Addressing those pesky ABET EC2000 criteria in capstone design: using communication activities to meet workplace expectations

The capstone design sequence is often selected as the site for addressing ABET criteria a through k. Increasingly, capstone design is designated as writing-intensive, serving to fulfill students´ baccalaureate writing requirements and address ABET criterion (g). Yet assigning capstone design the responsibility of fulfilling communication requirements presents the challenge of understanding what and how these future engineers will be writing. A study of communication practices of working engineers, with particular focus on these engineers´ capstone design communication experiences as preparation for engineering practice, was completed in 2001 and is being analyzed.