Does present education system infuse creativity in students?

Creativity is the most sought-after skill in the age of automation. It is said that the future is creativity-driven and it is the basis of for all inventions, innovations and entrepreneurship. Human creativity let us imagine the things which don’t exist yet. In fact, the World Economic Forum places creativity amongst the top three skills of the future.

In a scenario where it is predicted that around 50 per cent of the jobs are going to be lost to robots and artificial intelligence, the importance of creativity can’t be overstated.

As robots cannot be creative yet. Creativity is human intelligence which relies on passion and inspiration whereas Artificial Intelligence is dependent upon data and algorithms. Therefore, it becomes utmost important to align our education system with the skill requirements of the future.

Dr John Baruch director at Director at e4i4 Centre (Education for the 4^th Industrial Revolution) and a visiting faculty at Leeds Beckett University, United Kingdom says that as steam power was replaced by muscle power during the first industrial revolution, in the same way, industrial revolution 4.0 will replace memory and experience-based jobs with robots. At the same time, it will lead to the creation of millions of jobs requiring completely new skillset including creativity. But currently, our education system is not equipped to infuse those new skills in students.

The current problem of our education system is that we are preparing students to follow routines and repetition instead of developing creativity and innovation.

Now the important question arises that how colleges and institutions can build that creative muscle in the students. What all strategies can be used by colleges to inject creativity and get their students to think outside the box. Talking about the Indian scenario, the picture comes out to be gloomy. Out of the total students studying engineering, only 20 per cent to 30 per cent are employable. The Indian education system is working to inculcate innovation and creativity amongst other skills in the students and make them more employable.

The engineering colleges in India are also taking innumerable steps to cultivate creativity in their students. They are focussing a lot over experiential learning along with creative methods in the engineering design process.

‘National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning’ is one such initiative launched by seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT Bombay, Delhi, Guwahati, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras and Roorkee) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) for creating the course. They have launched various targeted courses to improve the creativity of the students. The engineering colleges in India are also taking innumerable steps to cultivate creativity in their students. They are focussing a lot over experiential learning along with creative methods in the engineering design process. Far more importance is given to project-based learning instead of theory-based learning these days. The colleges are giving top priority to develop the soft skills of the students and are holding several workshops on creativity and design thinking. The example of one such college is ITS Engineering College, Greater Noida which has a major focus upon building innovation, incubation and entrepreneurship amongst its students. It has an Incubation centre which encourages the process of innovative thinking and development of entrepreneurship spirit amongst the students. Innovation Entrepreneurship Development Centre (IEDC) organises various entrepreneurial activities and provides support for the development of innovative ideas amongst the students. They are given lots of opportunities to take the risk. This whole approach helps students in becoming job creators rather than job seekers and also leads to the development of skills such as creativity, innovation and problem-solving.

About the author

Sonal Gupta is an Assistant Professor and Personality Development & Soft skills trainer at ITS Engineering College, Greater Noida. She has over 7 years of diverse work experience across Soft Skills, Academic Lecturing, Content Development, Media and Retail. Sonal is proficient in taking academic lectures for Personality development, MBA, Retail Management and other such business management courses.

Note: The views expressed in this article are solely author’s own and do not reflect/represent those of Shiksha