2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

[Survey/Literature Review] Prior to and further necessitated by the COVID pandemic, engineering industry has found utility in remote partnerships, thus the need for engineers trained in online collaboration methods. Providing an opportunity for experiential learning during fully remote collaboration is critical for online engineering curriculums. Capstone design is a team-based experience for all seniors in engineering, where student teams are given the opportunity to work with a sponsor to develop a solution to their design problem. These multidisciplinary experiential learning opportunities are often the highlight of an undergraduate student’s curriculum, and most engineering majors must complete a multiple-course senior capstone design sequence. The key challenge is how to scale traditionally hands-on centric capstone design pedagogy to an online platform (both synchronous and asynchronous). An additional constraint is these pedagogical methods will need to meet both institutional and external (i.e., Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET)) requirements. It is critical to identify and create best practices that will support both students and sponsors to ensure the achievement of educational requirements (e.g., ABET, technical writing), project deliverables, and student success. The research goal is to identify collaborative techniques to support project mentors (e.g., instructors, industry partners, faculty) and student teams, and help determine the type and scope of projects best suited for remote collaboration. In addition, we aim to investigate how to determine teaming strategies for fully remote teams appropriate to the various expectations of project outcomes (computational/theoretical solutions versus physical prototypes, for example), and how to get students both excited and engaged with fully remote sponsors. This paper presents the current state of research and efforts in the realm of remote collaboration of engineering teams, online engineering capstone course pedagogy, and online engineering capstone (or equivalent) projects with external sponsors. The synthesis of this literature review will guide future work in assessing the quality of experience in multidisciplinary engineering capstone between in-person students and sponsors and those that are fully remote.