Mentoring the Project Coach: Effective Propagation of Pedagogical Techniques, Resources, and Know-How

A common obstacle faced by faculty serving as coaches for student teams in multidisciplinary capstone design courses is the lack of teaching paradigms that can serve as a guide when making pedagogical and team-management decisions. We have addressed this challenge by creating a document entitled IPPD Coach Guide-A Resource for Mentoring Project Teams that compiles a set of best practices and catalogs resources available in our Integrated Process and Product Design program, with the goal of enhancing the coach's effectiveness in directing the evolution of the design project and assisting students in reaching all learning objectives. The guide serves as a tool that enables the propagation of pedagogical techniques, identifies available administrative and material resources, and archives the program's historically acquired know-how. This paper describes the mechanics followed to arrive at the generation of the guide, including the methodology used for harvesting collective knowledge from the most experienced faculty coaches, using techniques ranging from a directed faculty-retreat event to systematic idea mapping exercises, and including management approaches such as a challenge-question environment and the adoption of affinity-group analysis. The guide can also be used to recruit and train new coaches, to establish policies, and to serve as a contextual framework for extramural program reviews. A brief overview of the contents of the guide is provided including succinct representative examples of the material. The guide may serve as an example tool that could be of utility to other capstone design courses interested in promoting improved uniformity in quality of pedagogical delivery and increased coach effectiveness.