Experimental Study on Usage Levels of Lateral Thinking Systems
in Construction Engineering Students
G. (Tantekin) Çelik
1, S. Aydınlı
1, B. Bağrıaçık
11Department of Civil Engineering, Çukurova University, Adana, Turkey
Abstract
In daily life, all individuals use a "vertical thinking" system based on cause-and-effect relationships to solve problems. Vertical thinking is often enough to solve the problems, but sometimes this system may need to be broken. At this point, creative thinking gain importance. Creative thinking is based on lateral thinking which is breaking boundaries and applying logic rules differently. In this study, a questionnaire was implemented to measure the level of use of lateral thinking systems by civil engineering students and the results were discussed.
Keywords: civil engineering students, creativity, lateral thinking.
1 Introduction
Our universities are carring out engineering education with an understanding of classical education. Kobu (2006) stated that classical education and social environment limit the creativity of individuals in time. Studies conducted in recent years indicate that teaching should be more active in terms of students (Mills and Tregust, 2003; Ebner and Holzinger, 2007; Kadayıfçı, 2008; Gavin, 2011; Aydın, 2012). The students need to not only sitting and listening, but also participating in the process of thinking, researching, producing solutions. It is argued that education should encourage cohesion as a team by getting out of the individuality.
The concept of lateral thinking, which constitutes the starting point of the paper, is a kind of thinking first proposed by De Bono in 1970 (De Bono, 1990). Lateral thinking is very closely related to creativity. While creativity is usually defined as outcome, lateral thinking refers process. Lateral thinking can be expressed as an creative analysis process (Yılmaz, 2017). Vertical thinking, which refers to traditional thinking, focuses on digging deeper while the lateral thinking system aims to drill a hole in a different place (De Bono, 1990). In the construction industry where different variables are involved, it has great importance that the civil engineers, who are faced with many different problems, are able to use their practical thinking and creativity actively. Problems are occasionally engineering and managerial creativity problems. At this point, civil engineers are expected to make quick and effective decisions by using available resources and facilities. It depends on the structure of the problem, but the creativity and thinking system of a civil engineer need to be active and versatile.
The aim of this study is to measure the level of usage of the creative thinking system by senior grade students in civil engineering. It was also aimed to investigate the relationship between the general grade average and creative thinking levels in order to find out the effects of traditional education.
2 Literature Review
Bordogna (1998) lists all educational components and stated that more emphasis is given to vertical (ın-depth) thinking, abstract learning, reductionism – fractionization, develop order, understand certainty, analysis,
research, solve problems, develop ideas, independence, technological - scientific base, engineering science than lateral (functional) thinking, experiential learning, integration - connecting the parts, corralate chaos, handle ambiguity, synthesis, design/process/manufacture, formulate problems, implement ideas, teamwork, societal context/ethics and functional core of engineering.
Boyle (2004) mentioned the importance of critical and lateral thinking in engineering education, and stated that lateral thinking is necessary to understand the relationships between the causes and problems. Awang and Ramly (2008) argue that after graduation, engineers in business life will also need creativity and this can be improved by lateral thinking techniques. The studies show that lateral thinking is necessary as well as vertical thinking in the solution of complex problems. Al-Jayyousi (1999) asked the students in the construction and environmental engineering three different problems and wanted them to produce creative solutions as a group. As a result, it is stated that lateral thinking encourages engineers to look from a wider perspective and directs them to produce non-traditional solutions to complex engineering problems. It is emphasized that lateral thinking increases the quality of solutions in engineering problems. The author argues that lateral thinking can be taught with case studies. Today's engineering students face many problems and can solve them more effectively using both vertical and lateral thinking systems.
According to Madhavaiah and Raghu Ram (2016), there are fundamental differences between vertical thinking and lateral thinking processes. It is necessary to be aware of these differences so that both can be used effectively.
3 Material and Methodology
In the first phase of this work, the “Lateral Thinking Disposition Questionnaire (LTDQ)", developed by Semerci (2016) for the purpose of self-evaluation and consisting of nine questions, was applied to fourth grade civil engineering students to self-evaluate the lateral thinking systems. The questionnaire scale was determined as 5 likert. LTDQ consists of one dimension. Likert scores were standardized and interpreted according to the range of points in Table 1. (Çelik, 2013).
Table 1. Points used in the evaluation of LTDQ
Likert Scale Range Evaluation Criteria
Never agree 1,00-1,79 Very Low
Mostly not agree 1,80-2,59 Low
Partly not agree 2,60-3,39 Medium
Mostly agree 3,40-4,19 High
Totally agree 4,20-5,00 Very High
In the second phase of the study, a quiz consisting of 5 Lateral Thinking questions was applied in order to measure students' creative and versatile thinking systems. The students' quiz results were evaluated, and Sperman's Rank Order analysis was conducted to question the relation between the quiz results, general grade average and the scores they got from the questionnaire. In the analysis of the data, Excel and SPSS package programs were used.
In the second phase of the study, quiz was (De Bono, 1990; Kobu, 2006; http://wilk4.com; https://tr.pinterest.com; http://picsdownloadz.com) applied to the students (Table 2).
Table 2. Quiz questions and answers. Question
Number
Questions Solutions
Q 1.
There are six eggs in the basket. Six people each take one of the eggs. How can it be that one egg is left in the basket?
The last person took the basket with the last egg still inside.
Q 2.
1
11
“13112221” Each number describes the previous number. Starting with 1, the second line describes it as 11 (one 1). Then the third
21
1211
111221
312211
……….
What is the next number in the sequence?
line describes 11 as 21 (two 1’s).Then the fourth line describes 21 as 1211 (one 2, one 1). This is the pattern.
Q 3.
Can you solve the equation by moving just 1 matchstick?
Try this: 7-9+3=1
Q 4.
Nine dots are arranged as shown overleaf. The problem is to link up these nine dots using only four straight lines which must follow on without raising the pencil from the paper.
Q 5.
A man is wearing black. Black shoes, socks, trousers, coat, gloves and ski mask. He is walking down a back street with all the street lamps off. A black car is coming towards him with its light off but somehow manages to stop in time. How did the driver see the man?
It was day time.
4. Findings
In order to measure the creativity of students of civil engineering, a questionnaire and quiz study based on multidimensional thinking systems were conducted. A total of 56 students (4 female and 52 male students) participated in the study (Table 3.). Normal distribution of GPA and general quiz results were examined by Kolmogrov-Smirnov test. Significance values were less than 5% (0,00; 0,08,0.00, respectively), that the data did not fit the normal distribution in %5 significance level. As a result of the analysis that measure the reliability of the data, the Cronbach Alpha value was 0.705 (Table 4.) indicating that the questionnaires are "highly reliable" (Kalaycı, 2008).
Table 3. Gender distribution of sample
Gender n %
Female 4 7
Male 52 93
Total 56 100,00
Table 4. Lateral thinking disposition scale reliability
Scale Name Cronbach Alpha Coefficient
The general conclusions of the lateral thinking disposition scale of students of civil engineering are given in Table 5. As a result of the survey study, it has been determined that the general disposition of students versatility thinking is at a high level.
Table 5. Lateral think disposition scale results Survey result Number of students
n % Very Low 0 0 Low 1 2 Medium 4 7 High 38 68 Very High 13 23 Total 56 100
Quiz results prepared to measure students' lateral thinking are given in Table 6. More than half of the students have 2 or fewer correct answers.
Table 6. Quiz results Correct answers Number of students n % 0 6 10,71 1 16 28,57 2 19 33,93 3 13 23,21 4 1 1,79 5 1 1,79 Total 56 100,00
The individual results of the students are summarized in Table 7. It is seen that the GPA of the sample participating in the study is below 3.00. It was also observed that the majority of the students responded correctly less than three questions, although they also thought that they were prone to lateral thinking. Students with a GPA above 3 were found to have a maximum of two correct answers. Sperman's Rank Order analysis was conducted to investigate the relationship between students' survey results, quiz results and GPA, and the results are summarized in Table 8.
Table 7. Individual results of students
Sample No Survey Results Quiz Results GPA
1 High 1 2,06 2 High 3 2,44 3 Medium 1 2,07 4 High 2 2,17 5 High 1 2,06 6 High 2 2,88 7 Very High 3 1,99 8 High 3 2,74 9 High 3 2,22 10 High 3 2,02 11 High 2 2,67 12 High 1 2,73 13 High 2 2,18 14 High 0 1,83 15 High 3 2,47 16 High 2 2,17 17 High 2 2,29 18 Medium 0 2,36
19 Very High 5 1,88 20 Very High 1 1,98 21 High 1 2,61 22 High 0 2,55 23 Very High 2 2,23 24 High 3 2,65 25 Very High 1 1,94 26 Very High 3 1,54 27 High 0 2,34 28 Medium 1 2,54 29 Very High 3 2,25 30 Düşük 0 2,38 31 High 1 2,46 32 High 1 2,59 33 High 1 2,65 34 High 1 2,21 35 High 2 3,44 36 Very High 1 2,19 37 Very High 2 3,04 38 Very High 2 1,98 39 High 2 2,37 40 Medium 0 2,91 41 High 2 2,41 42 High 2 3,74 43 High 2 1,99 44 High 2 2,18 45 High 2 3,60 46 Very High 3 1,72 47 High 2 2,06 48 High 4 2,90 49 High 3 1,70 50 High 2 1,98 51 High 1 2,42 52 High 2 3,22 53 High 3 2,76 54 Very High 1 1,76 55 Very High 3 3,00 56 High 1 2,12
According to the results in Table 8., there is a low correlation only between the questionnaire and quiz results. This situation suggests that self-evaluations of students are not very conscious. The GPA has no relation to the survey result and the quiz. It is thought that it has influnce that the overall average of the sample is between 2.00 - 3.00 and the students whose GPA is higher than 3.00 constitute only 9% of the sample.
Table 8. Sperman’s rank order correlation analysis results
1 2 3
LATD 1
Quiz 0,303* 1
GPA -0,221 -0,008 1
Notes: * indicates p<0,05, ** indicates p<0,01 (2-tailed)
It is argued that academic education can blur creativity. Students with higher school achievement tend to be less likely to get out of bounds (Şen, 1999; Kobu, 2006). At this point, education should be encourging creative thinking. In Ai (1999) study, teachers were asked to score students creativity, and according to teacher reports, while creativity and academic achievement were related, three out of three different creativity tests were almost unrelated. In this study there was no relationship between GPA, LATD and quiz results. But the sample is in a narrow range of GPA makes the result debatable.
5 Conclusions
In order to determine the level of use of lateral thinking systems by fourth grade students in civil engineering, LATD scale was applied and they were asked to evaluate themselves. Lateral thinking quiz composed of 5-question was prepared after the 5-questionnaire. According to the results, it is concluded that the majority of students can think highly versatile. Quiz results show that it was seen that the majority of the students answered 2 or less correct answer. Contrary to what students think, the quiz results are lower than they expected. As a result of the correlation analysis conducted to investigate the existence of relations between GPA, LATD and quiz result, only a low positive correlation was found between quiz and questionnaire results. The number of students and the GPA of the general population is between 2.00 - 3.00 constitute the constraints of study. It is thought that applying the study to wider samples can change the results. The findings of research on intelligence suggest that lateral thinking can be improved by practice. In this context, it is suggested to make the education system based on project and homework in order to lead students to think.
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