Abstract:

The learning experience in engineering education which adopts a new learning approach is lately shifted from traditional teacher-centered to learner-centered educational process based on real-life problems which encourage problem- and project-based learning which promotes students’ higher-order competencies such as creative thinking and critical reasoning, meeting the schedule, communication, problem-solving and teamwork skills. To meet these experiences, it is very common to include a senior capstone course in undergraduate STEM degrees. In these courses, a new learning model is deployed through the project that aims to challenge the education process of future engineers - students are typically given a major project to work on in an effort to demonstrate their mastery of the entire range of skills they have been taught during the preceding years.

The authors have developed a course, in consultation with industry representatives (sponsors of the project), that better prepares students for employment. Each year students work on different projects and over the last four years we offered multiple projects randomly divided on teams – each team works on a single project, but about four teams on average work on any particular project, competing with each other. The projects are vaguely defined, teams are made up of students from multiple degree programs, teams are international with the representation of three different countries, and four international campuses and teams are responsible for retiring existing systems and deploying the new system. Further, students experience several realistic “curve balls” during the year-long project. These include changing team members, changing due dates or requirements, and even changing sponsor representatives. In the end, the best projects are implemented on the sponsor side providing a real reference for the students in their further work.

This paper discusses the experience details of working in teams, meeting the schedule, plans, and documentation about the project as a learning experience in the capstone project.

Keywords:

STEM, learning experience, documentation, industry project, working in teams.