Capstone projects offer an excellent oppor- tunity to assess the attributes of engineering students in their final year of studies. For the purposes of accredi- tation and outcomes assessment, capstone projects can be used to establish that engineering students have ob- tained a suitable level of mastery of the skills necessary to be successful in their field of study. At the University of Waterloo, a committee was formed by the Faculty of Engineering to investigate, develop, and implement a common set of rubrics for the purpose of consistently assessing graduate attributes across all engineering disciplines. Faculty members from every engineering discipline were appointed to the committee. Using the collective experience of the committee members, a set of rubrics for outcomes assessment was established. This paper examines the design of the six rubrics that the committee deemed to be equally applicable to all engineering disciplines. These rubrics assess the CEAB graduate attributes of problem analysis, design, individual and team work, communication skills, and economics and project management. Each rubric subdivides the assessment of an attribute into a set of elements that are examined independently. This paper presents the rubrics, examines the elements of each CEAB graduate attribute, and examines the expected level of mastery associated with each assessment level. This paper concludes with a discussion of the recent use of the rubrics in the assessment of capstone projects in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Ada Hurst is a Lecturer in the Department of Management Sciences at the University of Waterloo. She has taught and coordinated the capstone design project course for the Management Engineering program since 2011. She also teaches courses in organizational behavior, theory, and technology. She received a Bachelor of Applied Science in Electrical Engineering, followed by Master of Applied Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Management Sciences, all from the University of Waterloo. Ada's research and teaching interests include decision making under uncertainty, subjective probability, gender issues in STEM disciplines, design teaching, experiential and online learning, team processes, and expert vs. novice review in engineering design. Prof. Oscar G. Nespoli, University of WaterlooOscar Nespoli is a Continuing Lecturer in Engineering and Mechanical Design in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo (Waterloo). Oscar joined Waterloo following a 23-year career in research, engineering and management practice in industry and government. His teaching and research interests are in the areas of engineering design methodologies, design practice, engineering education and high performance, lightweight, composite materials design. Oscar is passionate about teaching engineering and, as part of his current role, maintains strong industry-university relations and a commitment to remain close to engineering design and management practice.Before joining Waterloo, Oscar held the position of Sr. Program Manager at L-3 Communications Wescam (L-3 Wescam), a manufacturer of airborne surveillance systems for public safety, security and defense markets. Oscar had been employed at L-3 Wescam for 11 years, where he led multi-disciplinary teams toward the successful development and commercialization of several products to various markets. He was responsible for L-3 Wescam's largest defense programs.Oscar worked at the Canadian Forces Department of National Defense failure analysis lab, where he was the Canadian Project Officer for an international program on F/A-18 bonded repair, and prior to that, a Research Engineer at the Canadian Space Agency. Oscar designed and qualified space flight hardware for a space experiment for Space Shuttle Flight STS-52 in 1993.Earlier in his career Oscar led the design and development of products employing composite materials at Owens Corning Canada and contributed to the development of novel production machinery for the footwear industry with Bata Engineering.Oscar earned a Master of Applied Science degree in Mechanical Engineering specializing in lightweight composite material structures from the University of Waterloo, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Queen's University (Kingston, Ontario, Canada). He became a licensed professional engineer in 1986.c American Society for Engineering Education, 2016 A two-dimensional typology for characterizing student peer and instructor feedback in capstone design project courses Abst...
The Faculty of Engineering at the University of Waterloo is preparing to employ outcomes-based assessments to inform program improvement as required by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) and the Ontario Council of Academic Vice Presidents (OCAV). Engineering at Waterloo requires all students to complete five 4-month work terms to graduate; a model of Co-operative education that involves a sequence of alternating work and academic terms. Upon completion of each work term employers complete a Student Performance Evaluation (SPE) that provides students with feedback on their work term and is employed to assign a grade to the student for the term. This presentation will describe an innovative use of historical SPE information to initiate a process that will lead to their use for outcomesassessment for program enhancement.
This project aimed to teach, facilitate the learning of, and assess need finding and problem formulation skills while students were immersed in an authentic practice environment during their coop work terms. An interdisciplinary team of students was placed in a manufacturing facility where they were asked to need find and propose significant problems to solve while they were taught design methods remotely. Students reported that they learned more deeply than a classroom environment because they were able to be in constant engagement with the problems they were trying to solve.
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