Creative Problem Solving is one of the techniques taught in schools in modern society enhancing the ability to resolve practical and unstructured problems through fresh and various processes. 2009 curriculum revision shows that the autonomy of unit sc...
Creative Problem Solving is one of the techniques taught in schools in modern society enhancing the ability to resolve practical and unstructured problems through fresh and various processes. 2009 curriculum revision shows that the autonomy of unit school in various ways of managing educational systems is greatly enhanced due to the proliferation of the importance of Creative Problem Solving. This kind of movement in educational curriculum guide generally fulfills modern society’s claim; general high schools is already applying various programs supported by the freedom of organizing educational system, and specialized high schools are following the flow as well by focusing students’ education on site compatibility through developing school-work links.
Therefore, for specialized high schools, which are to be designed to foster experts possessing executive abilities in their fields, Creative Problem Solving education is particularly required in order to enable future specialists to be ready to face unexpected obstacles with flexible problem solving skills. However, during the stage of advanced research, the study about providing students with practical plan towards achieving creative problem solving education was lacking. For instance, the researchers have realized in the spot of education that the students’ interest and feel of necessity towards design studio class was actually very low, because the educators were not capable of teaching studio students in the way of applying designing techniques to solve variously occurring problems in society creatively. This research introduces the potential of students gaining the opportunity to experience their knowledge not only being applied to design processes, but also to various problems that would occur along the way in real life, if practical strategy is well applied to integrate creative problem solving techniques with design education. This may also allow creating the capability of divergent thinking process towards comprehending the essence of the role and function in the fields of design.
The suitable subjects of this research are sophomore students of specialized high schools, supported by Piaget’s cognitive development theory, insisting that students of age 16 to 17 are in the stage of having the capability of creating and executing systematic algorithms through abstract thinking, inferring, and generating theories.
This theory suggests that the students are to be mainly involved in becoming fulfilled design specialists by obtaining creative problem solving ability, through diverse activities, in which they would experience seeking and solving societal and cultural problems. Therefore, for this research, the concept of the ability to creatively solving problems should be thoroughly analyzed and redefined, and verifying the significance of the relationship between problem-based learning (PBL) model and creative problem solving should be followed along. These stages support the overall outline of this research: Effect of the new teaching method [each stage of problem-based learning(PBL) model distributed into sophomore visual design class of specialized high schools’] on developing individual student’s capability of creative problem solving. The procedure of this research is as follows.
First of all, the ability to creatively solve problems are thoroughly analyzed and redefined, and verifying the significance of the relationship between PBL model and creative problem solving is followed. Afterwards, sophomore students of specialized high schools, of which 2009 curriculum revision is being applied, are selected as the objects of study, and their equivalence is investigated by comparing visual design curricular midterm exam results. The research subjects consisting of the students of a unit class, whose equivalence among the individuals is verified, are to take 7 periods of classes, each 50 minutes long. One of the two groups is assigned as a subject group and another as a control group, and the subjects of research in both classes are to take the same topic:
denouement‘Advertising Design’, small unit2. Poster Design of ‘Visual Design’(Visual Design Authorized Reference Compilation Committee,2010)from Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education, and a reassigned to express the issues about the social problem occurred by spam messages based up on the given learning objective and contents. The subject group is offered with PBLmodel, designed by the researcher, while the existing general education method disapplied to the control group. After the last period, the groups were assigned with the testing tool for the ability to creatively solve problems, are vised version of‘Development of the Scientific Creative Problem Solving Test for the Selection of Gifted Science Students in Elementary School’(Sun-YoungChoi, Ho-KamKang) suited for the test for design class, in order to compare each group’s strength of creatively solving problems.
SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science, Ver. 21.0) is utilized in order to organize the test results of the control group and the subject group in purpose of statistical verification and investigation. The details about the results are as follows.
First, the subject group shows the application of PBL model increases the ability of creatively solving problems; according to the paired t-test result, the subject group result (M=7.5) is resulted higher than that of the control group (M=4.54) indicating the students’ ability of creatively solving problems is increased by the application of PBL model. Therefore, the result demonstrates that PBL model is effective in encouraging a group’s capability of solving problems in creative way (when t=4.38, p < .001). This also presents that PBL model facilitates to organize and analyze data from its subordinate scopes, including suggesting diverse problems, selecting appropriate design tasks, generating solutions, planning the outline of design process, and confirming the design solution plan.
Second, PBL model applied education not only increases the subject group’s the ability of creatively solving problems, but also enhances each individual’s interest and satisfaction towards design class activities, and responsibility of one’s active involvement in class environment. As the evaluation form about the degree of satisfaction with class shows 81.8% of the subject group students mentioning “PBL model would be a great help for us to create much better outcomes in the near future... this model is applicable in our everyday routine as well… this type of education is very interesting..”, the overall reaction upon applying PBL model is positive.
Third, according to the result of the evaluation regarding the degree of satisfaction with class, the students of the subject group shows higher interest in ‘planning problem solving’ and ‘research and brain storming’ rather than ‘power point based education about class related information’ and ‘sharing and criticizing other teams’ works’. This also supports that PBL model is effective in encouraging students’ to be involved in class environment with responsibility. These results demonstrate PBL applied design education supports what constructive approach of education is aiming towards: students to be voluntarily involved within learning activities with responsibility.
Fourth, the works of the subject group students were scored according to four categories - conveying subject, expressing method, formative elements and principles. Most of the works from the subject group received high evaluations, and according to the analysis of self and peer evaluations, many of them answered that they are satisfied with their achievements and activities.
Overall, application of PBL model to design education enhances the ability of the sophomore students from specialized high schools to creatively solving problems and also brings positive effects to their subordinate scopes of capability, containing suggesting diverse problems, selecting appropriate design tasks, generating solutions, planning the outline of design process, and confirming the design solution plan. This generates within the individuals the urge to actively participate into class activities with much more improved sense of responsibility, which would result in higher achievements in the field of academics. Therefore, PBL model is effective in specialized high schools’ education, from which school - work links are especially emphasized within the system. Furthermore, this phenomenon corresponds to the purpose of the establishment of such specialized educational organizations for PBL method generates such positive effects demonstrated in the four stages stated above.
In conclusion, application of problem-based learning (PBL) model not only creates a significant implication in today’s educational system where students need flexibility upon dealing with obstacles hampering them from academics and work sites at the same time, but also satisfies the educational constructionism aims for – student centered education; therefore, this model would become an example of an effective educational system for the future design experts. However, in order to make its pure purpose more firm, continuous research linked with other fields should be juxtaposed, and the connection between schools and local communities should become much more developed, exposing students to diverse practical experiences in real life society. The majority of data of this research is mainly subjected to sophomore students majoring visual communication design in a design-specialized high school located in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Korea, further research and study are needed considering wider scope of location, major, population, grades, and major in order to generalize the positive effects of PBL model application to existing educational system.