Alternatives For Establishing Effective Capstone Design Teams

Universities have the task of educating student engineers such that they can provide effective and responsible solutions, both as an individual and as a member of a team, to human-socialenvironmental needs. For years capstone design courses have been used in single engineering disciplines and at single universities to foster the understanding of the design process and teamwork. However, more is required to prepare engineering students to interact in teams with members of different backgrounds and to meet the challenges that they will encounter in their careers. Universities and industry must work together to identify and eliminate those barriers to effective teaming and communication. This paper addresses some of the issues associated with the modification of the aforementioned capstone design activity to include multi-disciplinary teams of engineering students addressing real industrial problems.