Abstract
Abstract Background Multidisciplinary Capstone Design courses are becoming a focus of engineering institutions as multidisciplinary skills have become a priority for accreditation and have shown promise for the development of young engineers. Most of the implementations are done using a stand-alone course or a dedicated section of a capstone course. Here we propose a Supplementary Multidisciplinary Capstone Course (SMCC) to be coupled to the departmental capstone courses to promote quick adoptions of multidisciplinary capstone projects. Hypotheses The SMCC will solve the problem of scheduling by assigning a time once per week that all students are required to be in the same location. The SMCC model will retain all discipline specific learning objectives. Methodology Two student surveys and one end-of-quarter grading rubric will be used to assess the hypotheses and to better understand the challenges involved in running multidisciplinary projects using the coupled course model. Results The SMCC course structure resolves student meeting scheduling problems by mandating attendance and retains departmental rigor by having advisors directly assigned in the departmental capstone course. We found that highly motivated teams with defined projects thrive with this model but that industry-defined projects may require increased communication for all involved faculty and industry mentors. Conclusion The SMCC structure is a reasonable approach for departments to quickly implement multidisciplinary projects into existing department-specific capstone programs.
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