Web-based Tools For Supporting Student-driven Capstone Design Team Formation

Team formation for Capstone Design projects is a complex challenge due to the many parameters involved, many of which are intangible. Of all the challenges in organizing a Capstone Design course, team formation is considered the primary one due to its importance in facilitating synergistic partnerships for successful completion of the Capstone project. The authors propose a process for facilitating team creation in an organic fashion amongst students by collecting and providing information about student interest on a per project basis as well as on each student’s skills. This allows students to gauge the interest levels of potential teammates for projects they are interested in as well and choose teammates that have complementary skills, thus maximizing their potential for success. To measure the efficacy of this system, post-process data analytics was utilized to gauge the utility of the proposed method to help form student teams. Findings from these analyses are discussed along with opportunities for future improvements.