Collection

2007 St.Lawrence Section Meeting

Authors

Thomas F. C. Woodhall

Designing a Rubric to Assess the Problem Definition Phase of Student Design Projects in Upper Year Engineering Courses Thomas F. C. Woodhall, B.Sc., B.A., M.Sc. (Candidate) Queen’s University at Kingston Ontario CanadaAbstractIn order to bridge the gap between a student’s understanding and instructor’s perception ofsubject mastery, it is important to assess upper year capstone design projects in a way whichtargets the important aspects within each stage of the design process, while providing feedbackthat is instructive and helpful. A rubric was created that assesses a student’s mastery of theproblem definition phase of a design project (as defined by Dominick et al. 2001). The

Collection

2007 St.Lawrence Section Meeting

Authors

Susan J. Masten; Robert V. Fleisig

, engineering education is builton a foundation of sciences and mathematics courses, with students taking engineering courses in their upper years, with fewstudents experiencing design outside of a focused course in their discipline. In the 1990's, in response to. accreditation criteria,most engineering schools added a “capstone” design project in the final year. These projects are meant to be complex, have a“real world” flavor, and are often multi-disciplinary. In some cases, there are industrial sponsors and students work closely withpracticing engineers. As engineering education has evolved in the last decade, the concept of a “cornerstone” or first-year engineering designproject has been added. The goal of these projects to give students early

Collection

2007 St.Lawrence Section Meeting

Authors

Ahmed S. Khan; Beverly Cronin; Maneesh Kumar; Atef Mustafa; Pankti Patel; Joey Socorro

) logistics, and item 915 MHz (USA) management 950-956 MHz (Japan)Industrial, 2.4 GHz 12.5 centimeters Item managementScientific, &Medical (ISM)Source: RFID, Applications, Security, and Privacy, Simpson Garfinkel and BethRosenberg, Addison-Wesly (2006), p. 21.II. DeVry University’s Senior Project Capstone Course Sequence DeVry University’s Electronics Engineering Technology/Computer EngineeringTechnology (EET/CET) program senior project is a two-semester course sequence in whichstudents synthesize knowledge and skills learned in the previous courses. In the first course(EET-400, Project management), students research, plan and develop a project

Collection

2007 St.Lawrence Section Meeting

Authors

Robert Edwards; Gerald Recktenwald

of core principles. Knowledge and problem solving abilities can get students through a traditional course, butunderstanding of core principles is needed for them to be able to apply their knowledge to uniqueproblems. Two approaches that are currently popular for confronting misperceptions and tryingto develop understanding are project-based learning and inquiry-based learning. 3 Project-based learning involves open ended projects, often with ill defined constraintsdesigned to challenge the students to think and hopefully develop a better understanding of theprinciples involved. Clearly, capstone projects fall into this category

Collection

2007 St.Lawrence Section Meeting

Authors

Doug Reeve P.Eng.; Annie Simpson; Veena Kumar; Emma Master; Dave Colcleugh; Greg Evans P.Eng.

, designing green chemistry labs, designing a compost system for anapartment building, developing a website for recruiting future chemical engineeringstudents, designing an energy efficient home insulation plan, designing a bio-engineeringfacility, harnessing bio-methane, and organizing student tours. In 2007 the tours visited amunicipal waste incinerator, a refinery and a steel mill. The rationale for the projects wasto allow students to apply their newly acquired knowledge, self-awareness, and teamskills.As a capstone to the summer program, students presented their group project work toinvited alumni and industry leaders. This was a formal event, where students presentedand were asked questions about their research and design work. Alumni voted

Collection

2007 St.Lawrence Section Meeting

Authors

Deborah Tihanyi; Margaret N. Hundleby

with regard to communication. The Department of Materials Science andEngineering is unique in the Faculty in that it has a significant communication-focused course ineach of years two, three and four of the degree program (see Table 1, next page). Each of thecourses is content-based, and each builds on the skills acquired in the one(s) before it, lookingforward to both the capstone project in the fourth year (thesis or industrial research project(IRP)) and professional practice.In MSE390, each of the deliverables goes through several iterations and receives extensivefeedback from both faculty and peers. Course instructors facilitate class workshops anddiscussion and meet individually with each student as the work progresses, in addition