Evaluating ABET Student Outcome (2) in a  Multidisciplinary Capstone Project Sequence

Nicholas Baine; Karl Brakora; Christopher Pung

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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 3 Capstone Design
Page Count: 12
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--40881
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/40881
Download Count: 460

Paper Authors

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Nicholas Baine Grand Valley State University

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Nicholas Baine, Ph.D., P.E. is an Associate Professor in the School of Engineering at Grand Valley State University (GVSU). He is the current Chair of the North Central Section of the American Society of Engineering Education and is the faculty adviser for Laker Racing (GVSU’s Formula SAE Team). His expertise is in the design of electrical control systems and sensor data fusion. He has done research in a variety of applications, which include integrity monitoring for navigation systems, autonomous ground vehicles, and battery management systems. As an instructor, he specializes in teaching and designing 1st year engineering courses as well as specialized control systems courses.

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Karl Brakora Grand Valley State University

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Christopher Pung Grand Valley State University

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Abstract

In 2017, ABET published a revised list of student outcomes detailed under ABET General Criterion 3, which replaced outcomes (a) through (k) with outcomes (1) through (7). The revised student outcomes place greater emphasis on measuring students’ ability to consider a wide range of factors in engineering situations and to address problems in multidisciplinary teams. The wide scope of outcome (2) presents unique challenges. This paper describes an assessment method for ABET student outcome (2), which assesses “…an ability to apply engineering design to produce solutions that meet specified needs with consideration of public health, safety, and welfare, as well as global, cultural, social, environmental, and economic factors.” The capstone project sequence at is well-suited to assess students’ ability to apply engineering design on real-world projects, most of which require multidisciplinary teams. To complicate the assessment, ABET requires each program to be assessed independently without data from students of different majors, even when students with multiple majors take the same course. 's emphasis on the use of multidisciplinary teams drawn from multiple engineering programs as well as ABET’s new emphasis on cross-disciplinary learning makes this disaggregation of data difficult.

The assessment tools presented in this paper use faculty advisor evaluations to measure key elements of engineering design for outcome (2) in a multidisciplinary industry-sponsored design and build project. These elements include following a design process, developing documentation, developing a design strategy, applying theory, demonstrating creativity, demonstrating holistic thought, developing alternative solutions, and debugging/troubleshooting the final design. In addition to these elements, students’ consideration of public health, safety, and welfare is independently evaluated along with other global, cultural, social, environmental and economic factors. The goal of these assessment tools is to disaggregate team performance data to determine an independent metric for each program major and preserve the multidisciplinary nature of the capstone projects.

This paper presents data collection methods for assessing outcome (2) along with methods to analyze that data and determine an independent metric for each program major. Data from the 2019 capstone sequence at is used to demonstrate these methods. There is also a discussion about the challenges of demonstrating and evaluating student design regarding the multiple considerations mentioned in outcome (2) and how best to integrate the wide variety of constraints into industry sponsored capstone projects. The result of the methods detailed in the paper is a clear, stable, and independent metric that can be used to assess outcome (2) for each program major in a multidisciplinary capstone project.

Citation
Format

Baine, N., & Brakora, K., & Pung, C. (2022, August), Evaluating ABET Student Outcome (2) in a Multidisciplinary Capstone Project Sequence Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--40881

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - In 2017, ABET published a revised list of student outcomes detailed under ABET General Criterion 3, which replaced outcomes (a) through (k) with outcomes (1) through (7).  The revised student outcomes place greater emphasis on measuring students’ ability to consider a wide range of factors in engineering situations and to address problems in multidisciplinary teams. The wide scope of outcome (2) presents unique challenges. This paper describes an assessment method for ABET student outcome (2), which assesses “…an ability to apply engineering design to produce solutions that meet specified needs with consideration of public health, safety, and welfare, as well as global, cultural, social, environmental, and economic factors.” 
The capstone project sequence at <redacted> is well-suited to assess students’ ability to apply engineering design on real-world projects, most of which require multidisciplinary teams. To complicate the assessment, ABET requires each program to be assessed independently without data from students of different majors, even when students with multiple majors take the same course.  <Redacted>'s emphasis on the use of multidisciplinary teams drawn from multiple engineering programs as well as ABET’s new emphasis on cross-disciplinary learning makes this disaggregation of data difficult.

The assessment tools presented in this paper use faculty advisor evaluations to measure key elements of engineering design for outcome (2) in a multidisciplinary industry-sponsored design and build project.   These elements include following a design process, developing documentation, developing a design strategy, applying theory, demonstrating creativity, demonstrating holistic thought, developing alternative solutions, and debugging/troubleshooting the final design. In addition to these elements, students’ consideration of public health, safety, and welfare is independently evaluated along with other global, cultural, social, environmental and economic factors.     The goal of these assessment tools is to disaggregate team performance data to determine an independent metric for each program major and preserve the multidisciplinary nature of the capstone projects.

This paper presents data collection methods for assessing outcome (2) along with methods to analyze that data and determine an independent metric for each program major. Data from the 2019 capstone sequence at <redacted> is used to demonstrate these methods. There is also a discussion about the challenges of demonstrating and evaluating student design regarding the multiple considerations mentioned in outcome (2) and how best to integrate the wide variety of constraints into industry sponsored capstone projects. The result of the methods detailed in the paper is a clear, stable, and independent metric that can be used to assess outcome (2) for each program major in a multidisciplinary capstone project.

AU  - Nicholas Baine
AU  - Karl Brakora
AU  - Christopher Pung
CY  - Minneapolis, MN
DA  - 2022/08/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Evaluating ABET Student Outcome (2) in a  Multidisciplinary Capstone Project Sequence
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/40881
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--40881
ER  -