It's a skill anyone can develop, but it's especially important to engineers. Goldschmidt's class is not a standard lecture class. If we use the chalk board, it's because we really made a mistake. I don't see myself as a teacher in this course. I see myself as a facilitator.
Students begin the course by reading about creativity and trying to define it.
As the course progresses, they keep dream journals, share experiences about environments in which their creativity was inhibited or encouraged, and discuss creativity in corporate settings. Students complete assignments on group dynamics, strategic planning and brainstorming. The final exam consists of a lecture by a fine artist on how creativity flows in the mind of an artist. If you plot creativity versus age, we all are creative when we're very young. At about five years of age, your shoe can become a truck, or a mansion, or a missile or a bed.