Engineering Capstone Projects Research Articles

Analysing Learning Styles for Engineering Capstone Projects: 4MAT Analysis on Student Outcomes and Perceptions

Capstone projects are integrated into engineering curricula to combine various subjects and impart essential professional skills that may be difficult to teach solely through traditional lecture-based courses. These projects play a crucial role in preparing students for their future roles as professional engineers, thereby significantly impacting a university’s industry reputation and ranking. The challenge in engineering education lies in aligning the teaching approach of educators with the diverse learning styles of their students. This study aims to examine the impact of the learning style of the students measured by their watching-doing scores using the 4MAT tool, on the attainment of the benefits of the graduation project (GP). The Bayesian Belief Networks (BBN) approach was adopted in this study to analyse the data collected from 271 students enrolled in both GP1 and GP2 semesters in the engineering department of United Arab Emirates University. Results show that regardless of learning style, both watching and doing category students share similar perspectives on various aspects of the GP course, such as the optimal team performance ratio. However, when assessing the overall effectiveness of the GP programme, doing students exhibit a higher level of agreement than watching students. The study provides valuable insights to faculty members, helping them navigate the optimal balance between providing mentorship and fostering students’ independence during the different stages of their final-year design capstone projects. These findings underscore the importance of tailored educational strategies to accommodate diverse learning styles, contributing to more effective engineering education and better-prepared graduates.

Fostering Entrepreneurial Mindset in Students: A Modular Framework for Integrating Entrepreneurship Education Into Engineering Capstone Projects

This paper aims to integrate entrepreneurship component into senior capstone engineering projects, so to elevate their entrepreneurial intentions. Incorporating entrepreneurship into engineering capstone projects helps students understand how their technical skills can be applied in real-world scenarios. It encourages them to develop solutions that are not just academically sound but also practical and marketable. Engineering Capstone’s projects are designed to provide senior students with opportunities to present their own solutions. These are all potential ideas for start-ups, that can stimulate new employment and economic growth. Nowadays the role of entrepreneurship to market economies has significantly increased, since it acts as the wheels of the economic development of the country. So, in this context, entrepreneurship education has emerged out as a demanding subject to be mastered by young graduates. This paper proposes a framework with modules (arranged according to Bloom Taxonomy) to be delivered within two stages aligned with engineering capstone projects’ academic timing. This methodology will boost the interest of the students for individual start-ups and embrace any upcoming opportunities to be successful entrepreneurs. This framework can be implemented in any engineering department.
 
 Received: 29 September 2023 / Accepted: 16 December 2023 / Published: 5 January 2024

Learning the Language of Medical Device Innovation: A Longitudinal Interdisciplinary Elective for Medical Students.

Physicians are playing a growing role as clinician-innovators. Academic physicians are well positioned to contribute to the medical device innovation process, yet few medical school curricula provide students opportunities to learn the conceptual framework for clinical needs finding, needs screening, concept generation and iterative prototyping, and intellectual property management. This framework supports innovation and encourages the development of valuable interdisciplinary communication skills and collaborative learning strategies. Our university offers a novel 3-year-long medical student Longitudinal Interdisciplinary Elective in Biodesign (MSLIEB) that teaches medical device innovation in 4 stages: (1) seminars and small-group work, (2) shared clinical experiences for needs finding, (3) concept generation and product development by serving as consultants for biomedical engineering capstone projects, and (4) reflection and mentorship. The MSLIEB objectives are to: create a longitudinal interdisciplinary peer mentorship relationship between undergraduate biomedical engineering students and medical students, and encourage codevelopment of professional identities in relation to medical device innovation. The MSLIEB enrolled 5 entering cohorts from 2017 to 2021 with a total of 37 medical student participants. The first full entering cohort of 12 medical students produced 8 mentored biomedical engineering capstone projects, 7 of which were based on clinical needs statements derived from earlier in the elective. Medical student participants have coauthored poster and oral presentations; contributed to projects that won WolfieTank, a university-wide competition modeled after the television show Shark Tank; and participated in the filing of provisional patents. Students reflecting on the course reported a change in their attitude towards existing medical problems, felt better-equipped to collaboratively design solutions for clinical needs, and considered a potential career path in device design. The MSLIEB will be scaled up by recruiting additional faculty, broadening clinical opportunities to include the outpatient setting, and increasing medical student access to rapid prototyping equipment.

Toward next‐generation engineering education: A case study of an engineering capstone project based on BIM technology in MEP systems

To respond to the digital building environment and Industry 4.0 in building information modeling (BIM)-based mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) systems this study developed a new approach to engineering capstone projects. This article reports on a case study of the development of the innovative capstone project for engineering majors, which is based on team-based learning (TBL) combined with the 360-degree evaluation feedback method to cultivate students' BIM competency. The data collection and analysis involves a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, which aims to evaluate students' learning outcomes and their BIM competency. The results indicate that TBL, combined with the 360-degree evaluation feedback in the capstone project, can be highly effective in improving graduates' BIM competency. This study discusses the interoperability of BIM software tools, problems in the process of data exchange, and provides suggestions for improving the course and BIM team collaboration. The research has identified how professional capabilities for students can be enhanced, enabled through a capstone project, and educators are able to deploy the BIM course to develop engineers that closely meet industry needs. The study provides the case for using the capstone project to improve and cultivate engineering students' BIM competency in MEP systems. This study has provided a new paradigm for applying TBL and 360-degree evaluation feedback to engineering education.

How to form a software engineering capstone team?

This research paper answers the question that how shall the students of software engineering undergraduate courses form teams for the capstone projects that can be cohesive too. In this research, 128 criteria for team formation are proposed for building teams for self-managing software engineering capstone projects. A comparison is also conducted to ascertain the level of cohesion among those teams that were formed using the proposed criteria and those that were not formed using the proposed criteria. The criteria were identified through a combination of qualitative questionnaire survey targeted at the graduated students of the past batches of Computer Science degree program and through synthesizing the literature on engineering capstone project teams identified under the guidance of KSAO framework for software engineering students. To check the effectiveness of the criteria, 100 students were asked to form the teams using the proposed criteria and other 100 students formed the teams without the proposed criteria. Those students that had used the proposed criteria for building teams and those that had formed teams without using the proposed criteria were asked to fill the modified Group Environment Questionnaire to ascertain the level of cohesion among the team members. The results were analyzed qualitatively and through descriptive quantification. The results show that the level of cohesion in teams that were formed using the proposed team building criteria was higher. There was a need for team building criteria in the literature on software engineering capstone project teams that conforms to a conceptual, theoretical framework; this gap is now filled through this research. This paper may also serve as a literature review paper for some readers.

Factors Considered in the Assessment of Computer Science Engineering Capstone Projects and Their Influence on Discrepancies Between Assessors

A capstone project is an extensive learning experience traditionally developed during a student's final academic year. Assessing such a complex assignment involves several challenges and is usually based upon the evaluations of at least two different people: the capstone project advisor, and one or more other assessors. Quantitative studies comparing only different assessors' grades and qualitative studies investigating the origin of possible discrepancies have been conducted. In both cases, contradictory conclusions were reached. The objective of this study is to analyze the factors that are given consideration by assessors of engineering capstone projects and the influence of these factors on the discrepancies between different assessors’ opinions of the same project. This study quantitatively examined 162 computer science engineering capstone projects developed by one student and supervised by one advisor. Each project was assessed by the project advisor and a committee. For each project, the advisor and the committee were asked to complete an additional questionnaire on product characteristics, student competences, and project supervision. Competences demonstrated by the student were found to be the most relevant element when a capstone project was evaluated by the advisor and the committee; product characteristics were found to be second in influence. Furthermore, advisors grant minor significance to the advisor-involvement component. Discrepancies between grades seem to be associated with those aspects to which one assessor has access, while the other does not, such as student skills demonstrated during project development or their performance in the oral defense. Both the advisor's and the committee's perspectives are important in the assessment of this complex task and they complement one another.

Using Continuous Peer Evaluation in Team-Based Engineering Capstone Projects: A Case Study

Scholarship of Application. Background: Capstone courses constitute the culminating experience in engineering curricula. A core characteristic is the student team and project-based nature, with many team deliverables. The ensuing difficulty is to fairly assess the individual team member's contribution toward the team effort. Contribution: The method presented here is based on weekly peer evaluation of the individual team member's contribution, which subsequently yields a participation factor (PF), in turn scaling the team grade in accordance with the individual student performance. Intended Outcome: This method allows the timely adjustment of the individual student effort to match the group expectations and rewards high-performing students by making higher individual grades than the team average possible, while penalizing underperforming free riders by not benefiting from other student's performance. Application Design: The method allows students to continuously calibrate their own and their teammate's expectations and improve their peer score by adjusting their individual efforts. This feedback also requires students to practice professional communication, and in particular giving and receiving critical feedback, and thus is highly aligned with industry needs. Findings: Results evaluated over three iterations of the assessment process indicate a weak positive correlation (0.26) of the peer evaluation with the individual instructor-graded deliverables as well as the individual student grade point average (GPA, 0.23). Further, survey-based data indicate student agreement that the PF is a fair reflection of the individual performance, and a neutral perceived overall assessment system effectiveness, with reported primary barriers being the difficulty in assigning fair peer grades and of open, critical discussion.

The Effect of Internships on Computer Science Engineering Capstone Projects

Contribution: Internships designed to provide training and an initial period of contact with industry, prior to a computer science engineering capstone project, have a very positive impact on both industry and academic capstone projects. Background: Internships and capstone projects are widely used to integrate work-related learning in computer engineering curricula. Both activities offer numerous benefits for students, industry, and academia. Although their effects have been extensively studied separately, the interaction between them remains unexplored. Research Questions: What is the effect of internships on the development of a subsequent capstone project? Methodology: The hypothesis was that the completion of an internship will have positive effects on several aspects of the capstone projects: 1) improved student competencies; 2) improved capstone project outcomes; and 3) decreased supervision effort. Further, these positive effects were expected to be greater in industry-based projects than in academic projects. The hypothesis was tested through a quantitative study of data collected from 274 computer science engineering capstone projects. A period of time with internships was compared with another period without internships, and differentiating between academic and industry projects. Findings: Internships prior to capstone projects improve student skills in autonomy, technology, methodology, and project management; increase the complexity and technological novelty of the resulting projects; and reduce advisor involvement in practical (technology, execution) and keep-the-project-alive issues, and increase advisor involvement in monitoring student work (meetings, reports, and initial arrangements). This effect was observed in both industrial and academic projects.

Adsorption of cadmium using teak leaves powder (Tectona grandis sp.): embedding Mahaffy’s tetrahedral concept in undergraduate chemical engineering capstone lab project

Chemical engineering education can be aptly structured on four central components: macroscopic, particulate, symbolic, and human element domains; known as the Mahaffy’s tetrahedral concept. This paper discusses the application of the concept of undergraduate chemical engineering capstone projects. The capstone was carried out as an undergraduate final laboratory project to investigate the adsorption of heavy metal, namely cadmium (Cd), using powder of teak leaves (Tectona grandis sp.). The lab experiment was environmentally safe, completed at ambient temperatures and that the experimental data collection was easy. It was actively guided by lecturers in a way to encourage meaningful lab experience as proposed in the Mahaffy’s tetrahedral idea. Three experimental variables were investigated: initial pH solution, adsorbent dosage, and initial concentration of Cd. The results were analyzed to determine the diffusion mechanism and kinetics through Weber-and-Morris intra-particle diffusion model. The experimental results agreed with most published literature which gave satisfaction on both students and lecturers. To assess learning outcomes, pre- and post-evaluations in regard the Mahaffy’s tetrahedral idea was employed. The post-test scores were significantly higher than those of the pre-test indicating that the learning outcomes were achieved. The lab project was also found to increase the student’s writing and presentation skills.

Utilisation of the conceive-design-implement-operate framework in a mechanical engineering capstone project

The Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate framework was initiated around 20 years ago at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in order to reform engineering education to cope with the latest nee...

WHICH DESIGN METHODOLOGIES ARE EFFECTIVE TO SUPPORT A CAPSTONE PROJECT IN AEROSPACE DESIGN ENGINEERING?

Abstract – Considering the challenges in the aerospace industry, the NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) Chair in Aerospace Design Engineering (NCADE) has launched its own version of a final year undergraduate engineering capstone project at Concordia University. NCADE’s objective is to expose students to the immense complexity of an aircraft design, thereby better meeting the industry needs of newly graduated students. Four design methodologies (i.e., systems engineering – SE, quality function deployment – QFD, theory of inventive problem solving – TRIZ, and environment-based design – EBD) were evaluated in the context of the NCADE project to answer the research question such as "to what extent do these methodologies provide effective support across the activities in the capstone project?" The evaluation was subjective discussing whether the design methodologies support the activities in the project. From the evaluation, it can be concluded that the studied design methodologies perform poorly to support the activities in the capstone project. Therefore, future research should investigate a better support for the capstone project to achieve NCADE’s goals.

NASA's Robotic Mining Competition Provides Undergraduates Full Life Cycle Systems Engineering Experience

AbstractNASA has held an annual robotic mining competition for teams of university/college students since 2010. This competition is yearlong, suitable for a senior university engineering capstone project. It encompasses the full project life cycle from ideation of a robot design, through tele‐operation of the robot collecting regolith in simulated Mars conditions, to disposal of the robot systems after the competition. A major required element for this competition is a Systems Engineering Paper in which each team describes the systems engineering approaches used on their project. The score for the Systems Engineering Paper contributes 25% towards the team's score for the competition's grand prize. The required use of systems engineering on the project by this competition introduces the students to an intense practical application of systems engineering throughout a full project life cycle.

Student and Staff Perceptions of Key Aspects of Computer Science Engineering Capstone Projects

In carrying out their capstone projects, students use knowledge and skills acquired throughout their degree program to create a product or provide a technical service. An assigned advisor guides the students and supervises the work, and a committee assesses the projects. This study compares student and staff perceptions of key aspects of completing this type of project, such as project characteristics, student competencies, advisor involvement, and student perceived learning. The primary finding of this study is that the students' expectations differ greatly from those of staff. In particular, students tend to have a better opinion of their project, their competencies, and the supervision received than does the staff. However, advisors and evaluation committees have a similar opinion about projects characteristics. The students' perception of their learning, furthermore, is not always consistent with the grade obtained or student satisfaction. This disagreement suggests the need to more clearly and effectively communicate actual expectations to students and staff.

문서 지향적 프로세스에서의 SCRUM 프로젝트 적용: 실험 사례연구

This paper examines how a Computer Engineering Graduate student team ran their Advanced Software Engineering Capstone project using SCRUM. The environment provided contextual challenges in terms of the on-site customer and upfront requirements document, not uncommon in a document driven single-step methodology. The paper details the methodology and practices used to run the project, and reflects on some of the challenges faced by the members of a typical software team when transitioning to a SCRUM process. The paper concludes by evaluating the success of the techniques and practices compared to the Agile Manifesto and Henrik Kniberg's Scrum checklist. The project was undertaken at South Korea's Ajou University.

INCORPORATING SOFTWARE MAINTENANCE IN A SENIOR CAPSTONE PROJECT

Software engineering capstone projects give students experience in developing a software product throughout the software life cycle. Projects such as these give students practical experience in applying concepts they have learned in their software engineering and computer science classes. This paper presents a software engineering capstone project conducted by students at the University of Virginia's College at Wise. The work of the students is documented in this paper. Unlike previous capstone projects conducted at this university, however, this one uses methods commonly found in agile development and is an adaptive maintenance development effort. To cite this document: Â Ira Weissberger, Abrar Qureshi, Assad Chowhan, Ethan Collins, and Dakota Gallimore , Incorporating software maintenance in a senior capstone project, International Journal of Cyber Society and Education, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 31-38, 2015. Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.7903/ijcse.1238

Original Concept for a Civil Engineering Capstone Project

AbstractThe objective of bachelor programs in engineering is the acquisition, over a period of approximately four years, of technical and professional skills that will allow the young graduate to address problems of relative significance and to propose workable solutions. A major step in the integration of knowledge and skills by the future engineer is often a capstone project. In civil engineering, problems of interest should require an investigation from an integrated perspective and take into account a variety of social and management issues. This paper reports on an original concept for a capstone project that was experimented at the Universite de Sherbrooke in the Fall 2000 term. In this project, all students of the graduating class had to design complementary components of the same open-ended project. The class was organized as a consortium of five consulting firms, which had to coordinate their design efforts to produce a single, complete, and integrated proposal to the client. A key feature of the...

Creating a Marketplace for Multidisciplinary Multi-university Systems Engineering Capstone Projects

Our previous research has shown that multidisciplinary capstone programs can enhance development of systems engineering competencies. However, undergraduate engineering capstone projects typically focus on only one engineering discipline. One way to foster more collaboration between engineering departments and students is to partner with colleagues at other universities. Although this provides more challenges for students it also exposes them to a wider variety of peers.Good capstone experiences involve sponsors with real needs. Finding and engaging such sponsors takes time and effort by faculty that might be better spent on other tasks. It would be easier if a global marketplace existed for multidisciplinary engineering capstone problems and projects. A marketplace would allow sponsors to propose challenging projects that require systems thinking across multiple disciplines. It would allow students to self-organize and select projects based on their backgrounds and interests. It would also allow faculty to focus on guiding student learning rather than defining challenging capstone projects and obtaining necessary resources.This paper describes an ongoing pilot project to develop a marketplace for multidisciplinary systems engineering capstone projects. Students from six different universities have applied to projects that were posted to the marketplace website by sponsors from government and industry. Each team includes students from different disciplines and different schools. The goals of the pilot project are to determine the requirements for a global electronic marketplace and to develop guidelines for faculty, students and sponsors who would use it.

Supervision Typology in Computer Science Engineering Capstone Projects

Journal of Engineering EducationVolume 101, Issue 4 p. 679-697 Supervision Typology in Computer Science Engineering Capstone Projects CÉSAR DOMÍNGUEZ PÉREZ, CÉSAR DOMÍNGUEZ PÉREZ University of La Rioja, SpainSearch for more papers by this authorARTURO JAIME ELIZONDO, ARTURO JAIME ELIZONDO University of La Rioja, SpainSearch for more papers by this authorFRANCISCO J. GARCÍA-IZQUIERDO, FRANCISCO J. GARCÍA-IZQUIERDO University of La Rioja, SpainSearch for more papers by this authorJUAN JOSÉ OLARTE LARREA, JUAN JOSÉ OLARTE LARREA University of La Rioja, SpainSearch for more papers by this author CÉSAR DOMÍNGUEZ PÉREZ, CÉSAR DOMÍNGUEZ PÉREZ University of La Rioja, SpainSearch for more papers by this authorARTURO JAIME ELIZONDO, ARTURO JAIME ELIZONDO University of La Rioja, SpainSearch for more papers by this authorFRANCISCO J. GARCÍA-IZQUIERDO, FRANCISCO J. GARCÍA-IZQUIERDO University of La Rioja, SpainSearch for more papers by this authorJUAN JOSÉ OLARTE LARREA, JUAN JOSÉ OLARTE LARREA University of La Rioja, SpainSearch for more papers by this author First published: 02 January 2013 https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2168-9830.2012.tb01124.xCitations: 13AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume101, Issue4October 2012Pages 679-697 RelatedInformation

Software project demonstrations as not only an assessment tool but also a learning tool

Software project demonstrations are commonly used as an effective assessment tool in software courses. We found that in addition to helping instructors find out the status of student projects in a short period of time, project demonstrations motivate students and challenge them to synthesize, organize, prioritize, and articulate different aspects of their projects, all of which are important skills of professional software developers. Our experiment shows that project demonstrations are an effective learning tool as well. In this paper, we describe different types of project demonstrations in our experiment, including short, frequent five-minute demonstrations and formal final project demonstrations. This study was conducted in the context of a software engineering capstone project course.

Service based framework for knowledge portals

This paper describes our work on establishing an on-line learning community to facilitate the interactions of the student (teams) in their group projects. It is illustrated with a Portal in the capstone project of our Bachelor of Software Engineering (BSE) course. [2] reported on our Monash University Software Engineering (MUSE) Studio Lab and the innovative software engineering capstone project experience. Our student teams used to store the various artefacts, which were produced as part of the SE Studio (capstone) projects on the servers in the studio lab. However, these SE product and process artefacts were not accessible uniformly through a web browser in a MUSE Portal. The Portal environment is aimed at providing a virtual learning space, knowledge aggregation and user management. In this paper, we provide details of our pedagogical service based framework, which has been designed and built to provide features to Portal users. The framework supports services such as group/team collaboration, task tracking, and project planning.The collaboration and learning services available from our Knowledge Portal is based on the learning activities as defined by [1] Nonaka1994. Nonaka defines: socializing to exchange views and develop trust between team members, dialoguing to share mental models and develop common vocabulary, systemising to combine knowledge by visualising interactions and constructing artifacts and exercising to communicate and reflect on outcomes. We follow a similar approach to enable team members to discuss and reflect on group findings with respect to SE processes & products during the year long SE Studio project, and reflect over individual thesis components.A pedagogical service based framework can service the current pedagogical needs of the SE group projects, other related subjects, and SE Honours research projects and is also extendible with more services on a demand basis. The focus has been on allowing custom subject specific services to be created without having the inherent overheads.A pedagogical framework with service based architecture has been built to provide services to the Portal users. The Portal Environment is the front-end through which services are exposed. Examples of services are: task tracking and project planning in group projects; collaboration between team members in a group project in a subject unit; knowledge repository of product/project assets; calendar facility etc. Support infrastructure services of user authentication, role and service allocation etc. are also managed via the portal environment.We show how on-line learning communities can be supported using the MUSE knowledge portal. The framework supports services such as team collaboration, task tracking, and project planning. The url for MUSE Portal is http://museportal.csse.monash.edu.au:8080/MUSEPortalWeb/.