Research on key influence factors of creativity development of applied undergraduates based on PCA

Culture factor: (Key factor: values) A person’s values have a great influence on his life. If we cultivate creative people without proper values, their creativity is likely to do harm to the country and society.

Public opinion factor: Public opinion naturally influences the development of people’s creativity. The direction of public opinion will influence people’s judgement and guide people’s behaviour. In the absence of availability of a good social atmosphere and an open and transparent social order, people’s judgement and behaviour will be seriously affected; thus, naturally, there will be no interest in invention and creation. If public opinion does not encourage creative people, naturally their creativity will be affected. This influence naturally also carries over to the youth group of the university.

Interpersonal relationships factor: Interpersonal relationships also affect people’s creativity development. Having a good relationship with classmates, colleagues, friends etc., especially the emergence of the social networking groups in the modern society relationship, would inspire students’ inventions, which may emerge from their emotional desires. They may even obtain inspiration, methods and skills of invention and creation in the collision of ideas, which promotes the cultivation of positive thinking and the development of their creativity. An instance wherein a collision of ideas resulted in a successful invention is the close friendship between Bill Gates and Paul Allen, which led them to co-found Microsoft.

Higher education factor: Key factors are excitation mechanism, university teaching management, great attention of leaders and assessment methods. University is the main base with which to cultivate the creativity of students. Therefore, a good incentive mechanism should be established in the university, which will promote fairness and stimulate people’s potential and creativity. How can a university with a low level of standard and backward teaching-management cultivate creative talents in students? To cultivate students’ spirit of innovation, universities should not only have advanced management but also have advanced ideas, and the leaders and even all the members of the university must pay immense attention to it. At present, the final examination of some universities tends to be based on the evaluation criteria of standard papers and standard answers, which makes students gradually lose their creativity and forms a fixed and consistent pattern.

Family education factor: (Key factors: study habit, family culture) In terms of family education, family culture is very important. Ancient people paid more attention to family traditions and family instructions; on the other hand, modern families pay more attention to the aspect of facilitating their children to get a good education, and believe that the only way out is for their children to go to universities. In addition to going to school, the child only changes from school to cram school, while ignoring the issues that are very important to the child’s education: physical and mental health and the question of how to cultivate good study habits in the child. This has also led to more and more psychological problems among students. As soon as the children arrive at college, they think they have achieved their parents’ goals. It is hard to imagine what inventions an unhealthy student can have, since the question arises as to whether any innovation can be expected from a university man who is satisfied merely with passing grades.

Campus culture factor: (Key factors: information diversity, campus culture construction) Information diversity can broaden students’ access to information, thereby ensuring that students can keep abreast of the latest subject knowledge, and can lay a foundation for students’ innovation. Students are participants in campus cultural activities, which include extracurricular cultural activities as the main content. Inheritance and innovation are the unique attributes of campus culture. Campus culture construction takes the campus as the space for teachers and students’ main activities and is a group culture which is characterised by campus spirit. Obviously, the innovation of campus culture construction is beneficial to the cultivation of students’ creativity [14]. Through the rich campus culture activities, we can broaden students’ knowledge, enrich their knowledge structure and enable students to give full play to their imagination and creativity.

Innovation atmosphere: (Key factors: flexible study time, creating an atmosphere of innovation) The surroundings have scientific enlightenment and educational functions for a person’s development; for this reason, the cultivation of creativity cannot be separated from an environment in a manner which is similar to the innovation atmosphere [15]. Tao Xingzhi, a modern educator, said, ‘Everywhere is a place of creation. Every day is a time of creation. Everyone is a creative person.’ This sentence clearly points out the importance of the innovation atmosphere. It is not possible to imagine how there could be creation without policy and environment support, without leaders’ support, teachers’ guidance and help, classmates’ mutual learning, personalised learning and living space.

According to the characteristics of applied undergraduates, the talent training mechanism should be innovated. Courses related to ‘creativity development’ should be included in the curriculum system, and the key factors of creativity development should be combined into the professional curriculum system.

In the teaching process, teachers should cultivate the student-centred teaching consciousness, give play to the students’ dominant position and adopt appropriate teaching methods in combination with the teaching content. For example, heuristic teaching can cultivate students’ ability to raise, analyse and solve problems, and especially to cultivate students’ creative spirit.

The assessment and evaluation methods should be flexible and diversified, and comprehensive evaluation should be carried out.

To establish a good incentive mechanism, such as cultural incentive, ideal incentive, goal incentive, success incentive, example incentive, personality incentive, care incentive, reward and punishment incentive etc., to mobilise students’ enthusiasm and initiative and then stimulate students’ creativity.