2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Preparing engineering students for the realities of a rapidly evolving profession remains a key challenge for educators. Capstone projects—culminating experiences in the final year of an engineering curriculum—are a widely used experiential tool that offers students exposure to multidisciplinary teamwork, professional accountability, and project-based learning. However, to truly align these experiences with industry standards, it is critical to incorporate clear metrics that measure student progress, teamwork effectiveness, and milestone achievements. Embedding such evaluation frameworks not only enhances accountability but also ensures continuous improvement and meaningful outcomes in the engineering education capstone curriculum.

This study evaluates the accountability reporting tools used in a design-build civil and construction engineering capstone course at The Citadel. The accountability reports were developed by instructors and used to assess team effectiveness, record individual accountability, and assess how well teams work to achieve their goals towards completing the design-build project. Five tools were used during the academic year: 1) Weekly Planning Meetings, 2) Weekly Timesheet Record, 3) Daily Task Record 4) Class Attendance Sheet, and 5) Milestone Tracker.

To investigate the effectiveness of the accountability reporting tools, a survey was presented to the students in the civil and construction engineering capstone course at the end of the 2025 academic year. In this survey, each tool was first evaluated individually and then evaluated in comparison to the other tools. Five-point Likert scales were used to assess individual tools (i.e., strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, and strongly disagree) and to compare across tools (i.e., very effective, effective, moderately effective, slightly effective, and not effective).

Aggregated survey results from thirty-three (33) capstone course students showed that over 60% of respondents had a favorable view of the effectiveness of the accountability reporting tools. Comparative evaluation of the five tools indicated that the daily task record was most effective for individual accountability, individual time management, and completing personal tasks assigned by the team, with over 70% of respondents indicating that this strategy was moderately effective to very effective. Additionally, the weekly planning meetings were most effective for team accountability, team efficiency, and meeting team deadlines, with over 75% of students indicating that the tool was moderately effective to very effective.

This study highlights the value and effectiveness of team and individual accountability tools used in a civil and construction engineering capstone design-build course. Ultimately, with a strategic combination of the accountability tools presented, instructors can successfully simulate real-world environments to prepare graduating engineering students to function as effective and invaluable team members in a professional environment.