Peer-Mentoring in Design Projects in Project-Based Learning (PBL) at First-Year Engineering Course

Abstract

The current wprk in progress paper discusses the peer mentoring program. This program provides dedicated mentoring support for first-year engineering students in Project-Based Learning (PBL) course titled “Engineering Exploration” at KLE Technological University, India. The course focuses both on the process and the output. In this course, students solve interdisciplinary design problems by following an engineering design process. They develop a mechatronic prototype as a solution to the given design problem. During the problem-solving process, the students face several challenges which generally begin during the concept design phase and increase exponentially during the physical implementation phase or prototype building phase. Students generally work on their team-based projects after college hours in a dedicated prototyping area called the Thinkering lab. More than 275 interdisciplinary projects are done by over 1100 students every year. Fifteen faculty members and three instructors find it extremely challenging to cater to this huge demand, especially during the prototype building phase. Hence, students need a support system in tools and equipment, services, and mentoring to complete their design projects on time while attaining the intended learning outcomes. The peer mentoring program called Mentors In ThinkeRing lAb (MITRA), after conducting a pilot run in a semester, was introduced formally in 2017. In this paper, we present a well-developed, sophisticated, and methodical version of the program, its challenges, evaluation, and results. Here, we describe the peer mentoring program's process: call-for the program, induction, screening, immersive training and deployment of the mentors, program monitoring, and celebration of their success. The program was evaluated by analyzing its impact on stakeholders: mentors, mentees, and faculty members. Five faculty members each with experience of more than three years in teaching engineering exploration course and seventeen mentors (sophomores, juniors, and seniors) were involved in the study. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis.