Delivering the senior capstone project: Comparing year-long, single semester and hybrid approaches

Abstract

This paper details the evolution of the capstone design experience for Western Kentucky University Mechanical Engineering (WKU ME) students, placing it in the context of the overall four year project-focused WKU ME curriculum. Starting in 2009, the senior project experience was changed from a single, year-long design-build-test project, to the current approach where a fall semester single-semester design-only project is followed by a second design-build-test project in the spring semester. To date, the experiences with student teams in the four cohorts to the present have been positive and have produced both expected and unexpected benefits. Issues related to the students' experiences, faculty management, and industrial partner accommodations will be discussed. Ongoing assessment of the capstone course sequence and the Professional Component outcomes is presented. The WKU ME program has a stable Professional Component framework to ensure that: program graduates acquire and demonstrate appropriate professional engineering abilities; student teams can execute a capstone project as independently as possible; WKU ME faculty can offer a project-based curriculum building on previous coursework and assess student progress meaningfully at each academic level. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2013.