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Capstone Design Courses Managed in an MS Teams Framework

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Conference

2024 South East Section Meeting

Location

Marietta, Georgia

Publication Date

March 10, 2024

Start Date

March 10, 2024

End Date

March 12, 2024

Page Count

6

DOI

10.18260/1-2--45511

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/45511

Download Count

97

Paper Authors

biography

Andy Pardue Tennessee Technological University

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Dr. Andy Pardue oversees the 2-semester Senior Design Courses for the Mechanical Engineering department at Tennessee Tech University. He worked in industry for 24 years in product development in several companies/sectors before his current teaching role. Dr. Pardue spent 11 years in the Automotive industry with Cummins and, while there, was chair of the SAE filtration standards committee and a member of the corresponding ISO TAG. He was also the Director of Research and Advanced Product Development for the Filtration Business Unit. Dr. Pardue then spent 7 years as a consultant for several companies working on new product development. The final 6 years of his industrial experience was serving as VP of Research for IEM in the area of power distribution in data centers. In his role in the ME department, he has overseen 139 student projects. He has also been working with the other Senior Design instructors to have joint projects with ME, ECE, and CS teams working together, which would more closely resemble the industrial product development process.

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biography

Sally J. Pardue Tennessee Technological University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-3348-1982

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Sally Pardue, Ph.D., is an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Tennessee Tech University, and former director (2009 - 2018) of the Oakley Center for Excellence in the Teaching of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

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Abstract

The paper will outline using Microsoft Teams to manage a Mechanical Engineering capstone program with 120 to 140 students and 25 to 30 projects. The MS Teams project site becomes the central repository for all the information regarding the student's work on their project as an individual and a team. A focus of the design of the project site has been an effort to effectively determine the individual contributions of a student versus the overall project outcomes. A simple MS Form is used for the students to enter their hours of effort for the course, but a written weekly journal is also required to justify the claimed amount of effort. These tools have provided data on student contributions that may have previously been inferred from interaction with the team or feedback from other team members. The tools have also confirmed when entire teams make limited time commitments to the project, reflecting reduced project outcomes. A physical project notebook is replaced by an electronic OneNote structure that collects all project and team information. The standard structure of the project sites allows the instructor, faculty mentors, and industrial sponsors to track progress and interact with the team without scheduling a formal meeting. The paper will outline the overall structure of the MS Teams project site and how the structure has evolved through use and student feedback.

Pardue, A., & Pardue, S. J. (2024, March), Capstone Design Courses Managed in an MS Teams Framework Paper presented at 2024 South East Section Meeting, Marietta, Georgia. 10.18260/1-2--45511

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