Mind Mapping : A Creative Development in Industrial Engineering Education

The purpose of this paper is to exploit student preference and propose, discuss and experimentally validate a strategy that aims to reduce time necessary to introduce tutoring of mind mapping to industrial engineering students. A survey instrument was designed and used to collect student preferences about mind mapping. Preferences were linked to alternative scenarios of mind mapping deployment. Survey responses from a 60 second-year students from the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management were analyzed using conjoint analysis. The findings of this paper provide a well documented framework in addressing mind mapping technique to engineering students. The proposed framework tries to make the best use of the available time for creativity development programs, in industrial engineering departments. This framework may also be applied to other creativity enhancing techniques, providing solutions for incorporating creativity in industrial engineering curricula.