Assessing the impact of faculty teaching, advising and mentoring in an alternative multi-year, interdisciplinary capstone design program

Abstract

In 2000, Michigan Technological University introduced a new undergraduate engineering curriculum option intended to serve as an alternative to the traditional two-semester senior capstone design experience and one that would better meet the needs of both students and industry. Initially funded through an NSF Action Agenda grant, this program offers teams of students from varied disciplines the opportunity to work for several years in a business-like setting to solve real-world engineering problems supplied by industry. This alternative capstone program is now a self-sustaining program that attracts engineering and other STEM-discipline students to the university, retains them, and makes them more marketable to employers when they graduate. Each alternative capstone design team operates as much as possible like a real company in the private sector and is run by the students. Team sizes range from 10 to 70 or more members. All team members have prescribed responsibilities corresponding to their level of maturity, abilities, and technical education. Team members define problems, develop and design solutions, perform testing and analyses, make recommendations, manufacture parts, stay within budgets and schedules, and manage multiple projects. This alternative capstone design program has converted the traditional classroom into a multi-year, interdisciplinary, experiential learning environment and has transformed the role of instructor from one who imparts knowledge to that of advisor and mentor who guides students as they discover and apply knowledge. Under NSF's IEECI program, we undertook a study to determine whether student participation in this multi-year, interdisciplinary design program and the roles of faculty mentors and advisors are positively correlated to successful student education outcomes. Although routine instructor evaluation takes place each semester for coursework associated with the program, no assessment project has attempted to measure the impact of faculty involvement on outcomes such as student retention and entrepreneurial intentions. The impacts of teaching, advising, and mentoring in team-based design programs are not typically susceptible to the kinds of metrics used to measure research accomplishments. Therefore, a model that can directly measure quality in hands-on, discovery-based learning environments and its impact on student outcomes would be potentially transformative. Evaluation results can help strengthen the business of engineering education by offering additional evidence of the impact of a curriculum such as that used in capstone programs, and the contribution of faculty who teach, advise, and mentor students. This is valuable information for recruiting engineering students, for designing programs that retain engineering and other STEM students, for improving engineering education, and for attracting industry support. Students from both the traditional senior capstone design program and from the alternative capstone design program participated in this survey so the possible impact of multiyear participation could be assessed. In this paper, we share the evaluation methods used and results of our study. We suggest practical applications of the knowledge gained to the improvement of engineering education. We also include recommended methods and metrics for assessing the impact of teaching, advising, and mentoring on student retention in engineering, graduation, career intentions, and other outcomes. © 2012 American Society for Engineering Education.