1. South West College (lead partner)
2. TKNIKA (Spain)
3. Thomas More University (Belgium)
4. Institute of Innovation & Knowledge Exchange (UK)
5. Dublin City University (Ireland)

The Creative Engine project emerged from a need to enable engineering vocational education and training (VET) learners and staff with practical creativity & innovation skills. It will create an open source learning platform enabling the fundamentals of creativity and innovation to be embedded in the engineering curriculum.

Background

• A disconnect between creativity, innovation & engineering has been recognised.
• Engineering VET has become “over-specialised”, focusing excessively on the body of technical knowledge, with little or no room in the curriculum for developing the ability to think and act creatively & innovatively
• Creative Engine will introduce both VET learners and trainers to the fundamentals of creativity and innovation through “learning-by-doing” and “flipped classroom” approaches.
• This will bridge the gap between the worlds of education and work, enabling students with the skills required to fit the labour market need.
• It will also further enable VET trainers to effectively deliver specialised engineering curriculum through cross-disciplinary and student-centric approaches by development of a teacher training programme.

Objectives

1. To undertake a comparative needs analysis across 4 EU countries to map the creativity and innovation skills required in today’s modern engineering industry and influence the design and content of the Creative Engine modular training course.
2. To enhance the labour market relevance of engineering VET by designing an openly accessible modular training course in creativity and innovation with a view to making students better learners in their area of expertise and leaders in their future careers.
3. To initially strengthen the key competences of 150 learners through the pilot delivery of the Creative Engine modular training course within the partner institutions
4. To develop and pilot a teacher training programme to 60 teachers & trainers to enable the effective delivery of specialised cross-disciplinary engineering VET.
5. To introduce modern training delivery methods (interactive case studies, podcasts, project-based learning exercises) & open access pedagogical resources (e.g. online toolkit) for staff and learners across Europe building capacity in the engineering sector.

Outputs

• O1: Creative Engine Learning Outcomes & Learning Units
• O2: Creative Engine Curricula & Course Materials
• O3: Creativity & Innovation Teacher Training Programme
• O4: Creative Engine Online Toolkit
• A demonstration workshop in the UK to promote Creative Engine results and validate all learning materials (E2)
• Three national information days in Ireland, Belgium and Spain to share and disseminate Creative Engine results (E1, 3 & 4)