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Recipes for capstone design courses: a review of key considerations in the capstone course landscape (Work in progress)

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Conference

2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Publication Date

June 22, 2025

Start Date

June 22, 2025

End Date

August 15, 2025

Conference Session

Design in Engineering Education Division (DEED) - Evolving Pedagogies in Capstone Design Education

Tagged Division

Design in Engineering Education Division (DEED)

Page Count

8

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/57103

Paper Authors

biography

Franz Thomas Newland P.Eng. University of Ottawa Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-9859-8765

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Franz is an older, white, cisgender, settler from Ontario, Canada, who has worked for many years in the space industry in Europe and Canada, and has taught and researched in engineering for the past 10 years. He is an associate professor in the school of engineering design and teaching innovation at the University of Ottawa.

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biography

Hossam Sadek P.E. York University

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I am currently an Associate Professor-teaching stream in Lassonde School of Engineering-Mechanical Engineering Department. My teaching experience include teaching courses such as Thermodynamics, Mechanics of Materials, Dynamics, Heat transfer, Thermodynam

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Abstract

The capstone design course is a core pre-graduation requirement in today’s engineering degree, expected by accreditation bodies, employers and students alike. This monolithic requirement hides a wide variety of capstone types, however, in terms of team size, disciplinary mix, course duration and intensity, stakeholder engagements, funding, grading emphasis, and expected design and project management approaches, amongst others.

Having been involved in teaching a variety of capstones over the past decade, the authors propose a capstone classification in this paper, to make it easier to compare capstone courses. The goal of this classification is to help improve and connect capstones, and make it easier to compare best practices in different capstone course types. This paper builds upon previous work that proposed a standardized way to classify capstone courses, by providing some text and context behind the classification, with the goal of testing out these capstone classification descriptions with conference attendees and other stakeholders. With confirmation or adjustment based on conference feedback, this capstone classification will be available for use by the capstone community, which will facilitate exchange between capstone practitioners, and support future Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) work into capstones by providing a common language to compare these complex courses.

Newland, F. T., & Sadek, H. (2025, June), Recipes for capstone design courses: a review of key considerations in the capstone course landscape (Work in progress) Paper presented at 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada . https://peer.asee.org/57103

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