The Impact Of Group Size And Course Length In A Capstone Design Course

In the spring semester of 2003, the School of Industrial Engineering at Georgia Tech ran an experimental one-semester version of their capstone course, Senior Design. The standard version is two semesters in the length, and the purpose of the experiment was to compare the marginal benefit of the second semester for the student (and project sponsor) to the cost of running the second semester in terms of faculty and sponsor resources. In addition, a survey was conducted on past students and sponsors of senior design to determine the impact of group size (which ranged from 5 to 12 over the study period) on the student and quality of output.