Student’s Self-Regulation in Managing Their Capstone Senior Design Projects

The objective of the present paper is to describe students’ self-regulation while working on their senior capstone design projects. The specific focus of this study was to understand how students manage their projects with their teammates on three major issues: Team Management, Resources Management and Time Management. Quantitative data associated with student SelfRegulated Learning (SRL) on project management were collected using our Engineering Design Metacognitive Questionnaire (EDMQ) survey instrument. Three hundred and fourteen students participated in the study. Data collected were evaluated quantitatively by comparing the mean value of each item from the same project-management-related issues (i.e., teamwork, time, and resources) across SRL episodes (i.e., task interpretation, planning strategies, cognitive strategies, and monitoring and fix-up strategies). The findings suggest Team strategies require a high level of student involvement and effort, while time strategies and resource management strategies are employed to a lesser degree, on average. Small differences were seen between male and female students in average strategy expression. Students may be benefitted by interventions designed to improve self-regulation for specific team management strategies employed by engineering students in relation to project management activities. Needed improvements touching on various strategic actions, as well as monitoring and fix-up strategies, are described in this paper.