Integrating Design Thinking into a Packaging Design Course to Improve Students’ Creative Self-Efficacy and Flow Experience

Abstract

Creativity can be evaluated from learners’ internal motivation and learning outcomes. Implementation of innovative teaching methods by teachers can increase students’ learning motivation. In this study, convenience sampling was employed to select 54 students from a packaging design course; they were randomly grouped into 12 creative teams. Design thinking was integrated into the packaging design course, and its influence on the students’ creative self-efficacy and flow experience was investigated through empirical research. A pretest–posttest design was adopted to perform teaching experiments. In the pretest, conventional lectures were employed, whereas in the posttest, design thinking teaching was incorporated into the course. Packaging design practice spanned 4 weeks. The experiment results revealed that in the 12 creative teams, the students’ creative self-efficacy and flow experience were superior in the posttest than in the pretest. The results also demonstrated that design thinking improved the self-efficacy of students with low creativity tendency as well as the creative flow experience of all students regardless of creativity tendency.