Developing an evaluation system for creativity courses in design disciplines oriented to education for sustainable development: an integrated application of AHP-entropy weighting and FCE models

Introduction Education for sustainable development (ESD) has become a key focus in higher education transformation. Design disciplines play a unique role in cultivating students' creativity to address complex social and ecological challenges, yet current course evaluation systems remain disconnected from ESD values and lack quantitative tools. Methods This study constructed an ESD-oriented course evaluation system for creativity courses in design disciplines, covering four dimensions: course philosophy, course content, course teaching, and course evaluation. It integrated the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and entropy weight method (EWM) for combined weighting, and adopted fuzzy comprehensive evaluation (FCE) for empirical assessment at a regional university in China. Results The weights of course philosophy (0.3801) and course evaluation (0.3239) were the highest among the four dimensions. The empirical case showed an overall score of 70.35, with course evaluation scoring highest (76.50) and course philosophy lowest (62.78), revealing a structural contradiction between instrumental rationality and value rationality. Discussion The study verified the feasibility of the AHP-EWM-FCE model and proposed a reverse evaluation paradigm centered on philosophy and evaluation. The findings provide a quantitative tool and improvement pathway for ESD integration and creativity cultivation in design education.