An engineering practices course

A so-called capstone design course at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) that maximizes engineering practices is described. The central design project is essentially used as a vehicle for the presentation and experience of engineering practices. To the extent possible, the students are afforded a real-life industry experience. They work in teams, select and propose their systems/projects, specify their systems, plan their projects in depth, design and test their systems, document and orally present their project, and demonstrate their systems. Where appropriate, practices lecture topics are synchronized with the project requirement, providing student preparation and reinforcement. Although the course is part of the Computer Science Engineering program (continuously ABET accredited since 1983), the format and most of the specifics can be applied to any engineering discipline     

A capstone design course [electrical engineering]

A capstone electrical engineering design course has been developed at the University of San Diego with the goal of providing students with the opportunity to: study design alternatives and select a design responsive to a request for proposal; sell the design concept to a panel of independent evaluators with a written proposal and oral presentations; obtain experience in design within a cooperating group; and completely fabricate and document a working electronic system. While innovation is not overtly discouraged, emphasis is placed upon satisfactory completion of a working product with the time constraints of a two semester course which spans one summer. The course is intended not only to provide a meaningful design experience but also to accomplish a confidence-building transition to the role of practicing engineer     

Development of a 16-bit microprogrammable computer as a seniorcourse project: a teamwork approach to engineering education

The authors describe an educational experiment in computer engineering at the University of Washington. Eight senior students work together to design and fabricate a 16-bit general-purpose microprogrammable computer system and support software. The project was developed in a capstone hardware design course in electrical engineering. In parallel with other demands of the course, students collaborated on such tasks as architectural specification and research, design and wirewrapping, and testing of the system     

Crazy Car Race Contest: Multicourse Design Curricula in Embedded System Design

This paper reports on recent initiatives aimed at significantly enhancing the teaching of engineering design at the Westcoast University of Applied Sciences. A good design experience offers opportunities for learning to synthesize, solve, and utilize a given problem. Design problems should be open-ended, moderately difficult, and common to all groups. The outcome of creating a multicourse design project, with the intention of attending an international design contest (Crazy Car Race), is described. Students with different design experience have to work together to build a racing car which navigates a given route autonomously. The course structure, its placement in the regular curriculum, and the student and instructor's evaluation results are presented and discussed     

Integrating the classroom and laboratory: an approach to capstonedesign

A two-quarter senior-level sequence in control systems is described. The first course covers classical control and is accompanied by a laboratory. A parallel activity is the planning of a capstone design project which students execute as part of the second course. The second course offers students new material on modern control theory plus a capstone design experience that includes implementation and testing of the design project in the laboratory. These capstone design projects provide the basis for new experiments for the laboratory that accompanies the first course     

A competition-motivated capstone design course: the result of afifteen-year evolution

In this paper, a design course organization is presented, which is the result of 15 years of experience with a two-semester senior design course sequence in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Detroit Mercy. An organization has been determined, which for the authors, balances team experience, individual assessment, design complexity, realism, writing content, and faculty workload. The current course structure is based on the integration of a capstone program with the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC) sponsored by the Association For Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI). The competition rules require that the students design and build an autonomous land vehicle which can navigate while sensing lane lines, avoiding obstacles, and traveling over ramps and sand traps. There are two main competition events: the vehicle performance competition where the autonomous robotic vehicles compete to finish the course in the shortest time or by traveling the farthest in the allotted time, and the vehicle design competition that evaluates the documentation, design process, and presentation of each team. The authors have found that this type of competition matches both the spirit and the practical needs of their capstone design course     

Changing student attitudes, perceptions, and awareness

Senior design capstone courses provide an excellent opportunity for biomedical engineering design instructors to help students begin to look at the "real world" differently. Depending upon the structure of a particular institution's senior design course and the resulting design experience obtained, students' attitudes and perceptions related to biomedical engineering design, the product development process, and the engineering profession can be positively affected. Therefore, senior design experience provides gateways for course instructors to transform the way students think about the design process, teamwork, expected job performance, and the engineering profession. The resulting changes in attitudes, perceptions, and awareness can play an important role in preparing students for careers in biomedical engineering.     

Senior design capstone courses and ABET outcomes

Capstone senior biomedical engineering design courses typically include a wide variety of lecture topics and provide students with many opportunities to develop design, communication, and interpersonal skills. This learning environment can play an important role in producing the desired ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology)learning outcomes. Careful identification and assessment of appropriate performance indicators using the appropriate assessment tools can help a biomedical engineering program determine the role of their capstone senior design course in producing the desired ABET learning outcomes.     

Four implementations of disconnected operation: a framework for acapstone project in operating systems

This paper describes a framework for a capstone project in operating systems that fulfills all learning objectives required from such courses while providing students with technical experience in a modern operating system. Specifically, this work proposes a structure for a project course whereby new, experimental, and academic operating system features are implemented in commercial operating systems. As an example of a realization of such a framework, the paper presents four platform-dependent implementations of "disconnected operation," a feature that allows network users to continue accessing data during temporary network failures. Additionally, the paper states that this framework provides a promising and solid environment for a capstone experience by balancing creative research work with an analytical design methodology and technical implementation skills     

Design projects.

The design project is the most important component of the senior capstone design course. To best prepare students for careers in biomedical engineering, they should be given the opportunity to work on projects with teams that reflect the team environment in an industrial setting. Team composition is important in providing as much of a multidisciplinary team experience as possible. The type of project to which students are assigned should be based on the student's interests and career goals, and the experience and skills they bring to the project     

Experience Management Wikis for Reflective Practice in Software Capstone Projects

Software engineering curriculum guidelines state that students should practice methods, techniques, and tools. A capstone project is one possibility to address this aim. A capstone project helps the students to increase their problem solving competencies, improve their social skills (e.g., communication skills), and gather practical experience. A crux of such projects is that students perform ldquoreflectiverdquo practice in order to learn from their experiences. The authors believe that experience gathering and reuse are effective techniques to stimulate reflective activities. An adapted free- and open-source Wiki-based system called software organization platform (SOP) is used to support students in managing their observations and experiences. The system can be used for experience exchange within the team and for experience reuse in forthcoming projects. The results of a case study show that standard Wiki functions improve communication and information sharing by means of explicit observation and experience documentation. A total of 183 documented observations and experiences at the end of the project provide a measure for the amount of reflection students have had during the capstone project. Still, the advantages of using Wikis will decrease when no technical adaptations of the Wiki to the learning objectives and to the software engineering tasks are made. Limitations of the case study, future evaluation steps, and planned developments of SOP will be provided in this paper.     

Electrical Engineering for Freshmen

A course in electrical engineering for freshmen, suitable for both engineering and non-engineering students, is presented. The course is intended to give the students an overall view of the field, at the same time teaching them enough fundamentals that they will be able to diagnose and develop simple circuits, getting a taste of design. A hydraulic analog is presented for ease and speed in teaching basic electrical concepts. An unconventional teaching technique, the "inclassdrill," is used, with encouraging results.     

A design laboratory in electrical and computer engineering forfreshmen

ECE 110, Introduction to Electrical and Computer Engineering, is a new laboratory course for freshmen. Unlike most freshman engineering courses, ECE 110 provides substantial design and problem solving experiences with electronic devices and electrical systems. To convey fundamental concepts and principles in electrical and computer engineering, ECE 110 is directed toward the design of an autonomous electric vehicle. Each laboratory session focuses on one subsystem of the vehicle, such as the power supply, the infrared photodiode sensors, and the digital pulse width modulation circuit to control motor speed. The last four weeks culminate in a design challenge: each pair of students enhances their vehicle to negotiate a previously unseen course with obstacles. Topics are covered in lectures as they are needed in the laboratory     

Enhancement of Student Learning in Experimental Design Using a Virtual Laboratory

This paper describes the instructional design, implementation, and assessment of a virtual laboratory based on a numerical simulation of a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process, the virtual CVD laboratory. The virtual CVD laboratory provides a capstone experience in which students synthesize engineering science and statistics principles and have the opportunity to apply experimental design in the context similar to that of a practicing engineer in industry with a wider design space than is typically seen in the undergraduate laboratory. The simulation of the reactor is based on fundamental principles of mass transfer and chemical reaction, obscured by added ldquonoise.rdquo The software application contains a 3-D student client that simulates a cleanroom environment, an instructor Web interface with integrated assessment tools, and a database server. As opposed to being constructed as a direct one-to-one replacement, this virtual laboratory is intended to complement the physical laboratories in the curriculum so that certain specific elements of student learning can be enhanced. Implementation in four classes is described. Assessment demonstrates students are using an iterative experimental design process reflective of practicing engineers and correlates success in this project to higher order thinking skills. Student surveys indicate that students perceived the virtual CVD laboratory as the most effective learning medium used, even above physical laboratories.     

Preparing students for capstone design [Senior Design]

The senior capstone design course is the culmination of the previous three years of the undergraduate curriculum. The goal of this course is to develop students' communication (oral and written), interpersonal, teamwork, analytical, design, and project management skills through a team-based design experience. Students learn about the product-development process and gain experience solving open-ended problems. Capstone design courses give students insight into what it is like to work as an engineer.     

A senior design course bridging power systems and powerelectronics: power quality impacts of electric vehicle charging

A new capstone design course, which combines elements of power electronics and power systems analysis, has been introduced at Georgia Tech as part of the newly revised curriculum. The paper explains the relationship of the new course with respect to the rest of the power curriculum, and how the course material and teaching style respond to various ABET requirements for an integrated design experience     

An Undergraduate Design/Project Course Utilizing a Microcomputer

Project-based courses offer one of the greatest education opportunities in an electrical engineering student's undergraduate curriculum. The ultimate success of this type of educational experience is keyed primarily to 1) the selection of a project with a high chance of success along with the right amount of challenge and 2) adequate planning. Faculty may choose to avoid a microcomputer-based design/ project due to their lack of experience in selecting suitable projects and planning for the support required. This paper describes a project which has considerable flexibility for individual definition of goals and, hence, the amount of challenge can, in some sense, be customized. The support required for a microcomputer-based design/project is distinct from that of a conventional design/project course. These planning and support requirements for microcomputer-based projects are described along with the course structure, content and approach to grading     

A capstone design project to meet the needs of the changing power systems industry and satisfy new accreditation standards

Currently, two motivators are effecting change in power systems education. First, the industry's transition to a more competitive environment is requiring changes in the content and pedagogy of power systems education. Second, engineering education as a whole is seeking to modify its curriculum to reflect a better balance between science and education in order to better meet the needs of industry. These curricular changes are largely a result of revised Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) accreditation requirements. In response to these changes, new curriculum and analysis tools were developed for a power systems capstone design course. The project integrates market economics and socio-political considerations with transient stability analysis and transmission planning. A power systems analysis package and an economic analysis tool were developed for use with this project. Student evaluations of the course in which the project was implemented indicate that the curriculum successfully addresses a broad range of ABET accreditation criteria.     

Establishment of a university course in electromagneticcompatibility (EMC)

The establishment, content, and experience with an undergraduate course in electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) in an electrical engineering program is described. The course has met with very favorable student reaction and enthusiasm. Current college/university curricula do not generally contain such a course although the material is rapidly becoming fundamental aspect of electrical engineering design. The means for implementing the course into an already crowded curriculum along with the use of several brief laboratories to motivate the students are discussed     

Summary of innovations in electrical engineering curricula

Two aspects of innovation in electrical engineering education are summarized: the membership and goals of the NSF Engineering Education Coalitions, and innovations implemented at individual schools. The latter summary results from responses to a survey of electrical engineering department heads. Responses from 35 schools were received; they are organized in this report under the categories of major program/curriculum revisions, curricular revisions, first-year experience, undergraduate engineering design experience, course innovations, and innovations in graduate education. Also reported are issues in electrical engineering education that merit attention, as reported by the department heads responding to the survey