Is senior design preparing engineering students for a post-academic mindset?

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.

Moreover, there is an increasing amount of literature covering specific geotechnical risk analysis and management topics. Examples of these are the difference between unsafe geotechnical certainty and safe geotechnical uncertainty (Barends, 2005), the role of the human factor in achieving geotechnical reliability (Bea, 2006), objective and subjective ways of geotechnical risk classification (Altabba et al., 2004), and contractual allocation of geotechnical risk (Essex, 2007).

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.

International exposure as well as project-based service learning for undergraduate students has gained much attention for their positive impact on students. Additionally, ABET engineering criteria require international exposure for all undergraduates. As such, a goal of the University of Pittsburgh is to have fifty percent of our students directly participate in an international experience. Over the past few years the university has offered a senior design service learning engineering experience as part of the Senior Capstone course. This has provided evidence that service learning is a valuable educational tool to develop a sense of value and direction, teach team dynamics and communication skills, challenge the students’ mindsets, and engage them in a community. This paper will discuss how the typical Capstone course is modified to include an international component. Over the past four years undergraduate students were given the opportunity to design potable water systems for two poor rural Ecuadorian villages and two villages in Panama that did not have a reliable water source. The paper will discuss the creation of a new course that allows the university to offer an international design experience within the traditional Capstone course, and it will further compare the outcomes of the international service learning frameworks to the standard senior design projects.

Importance. The scale of implementation of educational projects in the Russian Federation is growing. Various federal projects, roadmaps for the development of education, strategies and policies for shaping the future of education, etc. are being developed. The results of our own research on risk management of educational projects are compared with the essential features characterising the current state of risk management of educational projects. The aim of the research is to substantiate the essential features identified and formulated in the course of this study, reflecting the meanings and values of the process of risk management of educational projects Materials and Methods. Texts of scientific articles, documents of applications for the status of the republican innovation site, documents summarising the work experience of the contestants in the field of educational projects in the republican contest “Teacher of the Year of the UR”, documents regulating educational projects within the framework of the National Project “Education”, documents aimed at the development of pedagogical education and training of pedagogical staff, texts of educational programmes of higher education–bachelor’s, master’s, and postgraduate courses. The research has been carried out using the methods of content analysis, critical discourse, reflexive problematisation, comparison and synthesis. Results and Discussion. The semantic units of the construct “risk management of educational projects” are highlighted and classified, and the results of our own research on each semantic unit are collated with the actual state of risk management processes. The study demonstrates that the risk management of educational projects is changing, the expert community is including risk management as an integral element in its activities, while the institutionalisation of risk management of educational projects is in the stage of methodological development.Conclusion. The activity of the subject of the educational project already includes risk management, while the process is built on the conscious use of an interdisciplinary approach, requiring special training, including the subject's awareness of the norms, rules, and regularities of risk management.

This article presents the results of a study that investigates the status of colour information use in the design process and generates ideas for a colour tool. Face‐to‐face interviews with senior designers and brand managers from the packaging and branding fields were conducted as the primary data collection method. The results are categorized into six topics: colour decision, types of colour information considered to be important in the design process, reasons for considering colour information important in the design process, current use of colour information, design professionals' preferences for existing colour tool types and data types and suggestions for a colour tool. It is concluded that there are problems with existing colour resources and tools regarding their availability and usefulness; there is a strong demand for a colour tool in the packaging design and branding processes. The insight from this work will help researchers, design professionals and colour tool developers to make informed decisions on the areas on which they should focus, how they should do so and why. This will facilitate better provisions and uptake of useful colour information for design professionals in the design process and strategy fields.

Capstone design, along with the last courses before graduation, is one of the major performance indicators of the student outcome in an undergraduate mechanical engineering program. Educational topics on the capstone course, such as the instruction content, course design, procedures, and timeline schedule, have been deliberated by engineering instructors in higher education. Meanwhile, more and more universities started to invite mentorship or advisement from industrial personnel to the capstone design classes as practical experience is also a significant factor in the engineering study. In this article, a senior design course for undergraduate mechanical engineering program is introduced. Collaboration and mentoring by industrial and business professions are offered in the course, though optional for students. As a result, the students in the same capstone course, though got the same lecture classes and follow the same design schedule, can be divided into three different groups: Group 1 worked in traditional design format, Group 2 received mentorship not only from the instructor but also from industrial professions, and Group 3 received help from a business profession. The course and project outcome of the three groups are evaluated by various assessment and results are demonstrated and discussed.

Despite the positive influence of risk management in Information Technology (IT) project results, many project managers are not managing risks or are managing them partially. To enhance risk management, collaborative project management has gained attention in recent years with the introduction of Web 2.0 tools. Project managers have used such tools to facilitate open communication and distribution of activities. This research introduces a prescriptive framework (W4RM – Wiki for Risk Management) based on a wiki to support collaborative risk management in IT projects. An exploratory focus group was set up and a series of interviews with practitioners was conducted to explore how a wiki can support risk management in IT projects. Findings show that project managers are facing difficulties managing risks and are the only ones responsible for identifying, registering and monitoring risks. By implementing a collaborative tool, managers can disseminate a collaboration culture and participate in risk management processes. This sense of collaboration may be used to keep the community identifying new risks, relating these risks to one or more projects, and facilitating continuous risk management. Practitioners can also adopt W4RM as a tool to support communication regarding risks status to be established for internal team stakeholders.

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.

Capstone project-based courses offer a favorable environment for the development of student skills through an approach incorporating theoretical and practical components. However, it is often difficult to successfully coordinate between students, stakeholders, and the academic team. The absence of suitable tools for addressing this issue, along with time constraints, often prevents students from attaining the expected course outcomes. This raises the question “How can we improve project management skills in computing majors through the use of technology-enhanced learning environments?” This paper presents a Cloud-based mobile system for supporting project management under a framework of best practices in software engineering capstone courses. The Kanban approach was used as a core of the proposed system. Kanban boards are very popular in the software industry today. It has been empirically shown that they provide increased motivation and project activity control due to their inherent simplicity. This helps the students and academic team be aware of the project context as it aids in preventing ambiguities, flaws, or uncertainties in the development of software artifacts.

The multitude of specializations within biosystems engineering makes traditional capstone design courses, which typically focus on a single topic, less relevant. In our department, our yearlong capstone design experience involves machine component design. While this experience is useful to students in all concentrations, ideally, students concentrating on biological-, food-, and soil and water-engineering will have a capstone design experience that integrates their unique technical capabilities. New capstone courses should also enhance the broader skills of undergraduate engineers, including teamwork, time and resource management, oral and written communication, and integrated computer skills. However, a variety of issues militate against simply adding new courses to the curriculum, whereas altering existing courses to provide new content is more acceptable. We report here on two years (four semesters) of experience with a hybrid design course based on two existing design courses, and appropriate to biological-, soil and water-, and food-engineering students. The catalyst for this hybrid course was an invitation to enter the Padnos Design Competition, which our students won with their first year’s effort, despite lukewarm course evaluations. In this paper we discuss this paradox, describe changes we have suggested for our entire curricula based on our experiences in the design sequence, and explain how we are modifying our presentation of technical material to better suit the needs of the design course.

Risk and risk management in software projects: A reassessment

Background: The evolving business environment and technological advancements in the UK construction industry, particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI), are reshaping project management processes, including risk management (RM). As the industry continues to evolve, project managers need to develop AI competencies to effectively mitigate emerging risks. Background: The UK construction industry is undergoing a transformation, driven by technological advancements, particularly the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI). This shift is reshaping traditional project management practices, including risk management (RM). With the increasing complexity of construction projects and evolving risks, it is essential for project managers to develop AI competencies to effectively navigate and mitigate emerging risks. Aim: This review aimed to evaluate the significance of AI competence for project managers and its impact on risk management practices within the UK construction industry. Methods: Using diverse databases including ProQuest, MEDLINE, and IEEE Xplore, a comprehensive literature review was conducted focused on studies from 2010 to the present related to AI competencies for project managers and risk management in the UK construction industry. The articles were initially screened based on relevant and specific keywords including Boolean operators and followed by full-text review to determine final choice articles used for this review. The findings were summarized using the narrative synthesis approach to report the findings in line with the review objectives. Results: The findings of this review highlight the critical role of AI competence among project managers in enhancing risk management (RM) practices within the UK construction industry. While AI integration improves decision-making, efficiency, and accuracy while reducing human error, the effectiveness of these benefits hinges on project managers’ ability to competently utilize AI tools. The findings were thematically categorized into: (1) AI in the construction industry, (2) AI integration in RM practices, (3) benefits and challenges of AI adoption, and (4) assessing project managers' AI competencies. Case studies, such as IBM’s Watson Explorer and RiskLens, underscore the necessity of AI competence for optimizing RM strategies. Conclusion: AI is revolutionizing RM practices by offering data-driven insights and predictive risk analysis within the UK construction industry. To harness AI's full potential, project managers must develop AI-related competencies. However, for successful adoption of AI in construction, addressing challenges related to competency, ethics, and cost is crucial. AI competencies development among project managers is key to maximizing AI’s benefits, ensuring effective risk management and successful projects.

Project processes are affected by risks in many ways, and this is particularly true in today's highly competitive world. Construction projects usually take much longer than typical projects in other sectors. In this sector, it is important to follow some kind of standardised risk management process. There is much literature on different approaches to project risk management, and this paper reviews the most prominent sources that suggest procedures that are widely used in practice. Nevertheless, standard risk management still faces some shortcomings, and professionals call for a more sophisticated solution. This research aims to expand the general risk management process based on the frameworks of the prestigious stand-ardisation institutions and associations (mainly on Project Management Institute's (PMI's) risk management standard considering the approaches of Institute of Risk Management (IRM), National Forum for Risk Management in the Public Sector (ALARM), Association of Insurance and Risk Managers (AIRMIC) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO), as well as Association for Project Management (APM)). The suggested two new processes are justified by in-depth interviews conducted with interviewees working on large and complex construction projects, and are supported by a thorough literature review. The novelty of the research is that these two processes added to the standard processes, namely, risk analysis verification and validation and risk plan experimentation. The research expectedly improves the risk management process in the construction sector and emphasises the need to clearly articulate and communicate the organisation's risk appetite and the necessity for risk management training to employees. Therefore, the research reconfirms the concept of project risk management by the standards, and justifies the proposed new phases.

Purpose– While innovation has many similarities to other forms of projects it is characterised by a high failure rate and the need to stimulate creativity. More explicit risk management could help in achieving success in innovation projects. However, too much or inappropriate risk management might stifle the creativity that is core to innovation. So, what project risk management should be applied and where in the innovation project?Design/methodology/approach– A theoretical framework is proposed which combines the generic innovation process with project risk management. The framework was used to analyse the current attitudes to managing innovation risk in a series of companies.Findings– The decision points of the stage-gate innovation process model provide an effective interface for incorporating project risk concepts. The general concepts appear most relevant to innovation management though it is useful to customise them to emphasise the particular characteristics of innovation projects. The experience of using the resultant combined model in a number of diverse case studies indicates the relevance of the model in understanding attitudes towards risk management in innovation. The analysis of the case study companies suggested that risk management needs to be applied in differential manner: simple, unobtrusive techniques early in the innovation life cycle with more substantial, quantitative methods being considered for later stages.Research limitations/implications– It would be useful to extend this research by examining more case studies from other countries and industries.Practical implications– The combined innovation and risk management model provides a framework that diverse companies can appreciate. The framework offers a basis for discussing the most appropriate form of risk management in different innovation-based industries.Originality/value– Although there are many separate models for innovation and project risk management described in the literature, there is very little discussion about explicitly combining these theories. This paper aims to help fill this gap in the knowledge.