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Session 1647

Restructuring the Capstone Course Leads to Successful Projects

Rafic Bachnak, Satyajit Verma, and Tim Coppinger Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi

Abstract

The engineering technology programs at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi share a capstone projects course that allows students to use their problem solving skills and the technical knowledge they gain throughout their college experience to develop a device or system that meets some specific requirements. As a result of concerns raised during a recent ABET accreditation visit, the course was restructured in order to ensure consistency in the quality of the projects being completed by students. This paper describes the changes and briefly presents the progress that has been made since 2004 Spring Semester.

Introduction

An engineering capstone design experience has been defined as “the crowning achievement in a student’s academic curriculum, and integrates the principles, concepts, and techniques explored in earlier engineering courses” [1]. Today, most engineering and engineering technology curricula include a senior capstone course [2-8]. Two major sources that led to this status are the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) and industry [9]. While the process for conducting capstone projects varies between programs and disciplines, such projects normally take two or three semesters to complete and in the majority of cases, students are organized in teams of two or more [10]. A number of institutions have already used the capstone course as a significant assessment tool [11-13].

The engineering technology programs at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi (A&M- CC) share a capstone projects course that allows students to use their problem solving skills and the technical knowledge they gain throughout their college experience to solve a moderately complex problem by developing a device or system that meets some specific requirements. This experiential learning activity brings the analytical knowledge and the practice of engineering in a hands-on meaningful project that involves product design, development, testing, and documenting. Until last year, projects were one- semester long and all students taking the course were advised by the instructor. As a result of concerns raised during a recent ABET accreditation visit, the course has been restructured in order to ensure consistency in the quality of the projects being completed by students. This restructuring affected another course, Project Management &

“Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education”

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Bachnak, R. (2005, June), Restructuring The Capstone Course Leads To Successful Projects Paper presented at 2005 Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--15296