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Engineering practitioners in the twenty-first century face complex challenges with social, political, environmental, ethical, and resource-limiting constraints. They work with diverse constituencies to solve rapidly-changing, complex problems. To be productive and responsive in this environment, engineering professionals must create innovative yet practical and responsible solutions that benefit society. As Schön (1983) argues, engineers will need to practice reflectionin-action (learning and adjusting as they perform) as well as reflection-on-action (intermittent analysis of conditions that leads to major advances). As agents of change, they continuously ask questions, make judgments, learn, and choose appropriate actions. Engineers must be competent, reflective practitioners if they are to contribute effectively in a dynamic global environment. This paper describes a set of fifteen assessments for four areas of performance in capstone engineering design courses: professional development, teamwork, design processes, and solution assets. First, it presents the research foundation and structure for making the assessments useful for both guiding student achievement and measuring achievement in the context of team-based design projects. Next, the activities for each assessment are summarized along with factors for scoring performances. Finally, the paper describes how the assessments prompt students' reflection on design activities and how student reflections might be used to assess reflective practice occurring in design activities. Assessment instruments are being tested for validity and reliability in a number of capstone design course environments. Additional research is needed to develop and test the measurement of reflective practice.

The design, build and test (DBT) project was created with the idea that the best way to learn engineering is by doing engineering. The primary goal of a DBTproject is to provide students with an experience that is fun, motivating and educational. In addition, a DBT project is designed to be easy to implement. The preeminent feature of a DBT project is the extensive use of science, math, and calculations to guide design efforts prior to construction. Key factors in designing an effective DBT project are (1) selecting an appealing topic that is amenable to simple prototype construction, (2) using metrics to define the project goal, (3) instituting a mentoring culture, (4) involving substantial mathematical modeling, (5) guiding students using iteration cycles, (6) motivating students by using competition and public presentation, and (7) continuously improving a project by collecting project resources.

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