Abstract

To meet industrial expectations, engineering and engineering technology (ET) graduates are expected to possess the critical competencies of design, problem-solving, communication, and teamwork. However, industry stakeholders and academic studies routinely identify these as skills gaps: areas graduates need to develop to a higher standard or are currently lacking when entering the work force. To address this issue, many undergraduate programs in the United States have implemented a comprehensive and integrative experience at the end of an academic program, often called a capstone course(s). The rate of adoption has grown such that approximately three-quarters of all undergraduate and graduate institutions include capstones. This case study describes how an engineering design focused capstone impacted ET students’ competencies (i.e., related knowledge, skills, and abilities). Central to the two-course sequence was an authentic learning experience that required students to follow the engineering design process to solve an internally or externally sourced open-ended problem. Forty-four students from two cohorts over two consecutive years strongly indicated that they had made progress in improving their design, problem-solving, communication, and group/teamwork competencies as a result of taking capstone.

Comments

This is the publisher PDF of Webster, R. and Turner, M. (2024) "Assessing Industry-Critical Skill Development in Engineering Technology Capstone Courses." International Journal of Engineering Education 40(5): 1262-1272. Copyright Tempus Publications, it is shared here with permission. 

Keywords

engineering technology; capstone; competency; skill gap; design

Date of this Version

2024

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