Creativity plays an important role in technology innovation, and how to increase creativity of students is an important issue in engineering education. This study is aimed to investigate the effects of creative problem solving instruction on creativity of engineering students. In the course "Creativity and entrepreneurship via Information Technology Applications", students are instructed to employ creative problem solving process in generation and realization of creative innovative Apps to solve daily-life and social-care related problems. The study subjects included 42 third year and fourth year engineering students. The New Tests of Creative Thinking was utilized as a research tool to gauge the participants’ creativity before and after implementing the creative problem solving instruction, and the collected data were analyzed through paired sample t-test. It is found that engineering students can use the creative problem solving process to efficiently perform group discussion and creative thinking for innovative Apps. The study results reveal that there are significant differences in the fluency, flexibility, and originality of verbal creative thinking abilities for the engineering students. In addition, based on the participant’s interview and opinion survey, engineering students reflect high acceptance in adopting creative problem solving process for creative thinking. Most of them consider the creative problem solving process as an efficient tool for group discussion and problem solving, and they have high inclination to employ this process in their future professional challenges. Besides, it is also found that the warm up activities associated with open and relaxing atmosphere and environment can help to enhance creative discussion and thinking. Based on the conclusion above, this study offers practical suggestions for engineering education authority, teachers, and future researchers.

Keywords: Creative problem solving, creativity, engineering students, Apps