Fostering Creative Cognition in Design Education: a Comparative Analysis of Algorithmic and Heuristic Educational Methods in Basic Design Education

Abstract

This research aims to examine the impact of algorithmic and heuristic educational methods in basic design education in an attempt to see their effects on the development of the creative cognition of students. The impact of educational methods in the development of creativity and creative problem-solving ability in design education has been addressed by a limited number of studies. The impact of algorithmic and heuristic educational methods in basic design education, on the other hand, has not been studied as of yet. In order to investigate this impact, this research conducts both a systematic theoretical review and a qualitative analysis on the use of algorithmic and heuristic educational methods in basic design education. The systematic theoretical review has been conducted both in the studies of design cognition and creativity and also in the studies of design education. The qualitative analysis has been carried out in the first-year basic design studio, with an attempt of making a comparison between the impacts of algorithmic and heuristic educational methods, through a creativity assessment of projects, based on the criteria of novelty and appropriateness. The analysis was made respectively on the pre-final projects of Fall 2016-2017 semester, which was carried out by means of an algorithmic educational method, and Fall 2017-2018 semester, which was carried out in line with heuristic educational method. The results of the comparative analysis have shown that both the overall novelty levels of the projects and also the average grade values were higher in the heuristic group in comparison to the algorithmic group. These results might imply that heuristic education would affect the overall creativity levels of projects in a positive way, and the students who are instructed heuristically would be able to show more exploratory behavior, generating more novel solutions than students who were instructed algorithmically.