Project Based Capstone Design Projects Amidst Covid-19 Restrictions

Project Based Capstone Design Projects Amidst Covid-19 Restrictions During the past 2 semesters we have had unprecedented changes and restrictions on how college courses are taught. In particular courses with labs and hands on learning activities have been radically affected. This paper examines how faculty and students used these unusual events as an opportunity for creativity and innovation in their approaches. We discuss what was tried, what worked, and what did not while trying to preserve course objectives and ABET goals. In the spring of 2020, most schools went from in class instruction to online in about one week. For Project Based Learning (PBL) courses like capstone this meant leaving projects half built and other projects completely unfinished. In particular our school has capstone design projects like Baja and Formula and other community-based initiatives that include finished products. We look at primarily community-based projects and discuss what was required versus what was actually done. The Spring represented the end of a one-year capstone program and the summer represented the beginning of the next years program. The spring semester was only 1/3 complete when the interruption occurred whereas the summer semester was done with online classes from the beginning. Both semesters posed a new set of challenges. In this study we look at the effects of the Covid-19 restrictions on capstone design projects that included multispectral analysis of farmer crops, building and designing drone aircraft and a radio control telescope project in a public park. These projects rely heavily on student's working together and having access to the schools considerable manufacturing abilities. Students were immediately denied access to school facilities and their ongoing work. Coping with these issues and trying to continue progress on the projects are addressed in this paper.