2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Capstone design programs are most commonly project-based learning experiences, during which students work together in teams to solve complex, unstructured “customer-provided” problems. The open-ended and unpredictable nature of engineering design highly contrasts with the predictability of “instructor-provided” problems students encounter in their earlier coursework.

This work explores two reoccurring themes our capstone instructors repeatedly observe in capstone design courses:
(1) Students struggling to adopt a “post-academic” mindset: To successfully deliver a working solution, students must shift their mindset and transition from instructor-directed learners (“academic-mindset”) to self-directed learners (“post-academic mindset”). However, this shift is not guaranteed. Students who transition to self-directed learners gain confidence, while those who don’t experience discomfort and frustration due to the lack of structure to which they grew accustomed to in their previous courses.
(2) Students perceiving design documentation as being non-integral to the design process: The biggest complaint and frustration many students voice is the amount of time they spend on documentation. While it is well understood in industry and research sectors that a big component of any engineer’s work is documentation, students perceive it to be additional, unnecessary work that, instead of supplementing and supporting the design process, detracts from time that could be spent on the design process. This disconnect suggests that students fail to understand the value and/or relevance of project documentation. If student perception of documentation and the design process is disjointed, it becomes difficult for instructors to help students develop the skills necessary for their future careers.

To address these themes, our capstone design instructors restructured the course to reflect a semi-imaginary firm: the instructors acted as the firm’s CEOs, the students acted as the firm’s engineering associates, and the firm’s customers were external industry or non-profit sponsors. To create organization and relevance for the associates, three pillars of operation representing the different dimension of project delivery were scaffolded throughout the course content: Design Control, Project Management, and Risk Management.

The purpose of this study was to determine if the introduction and scaffolding of these three pillars, and their associated documentation templates, impacted student mindset (“academic” to “post-academic”), perceptions of capstone design (course for credit vs. project experience), and perceptions of the three pillars of operation (relevant vs. not relevant to the course/their future career). Specifically, we aimed to answer the following research questions: As students progress through their capstone experience, do they...
(1) increasingly perceive senior design more so as a project experience than a course for credit?
(2) increasingly perceive the 3 pillars of operation as useful/relevant to the capstone course?
(3) increasingly perceive the 3 pillars of operation as useful/relevant to their future career?
(4) feel increasingly confident that senior design will prepare them for their future career?
(5) have an increasingly positive perception of the design process and project deliverables (e.g., design documentation)?

To answer these questions, the authors surveyed the last two year’s cohorts of capstone design students during the Fall (early phases of design project) and Spring (late phases of design project). Results indicate that as time progressed, students: (1) increasingly perceived the capstone course as being primarily as a project experience and not a course for credit; (2) increasingly perceived the pillars of operation as being useful/relevant to capstone design; (3) increasingly perceived the pillars of operation as being useful/relevant to their future career; (4) had increased confidence that capstone would prepare them for their future careers as engineers; and (5) had increasingly positive perceptions of the design process and project deliverables.

The authors presented preliminary data from this study as a work in progress at a previous ASEE conference. This paper represents the completion of that work.