Work in progress: improving the senior capstone design experience through shared perspectives and best practices

A recent effort to share expertise and best practices in teaching senior capstone design has led to a consortium of engineering faculty involved with the senior capstone experience. This group seeks to better understand the possible approaches to teaching design, while drawing on each others´ knowledge in specific skill areas. Common goals are to move toward multi-disciplinary design project opportunities and to reduce redundancy of teaching common topics. Toward that end, lectures on a variety of professional engineering topics are being developed and is shared across the College of Engineering, beginning fall 2004. Because the capstone design sequence is increasingly the site of ABET accreditation documentation, an additional focus of this group is to support and enhance assessment activities in capstone design by sharing assessment/evaluation rubrics and best practices.