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1. Work in Progress: Implementing a Tiger Team in a Capstone Design Course

   S. Thomas, M. S. (July 2023, ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   This paper reports on the initial implementation of a two student “tiger team” in an engineering capstone design class. A tiger team is a small group of individuals that covers a range of expertise and is assigned when challenges arise that helps address the root issues causing the challenge. The term was coined in the 1960’s in the Cold War; tiger teams are used in industry, government, and military organizations. While tiger teams in these situations are usually formed around an issue then disbanded, in the capstone class the tiger team was formed for the duration of the two semester long class; details on formation and the larger context and organization of the class are discussed in the paper. The rationale for the tiger team was the observation over many years of a capstone class that as projects are functionally decomposed and subsystems assigned to individual students, a not insignificant fraction of students become “stuck” at some point in time – the concept of “stuckness” is further derived in the full paper. The result is that if delays accumulate on critical parts of the project, teams often struggle to get the project back on track and end up with a cascading series of missed deadlines. The rationale for the tiger team is to help teams identify when parts of the project are getting behind schedule and to have additional, short-term help available. In the initial implementation described here, the tiger team was two students—one from electrical and one from computer engineering—who volunteered for the position and were confirmed in that role by the other students in the class. Initial data shows that during the problem identification phase of the project the tiger team attended team meetings, helped evaluation project milestone reviews, worked to solve individual and team issues, and regularly met with the faculty. Early in the semester the two tiger team students described their role as unclear and worried their technical exposure would be limited. Later, as the teams developed technical representations, the tiger team provided independent feedback and addressed multiple technical challenges. Finally, as teams started to build technical prototypes the tiger team role again shifted to helping individuals with specific aspects of their project; this role continued throughout the remainder of the year-long course. This in-depth case-study of the experience of implementing a tiger team draws on observations from students, faculty, the tiger team members, and an external ethnographer. This work may help other capstone instructors who may be considering similar interventions. 

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2. Process Matter(s): Leveraging the Design Process to Build Self-Directed Learning

   Paretti, Marie C.; Kotys-Schwartz, Daria; Ford, Julie; Howe, Susannah; Ott, Robin. (May 2019, Clive L. Dym Mudd Design Workshop XI)

   Capstone design courses, an established component of undergraduate engineering curricula, offer students the opportunity to synthesize their prior engineering coursework and apply professional and technical skills towards projects with practical application. During this unique experience, capstone faculty enable mentored exploration, coaching students to navigate the design process to complete complex and open-ended projects. However, each capstone scope of work requires project specific knowledge and skills that capstone students need to independently research and comprehend. Findings from our study of recent graduates during their first year on the job suggest that self-directed learning isn’t just occurring in the capstone experience, but it is also an essential skill in professional workplaces. In this paper we share data regarding participants’ experiences relying on self-directed learning while working on their capstone projects and later in post-graduation environments. We consider the ways that capstone design educators can design course content and mentor students to help promote this critical skill and conclude by offering recommendations. 

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3. Relationship Between Team-Building Activities and Capstone Team Performance and Student Experience

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--46949  

   Godbole, Hrushikesh; DeBartolo, Elizabeth; Takai, Shun (June 2024, ASEE Conferences)

   Team building activities are popular interventions during early stages of team development. At RIT, in the multidisciplinary capstone course with an average cohort size of around 350, the students on a particular capstone project team may not be mutually acquainted and thus may benefit from such team building activities. Prior literature has studied the effectiveness of various instructor-directed team building activities on student teams. However, our students are generally eager to spend class time working on their projects and often see in-class activities as a distraction rather than an important part of their growth. Instead, the student teams are now allowed to choose an intervention based on team consensus. In this paper, the relationship between attributes of the chosen intervention and student performance, as measured using a series of AACU VALUE rubrics, was studied using statistical measures. The analysis revealed a statistically significant effect of type of team building activity on teamwork, oral communication, and design & problem solving scores of individual students on the team. Also, a statistically significant effect of location of team building activity (on or off campus) on design & problem solving score was observed. 

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4. A Diversity Index to assess college engineering team performance

   Rodriguez, Joaquin; Dukes, April; Keith, John A. (January 2022, 2022 ASEE - North Central Section Conference)

   A Diversity Index (DI) was developed to quantify eight minority categories (“Women”, “Non Male/Female”, “Afro-American”, “Hispanic”, “Asian/other ethnicity” “LGBQT”, “Disabilities”, and “First Generation”) in contrast to the standard “White American male”. This index is compared with a Minority Index (MI) based only on the ratio of “Non White American male” to the total of group members, which exhibits poor representation for diversity when teams are heavily conformed by minority representatives. In addition, the Diversity Index includes a tuning parameter to adjust for the impact of multiple diversities on the same individual. The Diversity Index has been calculated for four junior courses on Reactive Process Engineering and four senior capstone courses on Process Control and Process Design during the last three years (2019-21). Each course included at least two semester-long projects for 4-6 member teams. The Diversity Index was used to assess the performance of 69 self-selected teams, performing 37 technical projects and 101 outreach projects total. Assessments included relations with grades, peer-grading, team experience, and scope of activities. The analysis provides a quantitative approach to the impact of diversity on team performance. Reliability on some data is still difficult to validate. This study has relied mainly on the instructor interactions with students. In order to protect the students’ personal information, the proposed Diversity Index outputs a quantitative value without exposing the diversity source, and thus promoting more honest, secure and respectful participation. A new step is in progress to offer a “diversity rewarded” option to motivate students to select team members providing for larger inclusion and diversity. 

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5. WIP: Advancing Data Quality Assurance and Privacy Protection Techniques: Bridging Theory and Practice

   Malek, Amin; Cruz, Alberto; Felix, Norma; Bangloy, Erin (October 2024, IEEE Frontiers in Education)

   This work-in-progress (WIP) research-to-practice paper describes a work in progress by the authors to integrate appreciation of privacy, ethics, regulatory compliance, and research into Senior Project capstone experiences for Electrical and Computer Engineering. The student work focused on data quality assurance and de-identification topics to enhance quality, accuracy, completeness, consistency, and timeliness. Real-world data protection regulations grounded projects to meet ABET EAC Criterion 3 requirements for Student Outcome 2. Students explored the topics in a Project-Based Learning (PBL) format as a part of their senior project. In addition to implementing PBL, our focus for the senior project capstone is securing as many industrially sponsored projects as possible. This paper focuses on a few senior projects that are PBL, sponsored by industry, and emphasize data quality assurance and privacy protection techniques. We present a framework that meets assessment needs and uses project-based learning on a current topic of interest. The student findings offer insights into the theoretical and practical challenges and opportunities of implementing data quality assurance and de-identification techniques across different domains. 

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