Capstone Design: Insights from an International Collaborative Student Team

Since 2005 the Civil Engineering Department at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (RHIT) has had at least one international capstone design project each year. For each of those projects, the student team worked on a project for a client in another country. This year the international project was designed by an international collaborative student team. Three students from RHIT were paired with three students from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Ghana to design a project in Ghana. The academic grades for all six students were inextricably linked; therefore, the six were forced to work collaboratively in order to produce a successful design. In order to complete the project, the team had to overcome several new challenges. Although all six students spoke English, their dialects and accents were very different. Adding to the communication challenges was the need to work remotely. The students were unable to meet face-to-face. In addition, only the KNUST students were able to visit the project site, so they had to relay critical information to the RHIT students. The instructors also had to overcome challenges. The two schools were on different term schedules. The capstone design courses had different durations, learning objectives, and deliverables. Therefore, the instructors had to adapt their expectations and demands on the students in order to facilitate the collaboration within the team. This paper provides unique insights and lessons learned from both the student and instructor perspective. It shows how well the student team achieved the educational outcomes, and summarizes the benefits the students gained beyond technical skills. The paper concludes with recommendations for programs that would like to develop an international collaborative student team experience. Introduction: Capstone design is long standing tradition in civil engineering and required by ABET for accreditation (ABET 2011). The importance of exposing students to cultures other than their own has been emphasized as important for engineers for some time (Friedman 2005). At RoseHulman Institute of Technology (RHIT), we have been combining the two experiences for at least one capstone design team each year since 2005. For the first six years, the students’ interaction with other cultures was limited to communication with the client, the user of the facility they were designing. Of those six years, three of the projects were obtained through the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Ghana. The assigned P ge 25285.2 Page 2 of 8 team from RHIT created a design solution for the same client that the design teams at KNUST were serving. This year, the two schools collaborated to allow students to experience the benefits and challenges of working on an international team made of students from both schools. Overview of Capstone Design at RHIT: RHIT is on a quarter system with 10 week terms. The academic year starts the first week of September. The capstone design course meets 3 hours per week in the fall and spring terms, and 6 hours per week in the winter term. The course objectives are as follows: 1. Analyze a client’s objectives and formulate an engineering problem statement. 2. Develop multiple solutions to an engineering problem and determine the merits and deficiencies of each solution. 3. Recommend the most appropriate solution based on client and engineer developed criteria. 4. Develop a design for the most appropriate solution(s) to meet a client’s objectives. 5. Explain and document the solution in oral and written formats. 6. Work effectively in an engineering team by utilizing individual strengths and communication. Each team is made of 4 or 5 students and is assigned to a different project for an external client with a real need. On the first day of class students individually rank order the projects. The faculty then make team assignments based on student preference. The teams create three written reports and make three oral presentations to communicate their design (Table 1). Table 1. Primary deliverables from capstone design teams at RHIT Overview of Capstone Design at KNUST: KNUST is on a semester system with 16 week terms. The academic year starts the fourth week of August, two weeks before RHIT. Capstone is only offered during the fall term. The course meets 2 hours per week. The main objective of the course is to introduce the students to the various stages of a design project: Deliverable Week Due Key Content Proposal 4 Proposal Presentation 6 Progress Report 13 Progress Presentation 15 Final Report 24 Final Presentation 26-28 Description of problem, client's goals, and team's plan to achieve those goals. Progress to date: typically preliminary feasibility study, geotechnical investigation, description of options for the most important design decision, and a rational evaluation of those options. Details of the design, drawings, and a cost estimate.