Effect of previous experience and attitudes on Capstone project achievement

Abstract

This research was undertaken to see if there are any prior experiences or attitudes that students bring into the senior Capstone course that correlate with group Capstone project success. A variety of assessment techniques were used to obtain both quantitative measurements and qualitative indicators in an attempt to find common factors students have coming in to the course sequence that affect how well the projects succeed. There were several self-assessments by the students themselves, including pre-course survey of satisfaction with their achievement of and the importance to their career of all ABET-ETAC Criterion 3 Student Outcomes, a pre-course student biography including GPA, previous education, course and work experience, peer evaluations of team project work, and a pre-course self-assessment essay of how past course and work experience have prepared the student for the capstone project. In addition, there were objective assessments of capstone project success done by the course instructor and project technical advisors. The measurements of Capstone project success were done as a part of demonstrating achievement of ABET-ETAC Student Outcomes, and they included assessment of initial hardware and/or software prototype at two months into the project, a Design Review of projects approximately half-way through the two-semester project, and the course instructor and project technical advisor assessment of project success, final reports and initial and final presentations. This research involved a small study from a single program at one University, and may not be applicable in a wider setting. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data found, in general: • student groups who, on average, are satisfied with their preparation in the area of the soft skills like teamwork, commitment to quality, and project management may tend to do better on their projects • student groups that feel satisfied, on average, with their preparation in designing components, ability to identify problems, and ability to analyze and design systems may be less likely to do well in their projects. • student groups with high GPAs, on average, do well on their projects • student groups with more industry work experience, on average, tend to do better in the project's soft skills, as well as the ability overall to complete their projects successfully • peer evaluations of group team work provided no data that related to project success • the number of hours worked on the job tended to not have an effect on project success. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2013.