Collection

2010 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

LeRoy Alaways

Factors that Inhibit or Enable Success of Capstone Design Teams LeRoy Alaways Department of Mechanical Engineering Villanova University, Villanova, PA 19087Engineering capstone is considered the final and crowning design course in the engineeringcurriculum. A typical design team is made up with three to five students and is multidisciplinaryin nature. These teams are assembled either by project choice where a member is assigned to aproject, or by group choice where a project is chosen by an existing self-forming group. A self-forming group is characteristically a group of friends that clumped together during theireducational career. No

Collection

2010 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

, along with proper reinforcement – onesuggestion is that several simple design problems precede the larger capstone design project [1].In addition, design and other engineering subjects are best learnt through hands on activelearning, e.g. project based learning [18, 19]. Therefore, the integration of impromptu designexercises into all aspects of the curriculum is motivated by the above research findings.2.1.2 Use of impromptu design contests in university classrooms: Aside from using impromptudesign contests in university courses as ice-breakers [6, 10, 20], little research has been carriedout on using impromptu design to achieve desired education outcomes. The current research inthis area has focused on the ability of impromptu design contests

Collection

2010 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Kevin Dahm

obtained from the evaluation both for individual student grading and forprogrammatic assessmentA previous paper6 described how this process evolved over the past ten years. This paperfocuses on the assessment process as it is currently implemented. One section is devotedto each of the six tasks summarized above.1) Identify Courses that Offer a Culminating Experience in the CurriculumThe program’s current assessment plan is built around two courses: Chemical PlantDesign, the capstone design experience, and Junior/Senior Engineering Clinic, aninterdisciplinary project-based course.Chemical Plant DesignNote that programmatic objectives require that graduates will possess certain skills andaptitudes. Demonstrating, for example, that students are

Collection

2010 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Mir M. Atiqullah; Norman Russell

theapparatus. This paper describes the design and operation of the device as well as teachingmodules and user surveys to match the results with laboratory outcomes. Such an inexpensivebut functional apparatus can enhance a traditional undergraduate fluids laboratory. Studentlearning was positive after using it for a laboratory exercise. Included drawings and teachingmodules may benefit other faculty members who want to take advantage of the current design.Keywords: Fluid mechanics, fluid statics, hydrostatic, buoyancy, laboratory, design.INTRODUCTION The senior machine design class includes capstone design projects done by teams ofstudents. These students had already taken the Fluid Mechanics laboratory class where theneed for a hydrostatic