generates lots of ideas, and then facilitates a convergent thinking phase in which only the most promising ideas are selected for further exploration. We will discuss our initial outcomes, surveys, and assessment and highlight visual representation as a new and authentic experience as creative and thought-provoking processes that allow students to better understand the subject, rather than memorize the equations and key characteristics.