Why Our Students Need a Senior Capstone Design Course

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.

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 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

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.

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.

The capstone design course is a senior level course in large number of civil engineering and construction programs. This course bridges the gap between education and industry by emphasizing project-based learning, asking students to accomplish open-ended project planning and system design. This study aims to investigate the potential of incorporating service learning into capstone courses in Civil Engineering, Construction Engineering, and Construction Management curricula. To accomplish this objective, a questionnaire is designed and will be distributed among alumni of Purdue University as well as Durham School of Architecture Engineering and Construction. The questionnaire is asking about the main learning objectives of the current capstone courses, objectives that can be better covered by a service learning project, and the most practical, efficient, and systematic way to incorporate service learning into capstone courses. The results of this study can be used to successfully incorporate service learning as a more advanced authentic performance task into the capstone senior design course and increase the student's experience with real-world issues, and enhance required skills such as project management, project planning, and cost analysis and estimation.

Mechanical design education focuses on teaching students with fundamental design theory and methodology. Educators systematically introduce design theories, processes, and tools to help students solve design problems. Companies and professional organizations expect that students will be equipped with basic understanding of the engineering practice, and be able to effectively perform independently and in a team environment. Senior capstone design courses, particularly with industry sponsored projects, are widely used to satisfy both education and professional needs of students. This paper presents an education system, which can further facilitate students to acquire design skills in a real-time collaborative, and practical environment. The web-based system helps student teams to: (1) specify the design process for their team projects, (2) organize and distribute tasks among different team members to simulate industry design environment, and (3) get instantaneous access to models, analysis, etc. related to their design. The developed web-based system also contains a knowledge-base that provides students with instructions to setup the design process for projects, and to perform different design tasks. A virtual design organization is created in the system, which is managed by students. In this paper different components of the web-based design education system are presented.

The Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering at West Point has recently established a multi-disciplinary research and educational outreach center that has a two-fold mission: enhance the undergraduate educational experience of students and assist in solving real-world technical problems, supporting global Army operations. This is accomplished by tying projects directly to the undergraduate education mission and gaining efficiency by consolidating administrative and outreach functions for multiple existing research programs. The paper describes the Center for Innovation and Engineering (CIE), its lines of effort, and several past and current initiatives. Assessment data from students participating in the senior capstone design course, which is closely tied to the CIE, reinforces the importance of multi-disciplinary, client-based projects in the engineering education experience.

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.

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.

Organizational support for senior capstone design courses [Senior Design

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.

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.