CDHub 2.0: Laying the Foundation for an Online Repository for Capstone Design

Abstract

The capstone design community includes faculty, administrators, industry representatives, students, and other stakeholders involved with capstone design courses across the U.S. and internationally. The Capstone Design Hub (“CDHub”) is a recent initiative to support and grow a robust online resource for the capstone design community that promotes shared practices and collective discussion, while remaining adaptive to the changing needs of the community. Community reaction to the CDHub 1.0 pilot, which was launched in 2012, validated the community desire for such a resource, but also identified the need for a broader, expandable hub. This paper reports on the development of the next hub iteration, CDHub 2.0. The development process included collecting stakeholder needs, developing design requirements, characterizing and framing the hub foundation, identifying initial topics, preparing resource-specific metadata, populating and troubleshooting the hub, and soliciting initial feedback from beta testers within the capstone community. Subsequent hub modification and directions for future growth will be informed by continued use and feedback from the capstone design community. Introduction and Motivation The Capstone Design Conferences (2007, 2010, 2012, 2014) have provided a rich, interactive setting for the capstone design community (faculty, administrators, industry representatives, students, and other stakeholders) to disseminate effective practices, share successes and challenges, and network in person. One outcome of the 2010 conference was the recognition of a need for an online presence a capstone design “hub” for the capstone community to support connections, conversations, and resource sharing in a sustained and ongoing manner. Following the 2010 conference, a group of capstone educators applied for and received funding from the Engineering Information Foundation to develop an initial Capstone Design Hub (CDHub 1.0) and test the hub concept within the capstone design community. The hub development team researched other online hub formats and platforms, noting characteristics of interest. Simultaneously, the team surveyed the capstone community regarding what aspects of a hub would be important to them and how they could envision using the hub. Based on this input, the development team built the CDHub 1.0 pilot on a WordPress platform and populated it with sample resources. This pilot hub focused on communication (per the requirements of the funding agency) and included multiple files and strategies related to capstone design communication such as project definition, project management, and intellectual property. The hub developers held a workshop at the 2012 Capstone Design Conference to demonstrate the hub functionality and solicit user feedback. The 60 attendees were overwhelmingly supportive of the hub concept and offered numerous suggestions to expand the hub to provide additional value. These suggestions collectively pointed to the need for a broader framework to enable continued growth beyond the communications focus. The CDHub 1.0 chapter ended with the conclusion of the initial grant funding following the 2012 conference. With support from a small NSF grant, a new team of capstone educators is pursuing CDHub 2.0, the next iteration of the capstone design hub platform.