John K. Estell

A common framework for diverse capstone experiences

Year-long senior design capstone courses used to be simple to manage; however, over the past several years they have become increasingly cross-disciplinary and technical in nature, to the point where a single faculty advisor will probably not have sufficient breadth and depth of expertise in all areas of the project to provide adequate guidance and supervision. The Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Department at Ohio Northern University has responded to this challenge through the establishment of a “Project Review Board” for each senior design capstone project that consists of three faculty members with the appropriate background and expertise to guide the project. This review board structure can be implemented at any institution, provides greater opportunities for both accurate assessment and student professional development, and builds upon previous publications regarding capstone assessment and design standards. This paper presents the details behind the changes that were successfully implemented in our revised capstone process.

The faculty course assessment report

The faculty course assessment report (FCAR) is a work in progress that presents a methodology that allows assessment reports to be written in a format conducive for use in ABET Criterion 3 program outcomes assessment. In addition to traditional assessment reporting, the FCAR lists modifications incorporated into the course, reflection on the part of the instructor as to what was effective, and suggestions for further improvements. To assist in program outcomes assessment, additional information is collected in certain specified areas. This facilitates program-level assessment in that, instead of processing raw data, assessors review the pertinent sections of an appropriate set of FCARs, thereby reducing the assessment workload. Reports are collected and disseminated to allow instructors to inspect prior offerings of specific courses and adopt the suggestions presented in the report, thereby improving the course with each offering. This methodology has been found to be effective as part of our assessment reporting process.

The need for a new graduation rite of passage

The use of computers is pervasive throughout our society. Given the ever-increasing reliance placed upon software, graduates from computing-related degree programs need to be more aware than ever of their responsibilities toward ensuring that society is well served through their creative works. To assist with this effort, a new organization is being proposed for the establishment of a rite-of-passage ceremony for students graduating in the computing sciences that is similar in nature and scope to the Ring Ceremony employed by the Order of the Engineer for students graduating from engineering programs. This new organization is solely intended to promote and recognize the ethical and moral behavior in graduates of computing-related degree programs as they transition to careers of service to society. Two institutions---Ohio Northern University and the University of South Florida---have already experimented with this concept. We seek to start a larger conversation on this concept by soliciting input from the community on what we believe is a significant need for a new organization---an organization that can benefit both our graduates and the computing profession.

Work in progress — Development of personas: Emphasizing human need in a first-year engineering capstone course

Engineers play a prominent role in the development of devices that improve nearly every aspect of life; however, the general public, including potential engineering students, often fails to see engineering as a profession that helps society. To help address this, the culminating capstone course in the first-year engineering program at Ohio Northern University recently incorporated requirements for student projects to address poverty alleviation in a Third World country. This allows students to better establish a connection between engineering and society, and to design a system within realistic engineering constraints. When assessing student performance after adding this requirement, evidence indicated that students had difficulty relating to the problem of poverty, as it was presented abstractly. Accordingly, personas — fictitious characters created to represent the goals and behaviors of a particular demographic of interest — are being developed to “humanize” the problem for the students. A persona is presented as a one- or two-page description that includes appropriate background information regarding a “typical” member of the targeted demographic along with a few fictional personal details to make the persona subject appear to be a realistic, believable character. Personas have been successfully used in fields such as marketing as they constitute effective “test platforms” for guiding decisions about a product, such as features, interactions, and visual design.