How service learning can be offered as capstone

A critical open question in the mechanical engineering pedagogical literature is whether Capstone senior design can be taught as effectively online as in-person with emphasis on whether group work conducted under these contrasting conditions is equally effective. The onset of COVID-19 induced a natural experiment enabling comparison of engineering student group work conducted in-person versus all-online. Group work is an essential element of mechanical engineering education codified by Student Outcome 5 of ABET Criterion 3 (Groupwork). Peer evaluation is a common engineering group work assessment, especially in Capstone design courses. In this paper, recurring peer evaluations are evaluated to quantify how well students performed in groups within a longitudinal study conducted across five semesters of a mechanical engineering Capstone senior design course. In UF’s Mechanical Engineering Capstone courses, recuring peer evaluation surveys tied to group assignment deadlines were already established prior to COVID-19. By continuing to deploy this same survey when courses transitioned online during the pandemic, three full semesters of group performance data were collected when students were forced to meet remotely. As students returned to campus, the same survey provided comparative data for two semesters when students were meeting in person. These collected data represent a quantitative tool to evaluate how online vs. in-person group meeting setting impacts the quality of teamwork. This work shows that online vs. in-person meeting environments DID NOT have statistically significant impacts on teamwork performance for mechanical engineering Capstone students in the semesters being evaluated. This result suggests that ABET Criterion 3 Student Outcome 5 can be met just as effectively in online or in-person Capstone courses. This important result debunks the misconception that the quality and fidelity of Capstone groupwork is somehow diminished when senior design is taught online to learners remote from each other over the Internet. This finding adds to the growing body of evidence supporting the viability of an all-online Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering program capable of receiving and maintaining ABET accreditation. Moreover, a forward-looking online ME program can include an effective Capstone senior design course with rich student groupwork interactions of quality equal to those experienced by students when meeting in-person.

Senior capstone design courses provide students the opportunity to develop their design skills and learn about the product development process. Student project teams, a number of which are industry-sponsored, often develop creative design solutions that result in the creation of intellectual property. When this occurs, who owns the intellectual property: the student, faculty advisors, industry sponsors, or academic institutions? The paper discusses how academic institutions, such as the Marquette University, deal with intellectual property and confidentiality issues in senior capstone design courses, in particular those that deal with biomedical engineering.

Service learning (SL) is a teaching and learning approach that couples service to a community partner with academic learning for students. Often the objectives of SL courses include academic or technical enhancement, civic engagement, and development of personal and interpersonal skills. A key component of SL is critical reflection, which is expected to help the students understand the significance of civic engagement as well as course contents. The civic engagement aspect of this educational approach aligns well with the service-oriented nature of the civil engineering profession. SL projects have been conducted in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Capstone Senior Design course at the University of Vermont since 2006. Students submit written semi-guided reflections on their experience at the conclusion of the course. The student reflections from 2011 through 2014 (n = 154 male and 61 female from a total of 50 different SL projects) were analyzed to assess if there is any difference in the attitude toward SL between male versus female students. The results of this analysis are presented here.

It is sometimes forgotten that industry is an important customer of engineering education. Ignoring this relationship has produced graduates that often fail to meet the changing needs of industry in today's competitive environment. On the basis of feedback from our industrial customers, faculty from Mechanical Engineering and Manufacturing Engineering at Brigham Young University have jointly developed a new senior capstone design course entitled “Integrated Product and Process Design.” This new capstone course is centered on industrial design and manufacturing projects. These projects involve both product and process design activities. Multidisciplinary teams of students are taught a structured development approach to produce typical industrial deliverables. These deliverables include a functional specification, product and process design, prototype, and first production sample. This paper identifies changing industrial needs, describes how the course was designed to meet these needs, and presents results from the initial offerings of the course.

Senior design and capstone courses are an integral part of any engineering curriculum around the world. These courses perhaps provide the only opportunity for students to apply the theoretical knowledge and technical skills they have acquired throughout the engineering degree. Moreover, they are often the (sole) environment in which students get some of the professional and transversal skills too. In addition, such courses present a great degree of nonuniformity since the students engage in projects of different nature (e.g., research oriented versus application oriented). Furthermore, not only do these courses prepare students for real-life engineering practice, they also serve as a major component in measuring program outcomes. The survey conducted over two decades ago by Todd et al. [item [1] in the Appendix], which collected responses from 360 departments across 173 schools, highlighted many of the issues related with capstone courses that are still relevant today. Such issues include course format, different degrees of faculty involvement, and project completion requirements. Indeed, all points highlighted thus far emphasize the importance of adequately designing and assessing capstone design courses.

A senior capstone design course entitled Integrated Product and Process Design has been jointly developed and taught at Brigham Young University by faculty from the departments of both mechanical and manufacturing engineering. The course features a structured approach to product and process design based on the Quality Function Deployment system. Teams of four to five students from both mechanical and manufacturing engineering work on selected, industrially sponsored design projects. These projects require both design and manufacturing solutions. The students are required to develop both functional prototypes and manufacturable production samples. An industrial environment is fostered in the course. The content of the course and an evaluation of its effectiveness are discussed. >

With global competitiveness, outsourcing, and an increase in production of overseas engineers, undergraduate engineering programs in the United States are increasingly under pressure to better prepare students for this evolving workforce. With the rapid pace of technological change, the environment that future engineers will face will require the ability to adapt quickly and engage in novel problem solving. Current assessment measures of student learning, such as standardized test scores and GPA, may not be the predictors of academic and career success that they were once believed to be. This is because they do not measure students’ adaptive problem solving abilities. Recent studies have attempted to define an adaptive expertise skill set that, when assessed, would provide engineering programs with a better predictor of student success. Adaptive expertise is defined as the ability to apply knowledge, gained through prior experiences, to novel situations in which key information is missing. Researchers have attempted to measure adaptive expertise through a variety of methods including interviews, think-alouds, and beliefs surveys. One of the most commonly used measures is Fisher and Peterson’s Adaptive Expertise Beliefs survey (2001). As part of a larger post-semester survey, researchers at a mid-Atlantic university administered Fisher and Peterson's Adaptive Expertise Beliefs survey (2001) to students enrolled in a senior design capstone course. Two sections of this course were included in data collection. Instructors taught one section of the course using methods based on the principles of adaptive expertise, while the other course section involved the use of the traditional lecture-based method of instruction. Results indicated a significant difference in overall adaptive expertise belief scores. However, researchers did not find significant differences between the two groups on any of the individual Fisher and Peterson subscales, making interpretations regarding the impact of instructional methodology more difficult and less useful to the instructors. This paper argues for the development of a more sensitive, more direct measurement of adaptive expertise. Given the importance of adaptive expertise to the emerging engineer, it is imperative that a measure of adaptive expertise be able to provide meaningful information regarding how students perform on the various dimensions of the construct. In addition, Fisher and Peterson's survey is an indirect measure that assesses what students report, not what they can actually do or demonstrate. A direct measure of adaptive expertise skills would allow for the development of educational interventions to promote adaptive expertise skills (not beliefs). In particular, such interventions would promote the development of more complex problem solving, better preparing future engineers for the fast-paced and constantly evolving environment of the workplace.

Baylor University is in the midst of preparing for accreditation under the ABET EC2000 in fall 2005.As such, the department is evaluating its assessment tools and looking at the validity of each instrument.One such tool is the Graduating Engineering Exit Survey.This tool is administered to all graduating seniors from the engineering department during the normal final exam period for their senior design capstone course (which does not have a scheduled final exam).The survey is a graduation requirement and allows the student to give feedback on the program in several areas.The first area has the student to evaluate themselves on the Expected Graduate Outcomes for the engineering program.Comments are encouraged.Another area allows the students to comment on individual faculty.Two questions are asked: "How effective was the professor in aiding me in the learning process?" and "How effective was the professor in stimulating my interest in the engineering profession?" Comments are also included.There are questions that rate the facilities and equipment as well as a series of essay questions designed to identify the department's strengths and weaknesses.Questions are also asked about attrition.The results of the survey give an interesting profile of the department and its effectiveness with the graduates.

This paper presents the findings of a study comparing the motivational factors and performance of two mechanical engineering senior capstone design course cohorts: 2014 and 2015 students. The study measures the motivation of students throughout capstone, a non-traditional course, and the impacts motivation had on their course performance (peer evaluations and team grade). The second cohort participated in an intervention plan during a design methodologies course completed the semester prior to senior capstone design. Quantitative data was collected at both the beginning and end of the course; whereas, qualitative data was collected at the end of the course. Our method utilizes an adapted version of the Motivational Student Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). The survey asks a variety of questions to measure the performance and motivation levels of the student. Performance factors studied are cognitive value and self-regulation. Motivation factors include presentation anxiety, intrinsic value, and self-efficacy. Statistical analysis is performed among the factors, cohort populations, and within the population (male versus females and domestic versus international) to identify if a correlation exists with student course performance. Amongst other findings, the results indicate the student’s experienced positive change due to participation in the intervention plan.

Senior design projects can be a way to bring the university closer to societal needs. This paper describes how the senior capstone design courses in power engineering developed at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagiiez (UPRM) strive to provide a service to society. These projects deal with societal needs, and are part of design courses that culminate the major design experience as specified by ABET. Teams of students identify a society-based problem, propose a design solution, perform measurements/simulations and present the final analysis and design to an industry or community partner. An important aspect of the projects is the inclusion of both technical and social constraints such as safety and environmental issues. These design experiences are an ideal way to understanding the new challenges in power systems planning, policy, analysis and design

The capstone project serves as the culminating experience of most engineering programs. Collaborative design and documentation tools are an integral component of a modern product design and development environment. The Engineering Design Guide and Environment (EDGE), is a web-based system which provides engineers with tools for collaboration on multidisciplinary projects. The EDGE system includes version-controlled repositories for project documentation and design files. By examining the history of changes to these repositories, it is possible to view the usage trends of the system and their relationship to curriculum structure. This paper explores these usage trends with respect to the transition from a quarter-based to a semester-based calendar, the cycle of project deliverables within an academic term, and the transition from a one-day-per-week meeting pattern to a two-day-per-week meeting pattern.

Results concerning the development of a robotic assembly cell are presented. The main components of the cell are a Kuka KR3 robotic manipulator and an Amtec PowerCube reconfigurable robotic manipulator. This paper presents an overview of the robotic assembly cell as well as results concerning its implementation and use. The various components of the cell were set-up by students as either team projects for their capstone senior design course or as independent senior projects.

Temple University has developed a program which introduces engineering students to the importance of oral and written communication exercises which are spread across the four years of the engineering curricula. In the first year, students are made aware of the importance of becoming good writers and speakers and how this can impact on their careers. Exercises in proofreading are conducted by a consultant in introductory level classes. In the second year, typical exercises include classroom note taking and short verbal presentations based on the notes. Laboratory journals and more formal laboratory reports are also introduced. Additional laboratory report writing and a formal research paper are emphasized in the third year. An exercise in teamwork is presented in a third year course to help students in the many collaborative projects they encounter in upper level engineering projects. All fourth year students take a full year capstone senior design course which includes many written submissions and oral presentations.

Senior design capstone courses provide an excellent opportunity for biomedical engineering design instructors to help students begin to look at the "real world" differently. Depending upon the structure of a particular institution's senior design course and the resulting design experience obtained, students' attitudes and perceptions related to biomedical engineering design, the product development process, and the engineering profession can be positively affected. Therefore, senior design experience provides gateways for course instructors to transform the way students think about the design process, teamwork, expected job performance, and the engineering profession. The resulting changes in attitudes, perceptions, and awareness can play an important role in preparing students for careers in biomedical engineering.

Why Our Students Need a Senior Capstone Design Course