Capstone course creates useful business products and corporate-ready students

ABSTRACT

Many engineering capstone courses require senior design projects involving teamwork. Our department's curriculum engages industries to provide meaningful design projects for student teams in real-world settings. One project resulted in students gaining professional skills, industry gaining products, and faculty gaining experience for developing its contemporary curriculum. Educators wanting to provide real-world experiences to graduating seniors may benefit from learning how we obtained corporate sponsors for projects, how we created student-consulting teams, and how we developed capstone courses incorporating system design theory. They may also gain insight from discussions about student evaluations and about lessons we learned from experimental capstone courses.

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INDEX TERMS

Keywords:
capstone course, collaborative projects, corporate experience, senior design project, team projects