Impact of Selection of Projects on Pan-Mentoring in Creative Engineering Design

Pan-mentoring, a pedagogical approach to creative engineering design education, establishes a close relationship between the pan-mentor and a design team of students as well as among the individuals within the team. This paper focuses on the impact of the selection (and screening) of design projects on pan-mentoring in creative engineering design. The selected projects should, among others, have good prospects for successful completion, stimulate creativity, and be challenging. This paper analyzed four sources of design projects, namely, faculty projects, industry supported projects, student initiated projects, and projects for design competitions. A project-screening scheme was discussed. An assessment was performed on the student selection process. Additional data was provided to show the impact of the project selection on the students´ perception on the design activity. It show that a well selected project and the application of the pan-mentoring pedagogy can enhance engineering design education and help to prepare students for a fast changing future. This study was performed at two universities