Combining international experience and industrial relevance in a Capstone engineering design course

This paper describes a novel format for a proposed Capstone engineering design course that combines industrial experience with international collaboration and uses distance learning as a pedagogical tool. The course is designed for programs in the Industrial Engineering Departments at the University of Pittsburgh and the Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM) in Monterrey. The team for the design project has two students from each institution and is conducted at an industrial concern whose location alternates between Mexico and the US each year. Project responsibilities are divided between the two sets of students and a faculty supervisor at each institution works with the two groups which stay in close contact with each other by means of electronic mail, the Internet and distance learning technologies. During the last week of the term, the members of the team at the remote location join their teammates to put the finishing touches on the project and to make the final presentation to the faculty and the industrial client. This paper explains the proposed program in detail