Observed Best Practices Within a Student Driven Multidisciplinary Team-based Architectural Engineering Capstone

Abstract

guidance students have won over 45 awards in the last 6 years. His research interests include: integrated structural design methodologies and processes; Innovative methods for enhancing engineering education; and high performing wall enclosures. These three areas look towards the next generation of building engineering, including how systems are selected, configured and designed.

Interdisciplinary design education: development of an elective course in architecture and engineering departments

“…Moreover, Ghonim et al call for adopting interdisciplinary design as a part of the graduation project, which represents this culmination [ 8 ]. However, only one semester may not be sufficient for students to fully attain needed competencies for applying the pilot project, rather, students need 1 year at least [ 16 , 17 ]. Therefore, in some programs, technical engineering and management skills are provided to students from the very beginning of enrollment (3–4 years of classes) [ 16 ].…”

“…However, only one semester may not be sufficient for students to fully attain needed competencies for applying the pilot project, rather, students need 1 year at least [ 16 , 17 ]. Therefore, in some programs, technical engineering and management skills are provided to students from the very beginning of enrollment (3–4 years of classes) [ 16 ]. Accordingly, the nature of the last semester/year of such programs (pilot project) is not to teach new topics but to let students synthesize and apply previously learned skills to a real project [ 18 ].…”

“…Ghonim has offered a framework for interdisciplinary graduation projects, showing that each student from a particular specialization has his/her own Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs) and can be easily evaluated, while all students are still able to engage in and solve real-life problems [ 8 ]. Solonsky and Parfitt have published a significant paper that provides an expanding theoretical basis of how to construct an AEC capstone program [ 16 ]. They have described trends and successes of 9 years of experience in offering such programs.…”

Software Strategies for Team Functionality Support in Capstone Courses

“…Lastly, survey trends on student perceptions are presented that are correlated to observed trends in projects and team functionality. Trends, results, and observed practices on the technical design side have been documented by the authors in the following papers: Solnosky and Fairchild [24], Solnosky and Parfitt [25], and Solnosky et al [26].…”

Multidisciplinary Engineering Capstone Design: Successful Implementation at a Regional Hispanic-Serving Institution

“…A capstone project for architectural engineering (AE) majors predicates the design of a building, as AE students specialize in the various aspects of building design. AE programs are generally considered multidisciplinary as they encompass structural engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and construction management components; as such, teaching senior design courses for this major presents unique challenges [5,10]. While integrating AE students with students from other majors seems like an ideal way to improve the quality of the overall project, this integration proved problematic because of concerns that other majors would play a supporting role to AE-dominated designs.…”