Teaching Capstone Design In A Service Learning Setting

This service-learning-focused capstone design project requires students to design and build one or more educational tools (such as a testing device or a piece of hands-on educational equipment) that will help high-school teachers and mentors who are working with FIRST Robotics teams communicate to the students the essential elements of the engineering design process, while creating an environment to enhance the high-school students’ interests in technical fields. This paper will describe how senior mechanical engineering students were placed in a mentoring role in connection with the FIRST Robotics Competition while working to complete their own design-and-build project related to this activity. The project is novel in that, unlike other design projects, the engineering students receive significant formal leadership training to facilitate their effectiveness as mentors and to aid them in their future professional lives. The project serves not only as a capstone design experience, but also as a mini-internship with a service-learning component where students experience working as both leaders and mentors.