Capstone course creates useful business products and corporate-ready students

Many engineering capstone courses require senior design projects involving teamwork. Our department's curriculum engages industries to provide meaningful design projects for student teams in real-world settings. One project resulted in students gaining professional skills, industry gaining products, and faculty gaining experience for developing its contemporary curriculum. Educators wanting to provide real-world experiences to graduating seniors may benefit from learning how we obtained corporate sponsors for projects, how we created student-consulting teams, and how we developed capstone courses incorporating system design theory. They may also gain insight from discussions about student evaluations and about lessons we learned from experimental capstone courses.

[1]  David Brown An introduction to object-oriented analysis , 1997 .

[2]  Spencer P. Magleby,et al.  A Review of Literature on Teaching Engineering Design Through Project‐Oriented Capstone Courses , 1997 .

[3]  John E. Baird How to overcome errors in public speaking , 1981, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication.

[4]  Michael F. Wolff Managers at Work: Building Teams—What Works (Sometimes) , 1989 .

[5]  Martha Ostheimer,et al.  Professional Preparation: A Course That Successfully Teaches Needed Skills Using Different Pedagogical Techniques , 1995 .

[6]  Andrew N. Hrymak,et al.  Developing Problem Solving Skills: The McMaster Problem Solving Program , 1997 .

[7]  Barbara M. Olds,et al.  A Model Curriculum for a Capstone Course in Multidisciplinary Engineering Design , 1994 .

[8]  John B. Newman,et al.  Writing and Speaking , 1965 .

[9]  Michael H. Markel,et al.  Technical communication : situations and strategies , 1995 .

[10]  Spencer P. Magleby,et al.  A Survey of Capstone Engineering Courses in North America , 1995 .

[11]  Edward Barrett,et al.  Integrated Teaching of Experimental and Communication Skills to Undergraduate Aerospace Engineering Students , 1996 .

[12]  K. C. Howell Introducing Cooperative Learning into a Dynamics Lecture Class , 1996 .

[13]  Russ Pimmel,et al.  Cooperative Learning Instructional Activities in a Capstone Design Course , 2001 .

[14]  C Wilkinson,et al.  Communicating Through Writing and Speaking in Business , 1986 .