Reality Gaps in Industrial Engineering Senior Design or Capstone Projects

Abstract

as a research assistant focusing on wastewater engineering and water reclamation. Desen holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Tufts University and is on track to completing her M.S at Virginia Tech. She was born in Arlington, Texas, then moved to Istanbul, Turkey, and then to Boston to pursue her B.S. She speaks Turkish fluently. Her PhD focus is on creativity and design in engineering education. When not studying or teaching, Desen is riding her bikes up and especially down the mountains of Southwest Virginia.

Mechanical Engineering Students’ Perceptions of Design Skills Throughout a Senior Design Course Sequence

“…This recommendation is based on the illustration the results provided about students' lower confidence in professional skills and their perspective of critically important professional skills (i.e., teamwork) as not important for engineering design. In addition, despite recent efforts, many engineering curricula tend to focus on the development of technical skills (i.e., pre-requisite concepts that are needed for future courses) [3], [30]. The same intentionality is not afforded to professional skills.…”

“…However, despite the similarities that design courses may offer to real-world experiences, educators face challenges balancing what the curriculum can simulate (e.g., realistic design constraints, access to stakeholders) and what would be most helpful in developing students for the complex, multidisciplinary work environment they will enter after graduation [3]. As such, there is currently a gap between what educational opportunities are feasible within academia versus what is required to excel in collaborative, multidisciplinary design environments.…”

“…Yet, these studies do not reflect on particular factors that may have impacted students' perceptions. Others focus on students' performance and behaviors within a senior design course and how those illustrate what skills students perceive as important to design (e.g., [3], [22]). While valuable to capturing students' actions, these studies are limited in their focus on potential factors affecting students' perceptions at the start of a senior design sequence.…”

Capstone Prepares Engineers for the Real World, Right? ABET Outcomes and Student Perceptions

“…They work in physical, social, and organizational circumstances, in which they do not control all of the conditions, thus requiring flexibility and agility to deal with uncertainty, risk, and incomplete information. These conditions may not be fully "real-world" [8], but they are certainly more so than students have seen in classroom or lab settings. Students working in teams of 4-5 must manage team interactions and project planning on an ongoing, iterative basis [5].…”

Capstone Courses Enhanced to Suit Larger Industry

“…Almost all the accredited engineering undergraduate programs have an end-of-program design project, termed capstone project, to culminate the engineering studies. Depending on the program and particular institution, they may have different course structures [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6] and different student outcomes or expectations. Ozkan et al [1] examines the ancillary effects (both positive and negative) of poorly defined problem statements, and the importance of understanding the actual problem before attempting a solution.…”