Pedagogical Changes to a Capstone Course to Foster Refinement of Professional Skills

Abstract For both accreditation purposes and for student professional development, ensuring students acquire professional skills is an integral part of an effective undergraduate engineering program. Engineering programs throughout the country have developed a variety of methods to hone these professional skills, typically involving a capstone project experience. At our institution, the culminating design course has grown over the past 20 years and has developed into a capstone program that delivers positive outcomes for both our students and stakeholders. A key graduation requirement of our program is that students complete a capstone project that includes the application of teamwork, problem-solving, design, project execution and management skills to a real-life civil and environmental engineering problem. The capstone experience has morphed over the past 20 years from a single project completed by the entire graduating class in small teams to multiple projects with separate stakeholders for each capstone team. The current structure is a two-course sequence that incorporates several pedagogical approaches to help students apply and hone their professional skills, including: • An introduction to management practices, especially planning and execution of projects. • Sustainability and resilience considerations in design. • Mandatory weekly meetings which promote applications of communication skills and client/customer relations. • Rotation of the Chair for weekly meetings that promotes inclusivity and equal opportunity for growth for each team member. • Selection of a team contact person who provides oversight to all communications with stakeholders and advisors; this ensures that team members collectively evaluate their strength to make the appropriate selection. • Faculty advisors and sponsors, who play the role of consultant, meet weekly with each team to provide supervision and advice on the progress of the project. • Mandatory site visits to meet the stakeholders in person and to better understand the scope and expectations of the stakeholders. • Establishment of a detailed project selection process that includes students' interest and faculty expertise. Changes have also been made to the project selection over time and now includes funding for site visits, a mandatory design component, a reasonable project schedule, realistic stakeholder expectations, and a good match with expertise of the faculty advisors. Each capstone design team is provided specific instructions to guide them through the execution of their capstone projects. These guidelines include mandatory weekly progress meetings with advisors followed by documented meeting minutes that are disseminated to the project team (including the advisor and the stakeholders); a final comprehensive technical report; a final notebook that demonstrates their progress throughout the semester; and a final presentation where the teams present to all stakeholders of the capstone project. The authors discuss the developmental changes implemented in this two-course capstone experience and an assessment of the impact of the pedagogical approaches used to enhance student learning and development.