Abstract
The use of the engineering capstone experience is ubiquitous in engineering education. The development of undergraduate systems engineers (SE) presents a unique challenge to both prepare them in a standardized and traceable way and purposefully place them into domain-centric engineering projects that allow them to develop their experience base (i.e., the leg of the “T”-shaped SE). In order to better understand the various characteristics of the United States Air Force Academy’s (USAFA) enterprise of over 30 projects in seven hosting departments, this research uses established frameworks to search for correlations to good capstone learning objective performance. Two years of capstone student self-assessment data was used to inform the authors in addition to qualitative faculty observations. These two primary sources of data were then analyzed for intersecting conclusions. Four common conclusions were found: (1) capstone projects should have a mix of internal/external funds, (2) the project should have a reasonable mix of flexibility and structure in the degree of constraints, (3) external customers should be involved for each project, and (4) team sizes should nominally include 3–10 students. Limitations of this research and the conclusions are also discussed.
This is a work of the US Government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States. Foreign copyrights may apply.
Distribution A. Approved for public release: distribution unlimited. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the U.S. Air Force Academy, the U.S. Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Cooper CA, Fulton JM, Homan JJ (2015). A multi-spectrum framework for characterizing interdisciplinary capstone design experiences. In: Proceedings of the 13th annual conference on systems engineering research (CSER), Stevens Institute, Hoboken
Cooper CA, Fulton JM, Homan JJ (2016) Initial application of a multi-spectrum characterization framework for interdisciplinary capstone design experiences. In: Proceedings of the 14th annual conference on systems engineering research (CSER), Huntsville
Homan JJ (2016) Initial application of a framework for improving the capstone educational experience at the US Air Force Academy. In: Presentation to the military operations research society (MORS) 84th symposium, Quanitco
Zable J (2010) Guest editorial: 2007 national capstone design conference. Adv Eng Edu 2(1):1–4
McKenzie LJ, Trevisan MS, Davis DC, Beyerlein SW (2004) Capstone design courses and assessment: a national study. In: Proceedings of the 2004 American society of engineering education annual conference and exposition, Salt Lake City
Meyer DG (2005) Capstone design outcome assessment: instruments for quantitative evaluation. In: Proceedings of the 35th ASEE/IEEE frontiers in education conference, Indianapolis
Dvir D, Shenhar AJ, Alkaher S (2003) From a single discipline product to a multidisciplinary system: adapting the right style to teh right project. Syst Eng 6(3):123–134
Rover DFP (1997) Cross functional teaming in a capstone engineering design course. In: Proceedings of the 27th annual frontiers in education conference, Pittsburgh
Griffin P, Griffin SO, Llewellyn DC (2004) The impact of group size and project duration on capstone design. J Eng Educ 93(3):185–193
Noble JS (1998) A approach for engineering curricukum integration in capstone design courses. Int J Eng Educ 14(3):197–203
Marin JA, Armstrong JE, Kays JL (1999) Elements of an optimal capstone design experience. J Eng Educ 88(1):19–22
Cooper CA, Homan JJ, Fulton J (2015) Characterization of capstone design experiences. In: Presentation to the 7th annual scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) fourm, USAFA
Cooper CA, Homan JJ (2016) Characterization of capstone design experiences. In: Presentation to the 8th annual scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) forum, USAFA
Ferris TL (2009) On ethe methods of research for systems engineering. In: Proceedings of the 7th annual conference on systems engineering research, Loughborough
Crawford L, Pollack J (2004) Hard and soft projects: a framework for analysis. Int J Proj Manag 22(8):645–653
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) center at USAFA for their shared interest and assistance in this research. The authors would also like to thank the many capstone mentors and instructors that have collaborated on the proposed framework through discussions and explanations of their specific capstones.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Cooper, C.A., Homan, J.J., Tidball, B.E. (2018). Integrating Systems Engineering Students in Capstones: A Multispectrum Characterization of Interdisciplinary Capstones. In: Madni, A., Boehm, B., Ghanem, R., Erwin, D., Wheaton, M. (eds) Disciplinary Convergence in Systems Engineering Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62217-0_79
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62217-0_79
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-62216-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-62217-0
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)