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Redesign of senior capstone program in electrical and computer engineering and its assessment

Our students are required to take part in a year-long capstone program consisting of a one quarter lecture course and a follow-on two-quarter industry-sponsored capstone project. Feedback from students, alumni and capstone sponsors indicated that: a) students needed better preparation before starting their projects, b) we should introduce a realistic mini-project, and c) students should learn and apply project management, time management, teamwork, and communication skills. Our redesigned lecture course has a term-long practicum project that mimics the follow-on project, requiring completion of a project from concept to test. During this practicum project, students apply all the best practices in design and project management that they are learning in lectures. Our program is assessed using multiple methods (focus groups, surveys, evaluation of student work) and multiple sources (students, alumni, sponsors and faculty). This enables triangulation of data and increases our confidence in validity of the results. Data was collected over four years and overall we have found good agreement between different methods and sources. This rich set of data validated our course redesign and provided an insight that students' writing skills and project management need even further improvement.