A Conceptual Model For Capstone Engineering Design Performance And Assessment

This paper describes a novel format for a proposed Capstone engineering design course that combines industrial experience with international collaboration and uses distance learning as a pedagogical tool. The course is designed for programs in the Industrial Engineering Departments at the University of Pittsburgh and the Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM) in Monterrey. The team for the design project has two students from each institution and is conducted at an industrial concern whose location alternates between Mexico and the US each year. Project responsibilities are divided between the two sets of students and a faculty supervisor at each institution works with the two groups which stay in close contact with each other by means of electronic mail, the Internet and distance learning technologies. During the last week of the term, the members of the team at the remote location join their teammates to put the finishing touches on the project and to make the final presentation to the faculty and the industrial client. This paper explains the proposed program in detail.

All the associate degree mechanical engineering technology (2MET) students at The Pennsylvania State University, Altoona College are required to take a capstone engineering design course during their fourth semester in the two-year degree program.This project-based three credit-hour course is titled "Product Design with Writing Skills" (MET 210W).In this course students are taught design and selection of spur gears, shafts, helical compression springs, chains and sprockets, keys and fasteners, through teambased assignments and mini projects.These activities prepare students for the major design project to be conducted near the

Professional skills are often emphasized in a capstone engineering design course, especially in relation to addressing ABET Engineering Criteria. Learning of these skills is typically a product of the project management approach followed by design teams. The principles behind agile development and the features of the Scrum methodology match up well with the expected outcomes of a major engineering design experience and preparation needed by students for engineering practice. This paper presents a case study on design team use of an agile process for the successful development and release on the Google Play store of an Android app for a client during the span of a two-semester senior design course in electrical and computer engineering. The agile project management used in the case study was found to be beneficial to all involved (students, mentors, and clients). It emphasizes behaviors that lead to greater satisfaction and higher quality results with the senior design experience. Student learning opportunities related to professional skills are examined. This work adds to emerging literature promoting agile development as a model for capstone projects.

In this paper we explore the use of text processing technology for on-line assessment in an engineering design project class. We present results from a 5-week classroom study in a capstone engineering design course in which we explore the potential benefits of such technology for student learning in this context. Furthermore, we present results from ongoing work assessing student productivity based on features extracted from their conversational behavior in the course discussion board. While we found that typical shallow productivity measures such as number of posts, length of posts, or number of files committed have no correlation with an instructor assigned grade, we can achieve a substantial improvement using simple linguistic patterns extracted from on-line conversational behavior.

1 INTRODUCTION Design education usually employs project-based learning, in which students learn to research, plan, design and reflect on the creation of technological projects [1], [2]. Student experience issues may influence students' design process, as well as their perception of professional knowledge development. Studies have pointed out students are ill-informed about design education when entering university [3]. In the field of design, although there have been student surveys to analyze design thinking skills and for assessing design literacy. However, these studies are primarily assessment tools, and do not investigate students’ attitudes or experiences of their design courses. While several studies focus on measuring students’ cognitive knowledge, assessments of affective variables, such as attitude, are far fewer in number. The objective of this study was to investigate student experiences, specifically the issues and challenges faced by students in three foundational design courses – focusing on introductory design, architectural design and engineering design – at the . We investigate issues such as how do students experience various instruction modes such as lectures and studio; and their experience of working individually or as teams in the three foundational design courses. 2 METHOD We conducted a survey in three foundational design courses, in both online and paper format. The survey comprised quantitative and qualitative components. Respondents consisted of 248 students from the introductory design course, 48 students from the introductory architectural design course and 71 students from the engineering design course. Respondents rated their perceptions on 23 items in two types of questions: Likert, semantic differential. Additionally, they provided their input in two open-ended questions. 3 RESULTS A principal component analysis conducted on the data revealed five factors that primarily contributed to students’ perception of foundational design courses: (1) the fun aspects of design, (2) the stressful aspects of design, (3) Course Pressures, (4) Student temperament issues, (5) Teamwork experience. Performance pressures majorly affected student experience in all three courses. The architectural design course was seen to be the most enjoyable for students, as fun scores were higher than the stress scores, and low course pressures. The engineering design course was observed to be very stressful for students, with low scores for fun. 4 SIGNIFICANCE Student perception of foundational design courses is important because it can be used to drive forward changes in curriculum and pedagogy. While this study uses data from one university, the issues reported here are generic and relevant for instructors developing design courses across different parts of the world. Research in student experience and perspectives is crucial to develop design education and propel it into the future. REFERENCES [1] Y. Doppelt, “Assessing creative thinking in design-based learning,” International Journal of Technology and Design Education, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 55–65, 2009, [2] N. Lee, “Project methods as the vehicle for learning in undergraduate design education: a typology,” Design Studies, vol. 30, no. 5, pp. 541–560, Sep. 2009, [3] A. B. Gencosmanoglu, “Learning, teaching and administration in design education: DESIGNtrain Project: Training tools for developing design education,” in Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2010.

This paper draws on research in both technical communication and education to describe a problem-based learning approach to engineering design courses that more authentically engages students in the practice of communicating with specific audiences for specific purposes. By developing a learner-centered classroom in which faculty serve as mentor-managers rather than repositories of knowledge, instructors can develop communication tasks that more closely reflect the way texts function in the workplace. In doing so, they can better prepare students for role that texts play in professional practice and enable them to make decisions accordingly. The author includes results from pilot sections of capstone engineering design courses to describe the implementation and evaluate the effectiveness of the approach.

This paper describes the development of a comprehensive assessment instrument to examine the multiple outcomes of entrepreneurship education for engineering students. It is targeted at senior-level students enrolled in capstone engineering design courses and is part of a larger study intended to clarify the relationship between faculty beliefs and practices, program characteristics, and student outcomes. The assessment draws on survey items used within the investigators' own engineering and entrepreneurship programs as well as others identified in the literature. Items fall into six categories including: 1) attitudes, 2) behaviors, 3) knowledge and skills, 4) self-efficacy, 5) perceptions of programs and faculty, and 6) demographic data. The paper provides an overview of the assessment instruments that were considered by the research team and the methodology used to create the final student survey. It discusses challenges encountered during development and administration including identifying validated assessments in the field, selecting response scales, survey length, and student and faculty participation. Preliminary results from year one of data collection across multiple institutions are discussed.

In a multifaceted course such as senior capstone design, it is integral to ensure students are receiving a value adding experience. In most universities across the United States, senior capstone design is a multiple semester sequence where design is heavily emphasized and students are encouraged to test their skills, both technical and nontechnical, by solving and implementing solutions to real industry problems. Given the nature of design courses, the takeaways are not things that can be measured solely through the use of a letter grade. Rather, an in-depth reflective interview must be performed to fully comprehend what students received from the course. In this study, an In-Depth Interview Protocol was developed to understand the effectiveness of engineering design courses and improve design education as a whole. This paper outlines the phases that contribute towards the development of an effective interview protocol for implementation in senior capstone design curriculum. The formulation and considerations are outlined with respect to design curriculum and student success. This protocol will be utilized to perform a Reflection Interview for each senior design project team at the end of the spring 2019 semester. The assignment is not graded and is inquisitive on the students’ perceptions of motivation during their time at Florida Tech. The qualitative data gathered will be eligible for further studies and analysis.

본 논문은 공학교육과정에서 사용되는 캡스톤디자인 교과목에 대한 평가체계의 개발 사례를 소개한다. 캡스톤디자인은 대학 과정에서 배운 전문지식을 종합적으로 활용하여, 산업현장의 문제를 분석하고 해결책을 설계하는 교과목이다. 본 논문에서는 캡스톤디자인 교과목과 관련된 기존의 평가 요소, 평가 방법 및 절차를 설명한다. 이를 기반으로 개발된 캡스톤디자인 평가체계를 소개한다. 본 논문에서 제시한 캡스톤디자인 교과목의 학습성과 평가체계는 타대학의 캡스톤디자인 교과목 운영 시 일부 참고될 수 있으며, 산학이 연계된 교육 및 인턴 프로그램 개발 시 평가체계 설계를 위해서도 사용될 수 있다. This paper introduces a case study on the development of the evaluation system for capstone design course which is usually provided at engineering education program. A capstone design is an engineering education course which aims to improve the students' ability on analysis and design of practical industrial problems by use of overall engineering knowledge which has been learned in undergraduate program. Firstly, this paper provides a literature review on evaluation indices and methods related with a capstone design course. Secondly, the evaluation system for learning outcomes of capstone design course is described. The evaluation system for learning outcomes of capstone design course provided in this paper could be referred by other universities opening a capstone design course, and used to design an evaluation system for internship program or education course which is provided as an industry-academic connection program.

One of the more difficult tasks in engineering education is to effectively teach the concept of “design.” The design process is very broad and involves a wide range of activities, from abstract thinking to detailed modeling and calculations. In Engineering Design, author Rudolph J. Eggert presents a well-structured and thorough overview of engineering design concepts and methods. A major strength of this book is the presentation of the overall design process, the illustration of the systematic concepts that are involved in every phase of design, and definitions of the terms that are used in design. The author has experience with various organizations, including General Electric, Fisher-Price Toys, Wurlitzer, and the New York State Energy and Development Authority, and that experience with the design process no doubt contributed to the effective organization of this text. The author states that this is a text for undergraduate or firstyear graduate engineering students. He also states that the book has a focus of integrating engineering design with topics about the business of manufacturing. This reviewer teaches civil engineering. In my opinion this textbook might be particularly appropriate for use in senior-level capstone design courses. It is my observation that engineering educators are very good at teaching the science of design. By this I mean they are good at making appropriate engineering calculations once a design concept has been established. However, the more abstract processes of design, such as developing an initial design concept or working with customers, are not as easy to teach. The strength of this textbook is its presentation of a coherent structure for understanding the more abstract processes. In this book Rudolph Eggert provides a systematic description for every phase of the design process. Chapter 3 gives an example of the design of a motorcycle that clearly illustrates the steps involved in developing design concepts. Other examples in the text also use items that students can relate to, including the design of a coffee pot and the manufacturing of bicycles. The discussion of customer satisfaction curves, in Chapters 3 and 8, is particularly useful in terms of providing the basis for the concepts of performance functions and ultimately multicriteria decision analysis techniques. These tools provide a basis for both guiding decisions as well as documenting decisions made during the design process. Chapter 10 covers topics of design failure, safety, and environment that it is crucial to present to engineering students. Finally, Chapter 14 on Projects, Teamwork, and Ethics has some very useful material. While I believe that this would be a textbook strongly worth considering for an engineering capstone design course, as a civil engineer I would have liked some detailed examples of design that relate to large, one-of-a-kind projects. While the material

In non-engineering departments such as cosmetology as well, capstone design has been operated as an educational program and evaluation method, generating some positive educational effects. To examine the adoption of capstone design among domestic cosmetology-related college curriculums, this study investigated the total number of credits granted, distribution of academic departments by school, supporting units within academic departments and schools and receipt of government subsidy from the Ministry of Education, and the results found the followings: In 2018, a total of 3,590 students from 31 departments under school of natural sciences and 22 departments under school of art and physical education completed cosmetology-related capstone design courses. In average, each student was assisted by KRW 90,532. The supporting units were operated in cooperation with office of academic affairs (23 colleges), academia-industry cooperation foundation (21 colleges) and strategic support center for government-funded projects (8 colleges). The course titles differed by college. In fact, new and unique capstone design course titles have been used by academic major. It is anticipated that the study results would be available as basic data needed to enhance educational effects for applying capstone design courses and planning government-funded projects, search new items and improve their utilization.

The impact of cognitive mode diversity on team performance and student satisfaction was assessed qualitatively and quantitatively in a capstone chemical engineering design course. In the capstone design course, students were permitted to form their own teams and the distribution of cognitive modes was assessed. In a concurrent design course, the same group of students performed projects in instructor-formed teams that optimized the distribution of cognitive modes. The results indicated no significant difference in team satisfaction between teams that had different levels of cognitive diversity. Although trends seemed to indicate higher rank in the course and greater independence and creativity for groups with higher cognitive diversity, these differences were not statistically significant. Generally, students seemed to have similar experiences in student-formed and instructor-formed groups. However, qualitative comments seem to indicate that groups may have worked more professionally and cohesively in the more cognitively-diverse, instructor-formed groups.

In Memoriam: Dr. Clive L. Dym (1942–2016)

This work reviews best practices in first-year engineering design courses at 40 universities across Canada and the United States. The authors reviewed the subject matter and instructional methods of these engineering design courses. University selection was based on prominence, level of engineering design content, and availability of data. The authors narrowed the scope of the study to seven Canadian programs and eight American programs for further investigation: University of British Columbia, University of Calgary, University of Manitoba, Queen’s University, University of Sherbrooke, University of Toronto, University of Western Ontario, University of Colorado, Franklin W. Olin Engineering College, Harvey Mudd College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Stanford University, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute. The authors then identified six reoccurring themes in the methods of engineering design instruction: full-scale project, small-scale project, case study analysis, reverse engineering project, design tools and methods instruction, and integration. These themes are then discussed from the point of view of educators looking to develop first-year engineering design courses.

The capstone design course allows students to synthesize solutions to open ended problems. However without some urging, the students tend to focus on the easy part of the project-a single technical solution. The paper deals with some experience in bringing the more demanding aspects of technical projects into the design course. These include: (1) defining the real project with your customer will we know when we're done?. (2) Planning for success. Resource analysis-time, money knowledge, equipment and all of their interactions. (3) What is the best solution? Holding design reviews and comparing alternatives. (4) Communication skills. How do you keep the design team, the boss, and the customer up to date? (5) Presentation of project information in written and verbal forms. (6) Team dynamics. How to support the development of high performance teams? (7) Social skills. Why do I have to deal differently with Mary than with Anne to get their commitment and support? (8) Conflict. Why you need it and how to manage it. Each of the above topics could be a course in itself, but the capstone design course is an ideal place to discuss and exhibit the interaction of these complex issues. These discussions sow the seeds that will allow our graduates to perform at a higher level in all of their future project activities.