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A Silver Lining: Engineering Senior Capstone Projects During Pandemic

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Conference

2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Minneapolis, MN

Publication Date

August 23, 2022

Start Date

June 26, 2022

End Date

June 29, 2022

Conference Session

DEED Technical Session 1: Adapting to COVID and other Design Challenges

Page Count

19

DOI

10.18260/1-2--41765

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/41765

Download Count

297

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Paper Authors

biography

Nebojsa Jaksic Colorado State University - Pueblo

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NEBOJSA I. JAKSIC earned the Dipl. Ing. (M.S.) degree in electrical engineering from Belgrade University (1984), the M.S. in electrical engineering (1988), the M.S. in industrial engineering (1992), and
the Ph.D. in industrial engineering from The Ohio State University (2000). He is currently a professor at Colorado State University-Pueblo teaching robotics and automation courses. Dr. Jaksic has over 100 publications and holds two patents. Dr. Jaksic’s interests include robotics, automation, and nanotechnology engineering education and research. He is a licensed PE in the State of Colorado, a member of ASEE, a
senior member of IEEE, and a senior member of SME.

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Abstract

Most of the undergraduate engineering programs culminate in a required senior capstone project where students demonstrate their knowledge, skills, creativity, and design capabilities. These projects are frequently completed by teams having 3 - 5 students per team. Often, the success of an undergraduate engineering program is chiefly assessed through analyses of student senior design projects. In this work, a comparative analysis of three generations of students’ senior capstone projects (a pre-pandemic phase, an early-pandemic phase, and a full-pandemic phase) based on project quality, work environment, and funding, is presented. Each phase was further divided into three stages: survival, adaptation, and thriving. A combination of appropriate pedagogical methods was used for each phase/stage. Based on direct quantitative project assessment metrics based on defined quality attributes it is observed that the senior design projects at the full-pandemic phase were of higher quality than the projects of the previous two phases. This shows that it is possible to design and build excellent senior capstone projects even in the time of physical isolation assuming that inexpensive rapid prototyping machines are available and appropriate pedagogical tools are implemented.

Jaksic, N. (2022, August), A Silver Lining: Engineering Senior Capstone Projects During Pandemic Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--41765

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