Student Perceptions of Project Mentoring: What Practices and Behaviors Matter?

While significant work in recent years has begun exploring the structure and teaching practices of project-based courses and design environments e.g., 1, , less work has been done to explore how students experience these practices. Data from studies that examine faculty beliefs suggest that faculty are intentional and passionate about their work in mentoring design teams, making choices to explicitly foster specific skills and promote students professional development. But what do students experience? How do they perceive and respond to teaching and learning in project-based environments? To address this question, this paper presents initial findings from case studies conducted at multiple universities. Each case includes observations of classroom practices, interviews with faculty, and interviews or focus groups with students. Observation data was collected via detailed field notes, while interview and focus group data was audio-recorded, transcribed, and coded using qualitative analytic techniques 7, . For each case, the observation data was used to help guide the interviews and focus groups, which followed a semi-structured protocol. The paper presents findings from two cases studies. Preliminary analysis suggests that while students identify many of the same practices faculty describe (including coaching, role modeling, being pushed to explain plans and decisions), they also tend to place more emphasis on the rapport they are able to develop with their mentors and the encouragement and affirmation they receive, but may be less aware of the ways in which faculty mentors seek to protect students from both project failures and learning failures. The findings thus provide rich insights into how students experience teaching and learning in design environments, what they value about those experiences, and, perhaps most importantly, what dimensions of mentoring are more and less visible as meaningful supports. By better understanding students’ experiences and perceptions, the findings from this study can help design educators better address student needs, refine their project mentoring to more effectively achieve core learning goals, and support students’ professional development.