Paper ID #8599

CubeSat: A Multidisciplinary Senior Design Project

Dr. Adam Kaplan, California State University, Northridge

Adam Kaplan received a BS degree in Computer Science and Engineering from UCLA in the year 2000,and worked in the burgeoning internet software industry for a year and a half before returning to UCLAfor a Masters (2003) and PhD (2008) in Computer Science. Since 2008, Adam has lectured at UCLA,UCLA Extension, and California State University, Dominguez Hills, while also working as a softwareengineer for local startup businesses IEnteractive and Perceptive Development. In the year 2012, hejoined California State University, Northridge as an Assistant Professor. His research interests includeassistive technology for victims of acute aphasia, the evolving cost models of cloud services, and thedevelopment of power and cost-efficient embedded and mobile software.

Mr. James Flynn, California State University, Northridge

James Flynn is a part time faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering atCalifornia State University, Northridge (CSUN). He holds a B.S. (1977) degree in Electrical Engineeringfrom the Illinois Institute of Technology and a Master of Fine Arts (1981) degree from NorthwesternUniversity. He is owner of a consulting firm specializing in electronics for television and film production.Currently, he is the system architect on a faculty-student team engaged in the development and construc-tion of a CubeSat to be launched in 2015. He has also been active in developing education tools involvingsoftware defined radio (SDR).

Dr. Sharlene Katz P.E., California State University, Northridge

Sharlene Katz is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at California StateUniversity, Northridge (CSUN) where she has been for over 25 years. She graduated from the Universityof California, Los Angeles with B.S. (1975), M.S. (1976), and Ph.D. (1986) degrees in Electrical Engi-neering. Currently, she is principle investigator on a faculty-student team engaged in the developmentand construction of a CubeSat to be launched in 2015. Her other areas of research interest have been inengineering education techniques, software defined radio, and neural networks. Dr. Katz is a licensedprofessional engineer in the state of California.

c©American Society for Engineering Education, 2014

CubeSat: A Multidisciplinary Senior Design Project

Abstract

Engineering and computer science programs often require a culminating senior design project. Several of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) accreditation outcomes are best demonstrated in the context of such a project. These include the ability to design a system, process or component to meet desired needs and the ability to function on a multidisciplinary team. This paper describes a recent California State University, Northridge senior design project in which engineering (computer, electrical, and mechanical) and computer science students work on a multidisciplinary team to design, build, test, and eventually launch a CubeSat carrying a research experiment. The scope of this project has provided an excellent opportunity for computer science students to collaborate with engineering students. In addition to its value as a motivational multidisciplinary project, the project has given students an opportunity to collaborate with local industry on an actual mission that will be launched into space.

I. Introduction

Engineering and computer science programs often require a culminating senior design project. Several of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) accreditation outcomes1 are best demonstrated in the context of such a project. These include:

• The ability to design a system, process or component to meet desired needs • The ability to function on a multidisciplinary team • The ability to communicate effectively • The understanding of professional and ethical responsibility

At California State University, Northridge (CSUN) engineering and computer science students are assigned to work on group design projects during their senior year. At CSUN, senior design projects are typically offered within the individual engineering departments. Some projects have included engineering students from outside the department to provide a multidisciplinary team experience. However, prior to the project described here, computer science students had not joined any of the engineering project teams.

Projects without a computer science component do not reflect the current engineering approach where software development is an essential part of any real world project and the boundaries between disciplines are increasingly blurred. It is therefore vital that engineering students learn to work effectively on projects that span as wide a discipline spectrum as possible2 - 4.

This paper describes a recent CSUN multidisciplinary senior design project in which engineering (computer, electrical, and mechanical) students teamed with computer science students to design and build a CubeSat capable of being launched and carrying out a research experiment. The range of tasks required to complete this project make it ideal for a team from multiple departments.

Since the uniqueness of the mission requires custom software, rather than an integration of existing software with an operating system and since previous papers have concentrated on projects across engineering disciplines, this paper will focus on the computer science aspect of the CubeSat project. This CubeSat project is being performed in partnership with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a local employer of CSUN graduates.

Section II of this paper describes the CubeSat project. Section III describes the project team and the challenges in running a large multidisciplinary project. Section IV describes the project management approach of the software team and the relationship between the project and the computer science curriculum. Section V includes some assessment of this approach. Section VI presents the conclusions.

II. Description of the CubeSat Project

A CubeSat is a miniature satellite (20 x 10 x 10 cm) capable of carrying an onboard experiment into space. CubeSats are launched free of charge as part of government and commercial satellite launches around the world and have a potential lifetime of years, orbiting the earth approximately every ninety minutes. In addition to requiring a team of students to design, build, and test the miniature satellite, this project also requires the design and construction of a telecommunications ground station, complete with mission control, to command and control the CubeSat during its mission and retrieve the valuable scientific data it will produce.

The project offers a wealth of educational and technical opportunities ranging from project management, unique design challenges, rigorous constraints, extensive testing and the demand for excellence in execution. Students must overcome daunting real-life problems to carry out a mission that will have tangible consequences in future space missions. They must wrestle with the scale of a project involving several subsystems which have to be brought together seamlessly and where any failure threatens the mission. Student members have to adopt the skills of working with project members outside their discipline, to communicate, coordinate and cooperate through meetings, reports and documentation. They have learned firsthand the reasons for requirements, timelines, interface control documents, power and thermal budgets and test plans.

The fact that this is a real mission, not a simulation or class exercise, motivates students to expand their knowledge, re-orient their thinking and refine their skills. They approach their work with pride knowing that this is something that literally the whole world will see.

III. CubeSat Project Organization

The design, build, test, and launch of the CSUN CubeSat will require approximately two years. In a given semester, 20 - 25 students are actively working on the project. During the first year the team included one mechanical engineering student, six computer science students, four computer engineering students, and ten electrical engineering students. The senior design course is a two-semester sequence. To provide continuity, new students are added every semester so that half of the team is new and half of the team is continuing.

A project this large requires a significant amount of faculty supervision. The current team consists of four faculty advisors who supervise various aspects of the project.

Most students are divided into groups which focus on the various subsystems (power subsystem, satellite communications, satellite processor, software design, and ground station) while others focus on systems level tasks.

In addition to CSUN students and faculty, engineers from JPL are participating in the CubeSat project by designing the payload experiment. JPL provided the initial seed funding for this project while a NASA grant is providing faculty support, equipment, and parts.

IV. CSUN Software Team

The software team of the CSUN CubeSat Project was comprised of senior computer science students whose contributions to the CubeSat comprised their Capstone project (partially fulfilling the requirements of the computer science Senior Design Project course). A professor from the Computer Science Department acted as manager and advisor to these computer science students.

Upholding the requirements of the Senior Design Project course, the Agile Project Management Methodology was employed in managing the software team. In this section, we provide a brief introduction to Agile Project Management5 with Scrum6, and provide the specifics of how Agile is employed in our computer science Senior Design Project. We also discuss the aspects of the CubeSat Project that coincide with a traditional computer science undergraduate education. Further, we discuss how the software team was selected from the seniors in the Senior Design Project. Finally, we discuss how the software team organized their tasks into a set of consecutive sprints, and provide an overview of the tools they used in their development of the satellite software.

A. Agile Project Management With Scrum

Traditionally, software projects have been managed using a sequential approach, such as the Waterfall method7. In such a method, development proceeds through a series of steps, beginning with a conceptual design document and ending with the deployment of a tested software system. Each of these steps is performed in its entirety before proceeding to the next step. Value is delivered all-at-once, at the very end of the project lifecycle.

This approach to project management has its roots in assembly line manufacturing, in which each product was created by a series of independent steps. Although such an approach to human endeavor is appropriate for predictable and repeatable tasks, in the modern world tasks of this nature are largely automated by computers. In today’s software industry, humans are employed to perform tasks that contain an element of ever-present change, ambiguity, and unpredictability. In such unstable conditions, sequential software project management methods like Waterfall tend to suffer, as less is known about the system at the beginning of the design process than will be known later in development. For instance, requirements are fully specified before the system is designed, which tends to impose rigidity on the system implementation. If fundamental design problems are not identified until implementation or testing, they can be difficult to correct. In the presence of evolving or ambiguous requirements, project progress may be stalled as designers scrap partial implementations and go “back to the drawing board.”

In Agile Project Management5 each of the stages of the Waterfall method is performed repeatedly, in small iterations of development. The term “Agile Project Management” is an

umbrella to describe a handful of such lightweight methods, including Scrum6. Agile methods like Scrum were experimented with in the mid-1990s, and began to see adoption in the software industry in the last decade. Although Scrum is now the leading Agile method, it has yet to be widely adopted outside of the IT industry8.

In Scrum6, every iteration of development is called a sprint, and a sprint is scheduled over a period of 2-4 weeks. The set of development tasks to be performed in a given sprint are called the Sprint Backlog. This set of tasks is a subset of tasks maintained in the Product Backlog, which is a list of all tasks to be performed in the development of the final product. Prior to every sprint, a set of tasks from the Product Backlog is selected for inclusion in the current Sprint Backlog. At the end of every sprint, any tasks from the Sprint Backlog which are not complete are re-placed in the Product Backlog. An estimate of the time remaining on each sprint task is maintained alongside the Sprint Backlog, in order to forecast progress.

Every workday, all team-members have a time-boxed 15-minute Scrum meeting (often referred to as a standup meeting as it is often held with the entire team standing in a circle). At this meeting, each team-member shares their experience since the last Scrum meeting, and their intended progress before the next Scrum meeting.

B. Agile Method of Computer Science Senior Design

In the CSUN Fall 2013 computer science Senior Design course (COMP 490 and 490L, taught as a separate lecture and lab), Scrum was adopted as the project management methodology for each student team. The seniors formed teams of 12 students, with each team independently implementing a separate year-long software development project. The CubeSat software team was an exception, as the team size was limited to 6 students, and the team was selected by the faculty managing ongoing CubeSat development.

The CubeSat project did not employ any Agile project management methodology prior to the Fall 2013 semester. Instead, CubeSat development had relied on a loose sequential methodology. In concordance with the course requirements of the Senior Design course, the CubeSat software team adopted Scrum as their management methodology. This methodology was employed only among the 6 seniors on the software team, in isolation from the rest of the CubeSat engineers.

Sprints were scheduled as two week iterations of development, with standup Scrum meetings scheduled three times a week (twice in Senior Design lab section, and once in a weekly Friday meeting with the CubeSat faculty advisor from computer science). The CubeSat computer science faculty was given the Scrum role of Product Owner, whose responsibility is maintaining and prioritizing the overall Product Backlog. The roles of Scrum Master (a facilitator of Scrum standup meetings) and Scribe (the unofficial role of meeting note-taker) rotated between the software team members every two sprints.

The Agile Scrum methodology employed by the software team provided some unique advantages. First, as per the official rules of Scrum6, none of the members of the software team were designated “team lead,” nor were any members given any other sort of authority or oversight. Second, Scrum encourages teams to be self-organizing. Indeed after the first sprint, the student team was independently capable of decomposing sprint tasks into subtasks with little-

to-no additional guidance from faculty, and self-managed its assignment of these subtasks to team members. (The first sprint’s tasks were decomposed and assigned by the computer science faculty, in order to ease the team into the project.) The team was responsible for maintaining its own Sprint Backlog, including documenting daily estimates of remaining work on each task. The frequent standup meetings maintained accountability, as each team member reported their incremental progress (or lack thereof) to the entire team, and discussed any obstacles they encountered in their work. Finally, using an Agile methodology helped the team remain flexible in the face of evolving project requirements. The scope of the CubeSat software, and even some fundamental decisions regarding high-level system organization, were not hardened until the end of the Fall Semester. Regardless, the software team was able to complete many critical development tasks in lieu of complete requirements, a feat that is difficult or impossible using a sequential methodology like Waterfall.

C. CS Education Aspects of Project

The software requirements of the CubeSat project reinforce many important aspects of a traditional computer science education. The software team was provided with hands-on experience programming and debugging a large project. In the course of programming a low-level embedded development platform, students gained valuable practice with bitwise operations, bit-masks, and number system conversion. The limited bandwidth of the communication link between the CubeSat and the ground gave the team an opportunity to explore networking and packet-switching beyond the domain of internet protocols. Naturally, this led to issues of computer security, such as the ability to authenticate transmissions from Mission Control, and the decision of whether or not transmissions should be digitally signed by each side. For these design choices and their subsequent implementation, the software team was able to apply lessons learned in our computer science curriculum, providing a true capstone experience.

However, there were a number of significant differences between the CubeSat project and the types of projects students had prepared for in their undergraduate classes. Whereas the language emphasized in our curriculum is the object-oriented Java, the CubeSat software was written in the C programming language, which computer science students are only required to learn and use during one brief semester, in the Operating Systems course. Moreover, due to early design decisions made in favor of determinism and reliability, the team was faced with the unusual task of developing firmware to run on the “bare-metal” of the CubeSat processor, without any underlying Operating System nor RTOS. Thus, these computer science students found themselves without a heap for the first time in their programming careers, and had to forgo any kind of dynamic memory allocation.

For the majority of the team (five out of six students), this was the first encounter with embedded systems programming, as there is no Embedded Systems course required in our curriculum. Thus, this project marked the students’ first practical experience with hardware timers, interrupts, programmable controllers, processor I/O, and in-circuit debuggers. Challenges posed by this unfamiliar platform included the need for a fault-tolerant design, and the imposition of timing, power, and memory constraints. Students had to revisit concepts of system organization, including the behavior of the runtime stack, the functionality of a boot loader, the intricate behavior of linkers and loaders, and the layout of code and data in memory. Such an experience

was invaluable, as this project took these concepts beyond the whiteboard and brought them to life as tangible software challenges.

Finally, the software team’s integration with other student engineers working on other aspects of the CubeSat provided a true multidisciplinary project experience. Our computer science seniors had to digest information from electrical engineers, and package details about their own work in a form that their electrical engineering peers could understand. This deepened the technical communication ability of the software team, and provided excellent preparation for a professional workplace setting with large, complex projects built by multiple teams of varied backgrounds and specialization.

D. Selecting the Team

At the beginning of the Fall 2013 semester, the CubeSat faculty presented the satellite software as a prospective project to both sections of COMP 490, and interested students were encouraged to email the faculty for more information. The faculty then conducted a round of interviews with all interested students, before selecting the students who would join the CubeSat team.

During the interviews, the faculty got a sense of each student’s enthusiasm about the project, and that student’s ability to commit ten hours per week to the CubeSat software. Additional technical questions were asked to probe students’ familiarity with the C programming language (in particular with pointers), as well as with dynamic memory allocation, and bitwise operations.

E. Sprint Planning

The fifteen weeks of the Fall 2013 semester were decomposed into seven 2-week Scrum sprints (with one sprint scheduled for 3 weeks owing to the Fall holiday schedule). At the beginning of each sprint, the team and the computer science faculty advisor had a three-hour Sprint Planning meeting, wherein a set of high-priority Product Backlog tasks were selected and added to the current Sprint Backlog. The set of tasks in the Product Backlog, and their priority, had been decided on in advance by the CubeSat faculty, and had been added to the Product Backlog by the Product Owner (computer science faculty). Once the Sprint Backlog was assembled, the team collectively estimated the number of hours each task would take using a live Planning Poker session.

During Planning Poker, for each task on the Sprint Backlog, each team member held up a paper card indicating whether they felt the task would be small, medium, large, or extra-large (corresponding to an estimate of 3, 5, 8, or 13 hours of work). For each task where teammates disagreed on the estimates, a brief discussion followed, where the difficulty of the task was debated. Next, each teammate once again held up a card indicating their estimation of difficulty, which was potentially revised after the discussion period. After this, if consensus was not reached, the majority opinion became the official estimated effort of the task. This step differs from the original rules of Planning Poker9, which indicate that discussion should continue until consensus is achieved, or until the team decides that a task should be deferred until further information is available.

Planning Poker discussions had the useful side-effect of encouraging the team to discuss the details of task implementation, and highlighting some of the subtle difficulties of certain tasks.

Such discussion amounted to a collaborative design of each component of the software, and allowed large tasks to be decomposed into subtasks by the entire team.

F. Software Development Environment

The CubeSat processor is a Microchip dsPIC33 microcontroller. This processor is found in Microchip’s Explorer16 Development Board (five of which were shared between the software team and the other engineers on the CubeSat project) as well as the Pumpkin CubeSat Kit™ Development Board (one of which was shared by project members). The Microchip MPLAB X IDE was used in concert with the Microchip XC16 C Compiler. Hardware debugging was performed with a Microchip ICD 3 in-circuit debugger. Subversion was used as our source code management tool.

V. Assessment

In order to assess the educational experience of this project, a survey was created for the six computer science seniors, comprised of three questions. The response rate was 100%. In the first question each team member compared their teamwork, communication, and programming skills before the senior project (i.e. before this semester) to those they have now. In the second question, each team member compared the current effectiveness of the entire CSUN CubeSat Software Team to the team’s effectiveness at the beginning of the project. The third question allows students to rate the contribution of the Agile methodology to their own work.

Each of the sub-questions is rated with a five point Likert scale, with responses assigned a score of 1 (poor / strongly disagree), 2 (below average / disagree), 3 (average / neutral), 4 (above average / agree), or 5 (excellent / strongly agree). Student responses are reported with the average score across all six seniors.

Finally, we use artifacts of the Scrum process to track the Software Team’s productivity over the first six sprints of the CubeSat project this semester. Specifically we report the team’s estimated value provided each sprint, and use this to calculate the team’s acceleration over the course of the semester. This measurement provides additional confirmation of the team’s success in navigating the learning curve of the CubeSat project. Moreover, team acceleration is an impartial indicator of team capability, untarnished by any personal biases.

A. Self Assessment

In Figure 1, we include the first survey question, which asks computer science students to rate their own abilities before-and-after the first semester of the CubeSat project. As this senior design project is intended to be the culminating experience of the Software Team’s undergraduate education, many of the self-assessment survey questions were selected to measure the degree to which this project met ABET Criterion 3 objectives for computing programs10. These ABET objectives are student outcomes, and enumerate the skills that students must attain by the time they graduate. All questions related to understanding of memory allocation, the runtime stack, and the C programming language (1.9 - 1.14) are derived from Criterion 3 Student Outcome (a): “An ability to apply knowledge of computing and mathematics appropriate to the discipline.” Questions 1.15 and 1.16 directly assess Student Outcome (b): “An ability to analyze a problem, and identify and define the computing requirements appropriate to its solution.”

Questions 1.5 and 1.6, as well as questions 1.17 and 1.18, are related to Student Outcomes (c) and (i), which are “An ability to design, implement, and evaluate a computer-based system, process, component, or program to meet desired needs” and “An ability to use current techniques, skills, and tools necessary for computing practice” respectively. Questions 1.1 and 1.2 measure the extent to which this project met Student Outcome (d): “An ability to function effectively on teams to accomplish a common goal.” Questions 1.3 and 1.4 measure the ability for computer science students to communicate with non-computer science engineers to exchange ideas, which assesses Student Outcome (f): “An ability to communicate effectively with a range of audiences.” Finally, questions 1.19 and 1.20 assess Student Outcome (h): “Recognition of the need for and an ability to engage in continuing professional development.”

The remaining questions 1.7 and 1.8 ask each student to rate their own interest in embedded system development, and how it has changed over the course of this project. This question was included to determine if the project has attracted students to this computing field, or if it has done the opposite and discouraged student interest in embedded systems.

Question #1: For each sub-question, please provide a rating (from poor to excellent) of yourself and your own work.

1.1) How would you rate your ability to contribute to a team (before this semester)? 1.2) How would you rate your ability to contribute to a team (now)? 1.3) How would you rate your ability to exchange technical ideas with engineers outside of computer

science (before this semester)? 1.4) How would you rate your ability to exchange technical ideas with engineers outside of computer

science (now)? 1.5) How would your rate your comfort at programming embedded systems (before this semester)? 1.6) How would your rate your comfort at programming embedded systems (now)? 1.7) How would your rate your interest in programming embedded systems (before this semester)? 1.8) How would your rate your interest in programming embedded systems (now)? 1.9) How would you rate your understanding of memory allocation (before this semester)? 1.10) How would you rate your understanding of memory allocation (now)? 1.11) How would you rate your understanding of the runtime stack (before this semester)? 1.12) How would you rate your understanding of the runtime stack (now)? 1.13) How would you rate your understanding of the C programming language (before this semester)? 1.14) How would you rate your understanding of the C programming language (now)? 1.15) How would you rate your ability to analyze a computing problem and decompose it into

implementation tasks (before this semester)? 1.16) How would you rate your ability to analyze a computing problem and decompose it into

implementation tasks (now)? 1.17) How would you rate your ability to debug source code (before this semester)? 1.18) How would you rate your ability to debug source code (now)? 1.19) How would you rate your desire to learn and continue learning the art of computer science (before

this semester)? 1.20) How would you rate your desire to learn and continue learning the art of computer science (now)?

Figure 1: Self Assessment Survey Questions

Figure 2 summarizes student responses to the self-assessment question, combining each pair of sub-questions (1.1 and 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4, 1.5 and 1.6, and so on…) into a pair of bars that show student ability before the project versus now. For instance, the top pair of bars labeled “team

contribution” reports responses to sub-questions 1.1 (Before this Semester, the white bar) and 1.2 (Now, the black bar). Therefore, for the 20 sub-questions, there are 10 pairs of bars.

A positive trend can be seen in Figure 2 for each of the 10 student abilities assessed. Students reported that each these abilities became stronger during the first semester of the CubeSat project. By the end of the first semester (i.e. Now), every ability has an average rating of higher than 3 (average), with only one ability reported as less than 3.5 (comfort at programming embedded systems, from questions 1.5 and 1.6).

The computer science students report that they have become above-average (score of 4.0 or higher) in their ability to contribute to a team, their ability to exchange ideas with other disciplines, their interest in embedded programming, their understanding of the runtime stack, and their desire for continuous learning. Despite such a high expressed interest in embedded systems (4.33, the highest of the aggregate scores), students still exhibit an average level of comfort in embedded programming (3.17, the lowest of the post-semester aggregate scores). However, the overall students’ growth in comfort at programming embedded systems (from 1.67 to 3.17 in a mere 15 semester weeks) is highly encouraging. It is anticipated that their comfort will continue to grow in the coming semester, as their development experience deepens.

Figure 2: Self Assessment Responses

In Figure 3, we track the growth of the students’ self-assessed abilities over the semester, by reporting the difference between their before and after scores (difference of average scores) in each ability. Students experienced the most growth in their interest in programming embedded systems, with 1.67 points gained over the semester. This result indicates that this project has garnered interest in the embedded computing field, rather than scaring students away from such endeavors.

Other areas where students grew significantly (by more than one point) over the semester include their ability to contribute to a team, their comfort in programming embedded systems, and their understanding of memory allocation, the runtime stack, and the C programming language. These results indicate that this project has been most successful in training students to meet ABET student objectives (a), (c), (d), (i).

Students experienced the least growth in their ability to debug source code, from an aggregate score of 3.17 before the semester to 3.50 now. As students primarily develop this skill during the first half of a computer science undergraduate education (in CS1 and CS2 classes, in particular), it is unsurprising that less growth in this area was experienced during the senior year.

Figure 3: Self Assessment Measured as Growth

B. Team Assessment

Figures 4 and 5 show the team assessment question and averaged responses, respectively. In their responses, each student assessed the effectiveness of the entire CubeSat Software Team at the beginning of the semester and presently (at the end of the semester).

Question #2: For each sub-question, please provide a rating (from poor to excellent) of the overall team.

2.1) How would you rate the overall effectiveness of the CubeSat Software Team (at the beginning of the semester)?

2.2) How would you rate the overall effectiveness of the CubeSat Software Team (now)?

Figure 4: Team Assessment Survey Questions

From the student responses in Figure 5, it seems that the team’s overall effectiveness grew over the first semester, from an aggregate rating that was below “average” (2.67) to a rating above “average” (3.83). This increase of 1.16 points marks a significant growth in the students’ perception of their team’s overall ability, and is concomitant with the growth each student reported in their own ability to contribute to a team (in Figures 2 and 3).

Figure 5: Team Assessment Responses

C. Assessment of Agile Effectiveness

In Figure 6, we provide our final question on the student survey. In this question students are asked to what extent they agree with 10 positive statements about the impact of the Agile methodology on the CubeSat project. Student responses are aggregated in Figure 7.

Students demonstrated some agreement with all 10 statements, with the lowest aggregate score being the neutral agreement of 3.33. Overall, students identified the Scrum standup meeting as the strongest contributor to project success, with aggregate scores above 4 for each of statements 3.1 – 3.3. The Scrum standup contributed to better communication between teammates (exchange of technical ideas, 3.1), better ability to contribute to the team, and better overall productivity of the team. These responses are encouraging, and suggest that frequent meetings of short duration can be very useful in order to keep students on-task as well as foster team spirit.

By comparison, the process of planning each sprint was reported to be slightly less effective than the Scrum standup. Aggregate scores of 3.67 were given as answers to question 3.4 - 3.6, suggesting that Sprint planning meetings, and specifically the included process of Planning

Poker, moderately contribute to useful estimates of effort, as well as team productivity. However, the results suggest that improvements could be made to the allocation of sprint work to each team member, especially with the nearly-neutral answer to 3.7.

Question #3: Please indicate your response to each statement with {strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly agree}.

3.1) Standup meetings facilitated an exchange of technical ideas between teammates working on different tasks.

3.2) Standup meetings contributed to my ability to contribute to the team. 3.3) Standup meetings contributed to the overall productivity of the team. 3.4) Sprint planning meetings contributed to an efficient allocation of work to each team member. 3.5) Planning Poker generated useful estimates of task effort. 3.6) Planning Poker contributed to the overall productivity of the team. 3.7) The tasks I was assigned during each sprint were appropriate for the amount of time given. 3.8) Agile Project Management Methodology generated more utility/usefulness than overhead for this

project. 3.9) Agile Project Management Methodology has helped the team remain flexible to shifting

requirements. 3.10) If possible, I would employ Agile Project Management Methodology in future engineering

projects. Figure 6: Agile Effectiveness Survey Questions

Figure 7: Agile Effectiveness Responses

The responses to statements 3.8 through 3.10 indicate agreement that the Agile methodology has contributed to team success (with the answer of 3.83 for statement 3.9 indicating near-agreement). In general, students feel that Agile provides more utility than overhead, and has helped the team remain flexible despite evolving and incomplete requirements. Students appreciate the strengths of the Agile Project Management Methodology sufficient to use it in their future projects, should the opportunity arise.

D. Sprint Productivity

To estimate the productivity of the Software Team, we utilize artifacts of the Agile/Scrum methodology, namely the total estimated hours of work remaining, which is tracked daily by each team member for each of their tasks. Initial estimates are provided by the Sprint planning meeting, which includes the aforementioned Planning Poker9 session. In Table 1, we track these hours for each of the first six sprints of the Fall 2013 semester. In the second column, we report the total estimated work hours across the entire Sprint Backlog, as determined by our Sprint planning meeting. In the third column, we report the estimated work hours remaining at the end of the sprint, summed across all tasks that are not complete. The difference between these numbers is the estimated velocity of the team, or the amount of work product (in units of completed work hours) that the team can produce each sprint. Please note: this velocity does not reflect the total number of real hours that the team collectively worked over the sprint. Rather, the velocity is derived from the estimated number of work hours remaining at the beginning and end of the sprint.

Table 1: Estimation of Team Velocity By Sprint

However, velocity cannot be used as a direct measure of team productivity11, as the estimates of work effort tend to be somewhat arbitrary, and take a few sprints to converge. To compare a team’s productivity to that of other teams requires calculating each team’s acceleration, i.e. the rate at which their velocity is changing. Acceleration can be calculated one of two ways: a) by calculating from sprint to sprint, or b) by calculating from the first sprint to the current sprint. The formulae for these calculations are as follows…

accelerationn (sprint-to-sprint) = (velocityn – velocityn-1) / velocityn-1

accelerationn (from sprint 1) = (velocityn – velocity1) / velocity1

…where velocityi is the velocity of the ith sprint, and accelerationi is the calculated acceleration of the ith sprint.

In Figure 8, we graph the acceleration in sprints 2-6 using both calculation methods. In this figure, acceleration is reported as a percent. Both methods result in the same overall graphed

trend, which shows the team’s acceleration increasing from sprint 2 to sprint 4, followed by a major dip in productivity during sprint 5, and a renewed increase in acceleration during sprint 6.

The apparent dip in productivity during sprint 5 seems to result from two potentially-related factors. The first is that this sprint was interrupted by the Thanksgiving holiday, during which time the campus was closed, and little useful work was being performed. The second is that the estimated hours of the sprint 5 tasks summed to 60, which is by far the smallest estimated allocation of work given to the team during any sprint this semester. In fact, the sprint 5 velocity is very close to the sprint 6 velocity, as much productive work was completed during sprint 5, despite far less work being assigned for that sprint.

Figure 8: Team Acceleration (by sprint)

Several factors contributed to the Software Team’s productivity in the CubeSat project, in which new languages and software paradigms had to be learned during the tight implementation schedule. One was the frequent face-to-face communication provided by the Scrum standup meetings, which was given the most positive overall response by the team in Figure 7. This communication really brought the team closer as a unit, and helped to break the ice during the early stages of ramp-up, as the team familiarized themselves with embedded programming and with each other. In addition to communication, the Scrum standup allowed the team to track each other’s progress and work obstacles very closely multiple times per week, allowing implementation and scheduling problems to be addressed as quickly as they occurred.

In addition to the frequent communication between members of the CubeSat Software Team, there were weekly multidisciplinary meetings that allowed the Software Team to interface with other engineering teams assembling the CubeSat. This perspective on the final CubeSat assembly, including how the disparate pieces interface with each other, enriched the paradigms of embedded programming that the Software Team was learning. Furthermore, exposure to schematic diagrams and electrical engineering concepts expanded the vernacular of the Software Team, and helped them collaborate more closely with engineers from other disciplines.

Although acceleration is a straightforward estimate of a team’s productivity, its use is limited, as a team’s method for estimating remaining work effort is innately imperfect, and the accuracy of the estimate stabilizes over a handful of sprints as the team’s process matures11. Thus, although studying acceleration trends helps to track how a team’s productivity changes over time, the numeric values of acceleration have limited application.

VI. Summary

During the Fall 2013 semester students at California State University, Northridge participated in a multidisciplinary senior project to design, build, and test a CubeSat. The scope of this project has provided an excellent opportunity for computer science students to collaborate with engineering students. In addition to its value as a motivational multidisciplinary project, the project has given students an opportunity to collaborate with local industry on an actual mission that will be launched into space.

This paper has focused on the Agile Project Management Methodology used and the aspects of the project that coincide with traditional computer science education. After the first semester the students’ experience on the project was assessed with a survey. The results of this survey show that students:

• Assess that their own abilities in the related student outcomes were strengthened by their participation in the project

• Assess that their ability to contribute to a team has improved • Have gained interest and confidence in the embedded systems field • Agree that the Agile methodology has contributed to team success

Additionally, statistical artifacts of our Agile process have allowed us to track the software team's productivity from sprint to sprint. A model of team acceleration demonstrates a positive trend in student effectiveness over the course of the Fall semester. The CubeSat team continues to work on this project and anticipates that the satellite will be complete and ready for environmental testing by Summer 2014.

The faculty’s own experience with the CubeSat teams has yielded a number of insights regarding large multi-disciplinary projects. First, we have witnessed a successful pairing of an Agile-managed software team with classical/Waterfall-managed engineering teams on the same project. This is an important affirmation that Agile can be applied outside the box of software-centric projects, which have largely been its domain over the past decade. We have also learned that a significant amount of faculty supervision is required for student projects at this level of complexity. The faculty provided the glue that held the project together, by defining and

scheduling high-level tasks, offering advice to project teams, and by facilitating much of the communication between the teams of different disciplines. We found that hand-picking our students via the interview process was an effective way of gauging the interest and motivation of prospective teammates, and advise such an approach when doable. Finally, the faculty feel it would have been ideal for all the students in the class to be enrolled in one single Senior Design Project class or similar elective, as opposed to separate Senior Design classes by major. Although it was infeasible in this situation, such an organization would have leveled the playing field by allowing student work to be evaluated and tracked in a unified manner, and may have enhanced the sense of all team members working toward a single purpose.

Bibliography 1. Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs, 2014 – 2015. http://www.abet.org. 2. J. Allenstein, et al, Examining the Impacts of a Multidisciplinary Engineering Capstone Design, ASEE Annual

Conference, 2013. 3. L. E. Carlson and J.F. Sullivan, Hands-on engineering: learning by doing in the integrated

teaching and learning program. International Journal of Engineering Education 15 (1999): 20-31. 4. A. Zhang, et al, Utilizing Project-based Multidisciplinary Design Activities to Enhance STEM Education, ASEE

Annual Conference, 2012. 5. J. Highsmith, Agile Project Management, Boston: Addison-Wesley, 2004. 6. K. Schwaber and J. Sutherland, “The Scrum Guide: The Definitive Guide to Scrum: The Rules of the Game,”

Scrum.org, 2011. 7. I. Sommerville, Software Engineering, 8th Edition, Essex: Pearson Education, 2007. 8. The State of Scrum: Benchmarks and Guidelines, June 2013, http://www.scrumalliance.org/why-scrum/state-of-

scrum-report. 9. Planning Poker: An Agile Estimation and Planning Technique,

http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/planning-poker. 10. Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), “Criteria for Accrediting Computing Programs,”

Computing Accreditation Commission, Baltimore, MD, 2012. 11. S. Ambler, Acceleration: An Agile Productivity Measure, October 2008,

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/ambler/entry/metric_acceleration.

Paper ID #10356

Enabling Institute-wide Multidisciplinary Engineering Capstone Design Ex-periences

Dr. Amit Shashikant Jariwala, Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Jariwala is the Director of Design & Innovation for the School of Mechanical Engineering at GeorgiaTech. He graduated with a Bachelors Degree in Production Engineering from the University of Mum-bai, India with honors in 2005 and received Masters of Technology degree in Mechanical Engineering in2007 from IIT Bombay, India. He was awarded a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Techin 2013, with minors in Entrepreneurship. Dr. Jariwala has more than nine years of research experi-ence in modeling, simulation, engineering design, and manufacturing process development, with researchfocus on design of polymer based micro additive manufacturing process. During his Ph.D. studies, hewas also a participant of the innovative TI:GER R© program (funded by NSF:IGERT), which preparesstudents to commercialize high impact scientific research results. Dr. Jariwala has participated and ledseveral research projects from funded by NSF, the State of Georgia and Industry sponsors. At GeorgiaTech, he is responsible for enhancing corporate support for design courses, managing design and fabrica-tion/prototyping facilities, coordinating the design competitions/expo and teaching design courses, with astrong focus on creating and enabling multidisciplinary educational experiences.

Sarvagya Vaish, Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of TechnologyDr. David W. Rosen, Georgia Institute of Technology

c©American Society for Engineering Education, 2014

Enabling Institute-wide Multidisciplinary Engineering Capstone Design Experiences

Abstract The final culminating Capstone Design course provides students the opportunity to work in teams and apply their knowledge to design, build and test prototypes for solving real-world, open-ended design challenges. Several research studies have shown both qualitative and quantitative advantages for students by working on multidisciplinary Capstone Design projects. All schools within various colleges of the Institute currently only offer the traditional mono-disciplinary Capstone Design course and hence there exists no formal channel for students to collaborate and work together on multidisciplinary Capstone Design projects. In the absence of a common multidisciplinary Capstone Design course, the transition from traditional mono-disciplinary Capstone Design course raises issues of managing faculty teaching expectations, providing administrative support to faculty and student teams and forming multidisciplinary functional student teams. In order to assist with resolving these issues, an online portal was developed to support the implementation of multidisciplinary Capstone Design projects. Faculty and student feedback was solicited in order to conceptualize and develop the website to support the entire process of student team formation, sharing of multidisciplinary project ideas across schools and making student-team assignments. This paper presents the design of this web portal along with a discussion on the scope for further improvement. Keywords Multidisciplinary, capstone design, senior design, online portal Introduction Capstone Design Course is offered as a project based culminating course in many undergraduate engineering programs. It is an integrative course where senior-standing engineering students synthetize solutions to “real world,” open-ended engineering problems1. Students taking Capstone Design course in various Schools within the College of Engineering (CoE) showcase their projects at the end-of-semester Institute wide Capstone Design Expo. Traditionally, at Georgia Institute of Technology, the course is offered mono-disciplinarily within each School with the exception for a special section comprising of few students who participate in the joint Capstone Design course offering between School of Mechanical Engineering (ME) and School of Industrial Design (ID). Several past research studies2-4 have shown the positive impacts of multidisciplinary Capstone Design experiences. Most design challenges in industry are solved by multidisciplinary teams, and thus multidisciplinary projects provide a more realistic engineering experience for engineering students5. In order to enable multidisciplinary Capstone Design experiences, there are several logistical challenges to be overcome by faculty and students6. This paper presents a brief overview of the design of an online portal which assists with efficient information transfer between students and faculty and helps in enabling an Institute-wide Multidisciplinary Capstone Design. Although unique for Georgia Tech, an online marketplace for multidisciplinary Capstone Design projects is not completely unique. A marketplace for multidisciplinary multi-university Systems Engineering Capstone projects has been presented earlier by Ardis et al.5. The authors clearly presented the need and requirements for a marketplace primarily for sharing information on project ideas to faculty and students. However, the marketplace did not assist in teams formation,

or making project-team assignments based on student interest. The design presented in this paper is the only known available design to the authors which truly alleviates the logistical burden of sharing information about projects, forming teams, accepting bids and awarding projects to the teams – all through one single website, with little to no faculty involvement. Need for an online project portal During Spring 2013, the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the College of Engineering (CoE) at Georgia Tech invited faculty and administrators from various schools within the College to collaboratively discuss possible pathways for developing a CoE or Institute-wide Capstone Design program. The faculty discussed several challenges, ranging from differences in curriculum requirements for individual schools, incompatibility between Schools having multi-semester Capstone Design sequence v/s a single semester, adequate scoping of projects, faculty load-sharing, etc. (some of which were similar to the ones already presented by Bannerot et al.6). Given the extremely large enrollments (around 800 students take Capstone Design every semester within CoE) and the other administrative challenges, it was decided that an Institute-wide Capstone Design Course (GT4823) be first offered by the School of Mechanical Engineering (ME) as a special topic substitute for traditional Capstone Design Course (ME4182) to a limited number of students. Other Schools could gradually “join-in” by allowing the GT4823 special topics course to be a substitute to their traditional Capstone Design or Senior Design course. In order to support the formation of multidisciplinary Capstone Design teams, it was found necessary to develop an online portal which would allow faculty and students to view and post project ideas. Interestingly, there was yet another motivation within the School of ME, which provoked the development of an online project marketplace. The traditional Capstone Design course within ME is taught by 6-9 faculty members, each mentoring a section of around 30 students. For more than five years, the faculty teaching Capstone Design in ME has also been soliciting industry projects. Every semester, there were about 20 sponsored projects which have to be assigned to student teams. For the first week of class, students are under high pressure to form teams, look at project ideas and submit their ‘bids’, elaborating on the group’s skills and motivations to work on the project, to their respective faculty section instructor. The faculty team then compiles the priorities from each team and coordinates this information with other faculty to decide which team would be awarded the bid. This entire manual process of project-team assignment had the following drawbacks: 1. Too much burden on faculty to compile the necessary information from their students and

share with other faculty (section instructors) 2. Narrow window of opportunity for students to learn about projects, form teams and submit

their projects bids 3. Logistical issues involved with matching teams and projects. The process was cumbersome

and not transparent to students. This would often lead to lack of motivation. In order to aid the process of making project-team assignments and to support the realization of multidisciplinary Capstone Design projects from across schools, the Office of the Director of Design & Innovation (DDI) in the School of Mechanical Engineering launched an internal web portal development project. A multidisciplinary student team comprising of juniors and seniors

from the College of Computing, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering was assembled to develop the online portal. Portal Concept and Design The student team interviewed faculty and students to define the user needs for the two constituencies and conceptualized the work flow. The following requirements were identified: 1. Faculty, students and external users should be able to submit project ideas. 2. Faculty and students should be able to view all accepted projects for a particular semester

along with information on which School’s participation is necessary for any given project. 3. Faculty in-charge of a specific section should be able to approve or reject projects within

their sections. For example, a faculty in a particular school was not keen on mentoring student teams working on multidisciplinary projects that would involve a specific discipline/school.

4. Students should be able to form teams, invite other students to their teams and submit ‘bids’ with priorities for projects of their choice.

5. Faculty should be able to view all teams within their section as well as their submitted bids 6. All students should be able to view how many bids have been submitted for a specific

project. This would help them refine their ‘bids’ in case they believe that they deserve the project more than another team.

Figure 1 Screenshot of the homepage for the online portal

Since the site, (screenshot as shown in Fig. 1) and available online at http://capstone.design.gatech.edu/, was to cater towards a primarily Georgia Tech affiliated audience, the site’s navigation and appearance was made consistent with other Institute’s websites. The site was implemented using the Ruby-on-Rails web development framework. The overall portal design can be described into three major phases – project submission, team formation and making project-team assignments.

Project submission and approval The portal needs to be first activated by the website administrator (currently the DDI) by creating semesters, sections and assigning faculty to each section. Once activated, the site starts building a database of users and projects as they are submitted. An external sponsor can visit the site to learn about the course, review past projects, read about NDA/IP policy and submit project ideas. The project form asks for the typical design project problem, overall requirements, design constraints, and contact information. It also provides an option for the sponsor to check if they need an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) to protect specific project related confidential details. As per the Institute’s Intellectual Property (IP) policy, which is typical of most other engineering institutes, the students own the IP that they create during the course of working on their Capstone Design project. Students are free to negotiate their IP with the sponsors at the end of the project. This situation is not favorable for most entrepreneurial sponsors and they typically request to have their project offered to only those students who are willing to assign their IP to the sponsors. The students have to be made aware of such a requirement prior to them accepting to work on the project. When external users submit projects, they have an option to check if their project is only made open for students willing to negotiate IP assignment with the sponsor. Several research faculty members consider Capstone Design course as a means to ‘hire’ a team of undergraduate designers for building automated systems to help advance their lab research. Often research faculty would offer design project ideas for the course which would help them advance their industry partnerships. At Georgia Tech students are also encouraged to utilize the course as a means to foster their own entrepreneurial spirit. Students have the freedom to work on an innovative project of their own choice, as long as it satisfies the course requirements (which are determined by the faculty instructor). Few students in the past have launched successful companies by further refining their Capstone Design course projects. To enable faculty and students to pitch their own ides to the class, the website allows Institute affiliated users (faculty, staff and students) to submit their project ideas by simply logging into the site using their Institute official email credentials (which is based on Central Authentication Service – CAS). Using CAS eliminates the need for the users to renter their contact information and makes it easier for other users of the site to quickly identify if the project is submitted by internal faculty/student or an external sponsor. Projects submitted by any user – external or internal arrive on the Projects’ workflow for the site administrator. The Capstone Design course (or Senior Design) is one of the most important elements for the development and assessment of student professional competencies for ABET accreditation. The overall project scope places heavy emphasis on whether or not the course project allows for satisfactory assessment of the student outcomes. Specifically, the project scope should be broad enough to allow students from the participating schools/disciplines to learn and demonstrate their knowledge to meet ABET Engineering Criterion 37 – student outcome 3.a); identify discipline specific engineering requirements for design (to meet ABET Engineering criterion outcome 3.c) and provide opportunities to identify, formulate and solve engineering problems (to meet ABET Engineering criterion outcome 3.e) relevant to their specific disciplines. The rest of the students

outcomes are generic and not discipline specific within Engineering and hence do not significantly impact the project selection process. Figure 2 shows the overview of the project submission and approval process for multidisciplinary projects. As mentioned earlier, project ideas can be initiated either from external sponsors (industry/entrepreneurs) or internal (faculty/students). Usually, external sponsors have specific requirements and expectations, which might not be within the scope of the Capstone Design course. Finding a good balance between solving a real-world industry need and meeting the curriculum requirements is necessary for successful industry-academia partnership for Capstone Design. The administrator (DDI), in consultation with faculty coordinators of relevant Engineering Schools review the submitted projects and revise the project scope to make sure that the project is of adequate scope. The administrator specifies the schools for which the project is most suitable for and the project then moves over to faculty and student users from the specified schools.

Figure 2 Overview of project submission and approval process

The project can be viewed by faculty and students associated with the schools that it has been made available for. The authors have experienced in the past that, especially for multidisciplinary Capstone Design projects, some faculty members are not comfortable in mentoring projects related to a specific industry or a school. Hence, faculty in-charge of a specific section has the option to reject projects within their sections. All projects accepted by the administrator are considered approved by default to eliminate additional workload on faculty. Figure 3 shows the view of the Project’s page for a typical faculty. As shown, all projects accepted by the admin are approved by the faculty as default. They have the option to reject a specific project if they wish. Doing so would make the project unavailable to the students registered in the faculty’s section, and hence they will be unable to bid for the project.

Figure 3 Projects' View for Faculty

Team Formation When students login the site for the first time, they have to fill in their profile information which includes the semester in which they will be taking the Capstone Design course, their majors (school like ME, BME, AE, ECE, etc.) and the section of Capstone Design course that they have registered for. Students have options to view existing projects, submit their own project ideas, join existing groups and/or create their group. Only after they form a group, can they submit bids for any projects. If a particular student is interested in working on a project, he/she could form a single member team and submit a bid for a project. The bid can include details like their individual skills, expertise, co-op/internship experience and their interest to work on the project while ranking their interest levels. Figure 4 shows the typical view of the Project’s page for a student. As shown, the student can view the projects that need his/her school’s participation, as well as the number of submitted bids for the projects. The green icon shows that the student’s team has submitted a bid for the project, whereas the yellow icon indicates that the student can submit a bid for the project on behalf of his/her group. A team can submit as many bids as they wish. All students, faculty and administrators can view the submitted bids and students can revise their submitted bids up until the deadline (typically by end of first week of the semester). This transparent view of the submitted bids allows students to learn from each other on how to submit stronger bids to enhance their chances to win the project.

Figure 4 Projects' View for Students

One of the challenges in assembling an institute-wide multidisciplinary Capstone Design team, which spans across various schools, is that the students are unaware of the skills and expertise of the students from other schools. Given the time constraints of forming a team within the first week of the semester, students often do not have adequate time to know their potential team members. This problem can potentially be resolved by having a pre-capstone course or a common meeting. However, given the extremely large enrollments, an additional pre-capstone course is administratively challenging and having in-person meetings might not be productive. The online portal also supports the formation of multidisciplinary teams. Figure 5 shows the typical view of the Group’s page for a student. As shown, the student can view the existing groups and can choose to either join an existing group or create a new group. The screenshot shows the popup window showing the details of the submitted bid by the “test” group. Since, all students can view existing teams and the team bids, they can decide if they might be a good fit to join the group or not and send a request to join the group. Group members can also invite students into their group by entering their login username. Upon joining, the new student member can edit/update the submitted bid to reflect the renewed strength of the team to work on the project based on the addition of the new team member.

Figure 5 Groups' View for Students

Project-team assignments Once all the bids from all teams are received, they are sorted and presented in form of a matrix of team names and project titles indicating the priorities ranks specified by the teams as shown in partial Table 1 (from Fall 2013 data). The top row, E1, E2, etc. indicates the project code and the numbers indicate the team preferences. For instance, Team, ‘Capston E’ submitted their first choice to work on project, ‘E8’ followed by their second choice to work on project, ‘E20’ (not shown), then project ‘E3’ as third choice and ‘E12’ as their fourth choice.

Table 1 Compiled matrix showing the priorities as submitted by teams for projects

Table shows how student interest for few projects listed as E1-E8 (which were sponsored by large companies which are typical employers for undergraduates) was highly skewed compared to others. Interestingly, the team working on the most popular project, ‘E8’ also ended up winning the grand prize at the end of semester design expo.

The faculty will typically try to assign the project to the team that has listed a project as its top priority choice. In case of a conflict, the bids will be reviewed to compare the strengths and weaknesses of the competing team and appropriate assignments are made at a common meeting including all section instructors. Experience and Outcomes At the onset of the Fall 2013 semester, the beta version of this portal was made available to seniors taking Capstone Design in ME, ECE and BME. Three online presentations (on prezi.com) were designed and shared on the homepage to guide the users to easily navigate through the site and accomplish their task. During the first week of its launch, the site was actively used by around 300 students across campus, all of which were seniors interested in working on Capstone Design projects8. A total of 34 sponsored projects and 19 student project ideas were accepted into the Capstone Design program using the site. 30 mono-disciplinary (mostly ME) and 10 multidisciplinary Capstone Design teams were assembled using the online portal. Most of the multidisciplinary projects were either between ME and ECE or ME and BME with an exception of one ME/BME/ECE team. In all a total of 49 students from the Schools of ME, BME and ECE were able to participate in a multidisciplinary Capstone Design experience in the Fall 2013 semester. A few of these exciting multidisciplinary projects included an assisting robotic system for the human hand, an autonomous lawn mower, a gesture-based automotive user interaction environment and a rapid yet accurate full-vehicle metrology system, most of which were sponsored by corporate partners or local entrepreneurs. Table 2 shows the matrix of multidisciplinary projects with participating student disciplines for each. Table 2 Table showing the descriptions of multidisciplinary projects and the participating student disciplines

Project/Team Name

Project Description Team Composition

Last Minute Guinea Pigs

During its manufacturing process, glass is heat treated then cooled. As the glass cools, differences in cooling rates can cause bowing in the glass. The project was to develop a new way to accurately measure the bow to a tolerance of 1/32 inch per linear foot of glass.

3 ME, 2 ECE

Team FFT Designed and prototyped an edger system for the John Deere TANGO autonomous lawn mower

3 ME, 2 ECE

Team AAA Designed and built a measurement system to measure the outer dimensions of golf cart sized vehicles.

3 ME, 1 ECE

Team Buzzed Project was to design and prototype an automated, self-contained, and user-friendly brewing device that accurately controls the temperature of the fermenting process, creating a high quality home-brewed lager at low cost.

5 ME, 1 ECE

License to Chill

A rapid refrigeration system to cool beverage drinks within a minute using forced convection cooling.

4 ME, 2 ECE

Electric Drive Team

Designed an electric drive control system for a multi-motor vehicle with independently driven wheels that can be used as a platform to test an electric car’s differential drive function.

2 ME, 3 ECE

Inovein Our device aids nurses in placing needles into neonatal infants for IV line installation and blood draws.

1 ME, 1 ECE, 3 BME

K.I.D.S. (two sub-teams)

Design and prototyping of cybernetic exoskeleton to assist injured and disabled patients (with muscle atrophy) to perform normal functions while still being able to utilize their partially functioning arm

5 ME, 3 BME, 1 ECE

Infotainment I/O

Design of a system to reduce driver distraction while providing the flexibility to operate a tablet/navigational system. Simulation of car interior, dashboard, windshield and steering wheel.

2 ME, 2 ECE

Industry sponsors provided tremendous support (financial and technical mentorship) for the initiative and were hugely appreciative of the student results. Such positive experiences certainly help the participating schools to continue to build stronger support and potentially receive more projects for future semesters. Students and faculty overwhelmingly appreciated the simple, minimalistic and clutter-free design of the portal. Few students suggested embedding more in-depth team formation tools within the site. With the growth of social networking and online collaboration and profile sharing platforms like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc. it is unlikely that adding team forming tools would remain a frequently requested feature. Of interest is the recently released online portfolio network, Seelio.com. This platform allows students to easily and beautifully document their skills, work experience, projects, and passions9. The Seelio.com platform seems to be tightly integrated with commonly known social networking websites. Students can potentially use such a platform to find potential team members, learn about their background, expertise and form multidisciplinary teams. Future Features Currently, the web portal is managed and operated by the School of ME. A single administrator approves all external projects ideas with consultation and coordination from faculty in all participating schools. This burden of coordination among different schools can be distributed by creating a capstone coordinator role within the site, for each School (within Engineering and outside like Industrial Design, Computer Science, etc.). Assigning such a role to at least one faculty from each school would allow them to accept suitable projects directly from the web-portal. Although the back-end design of the site is quite developed and robust, the front end views need to be made more user-friendly. The above mentioned features are slated to be added as part of a Capstone Design project for students in the College of Computing within Georgia Tech in future semesters. Conclusions Despite its well-known advantages for student learning, enabling multidisciplinary Capstone Design experiences across traditionally divided silos of Engineering is difficult and quite challenging. One of the challenges arises from the additional logistical burden on supervising faculty for sharing project ideas, forming teams between students across schools and making team assignments. An online portal, which enables open and transparent sharing of project information, makes the process simpler. An easy to use interface, minimalistic, yet functional design and helpful online presentations for different user groups are keys to successful

implementation of an online project management portal. We hope that the simple to use online platform continues to encourage students and faculty from different disciplines within Georgia Tech to work together on real-world true multidisciplinary Capstone Design projects. The design team is continually working on improving the user experience for all the three user groups – external sponsor, faculty and students to reduce the logistical burden. Acknowledgements The creation and development of the institute-wide portal would not have been possible without the help of the student web developers: Sarvagya Vaish (BS CMPE’13), Jasmine Lawrence (BS CS’13), Mark Trinquero (BS ISyE’13), Eli Cooper (Computational Media Senior) and Lindsay Dady (ME Senior). Thanks also to the helpful staff from the Office of Information Technology (OIT) at Georgia Tech, Jason Belford, Jimmy Lummis, Peter White and IT staff from the School of ME and Georgia Tech OIT: Asu Ogork, Marlena Frank, Mark Juliano and Kurt Nelson. The portal development project was funded by the Office of the Director of Design & Innovation at Georgia Tech with additional support from our generous corporate sponsors: John Deere, Ford, Caterpillar, Lockheed Martin, Bechtel, NCR, Rolls Royce, Whirlpool, Eaton’s Cooper Lighting, National Instruments, Integrated Environmental Services, E-Z-Go, Textron, Jacobsen, Coca-Cola, Formetco, Delta, Michelin, Autodesk, Angelica, Southern States, Medtronic, TriVantage, Boeing, Pratt & Whitney, Viracon, Weyerhaeuser, Shell, BP, Panasonic, DKF Investments, CyborFusion, VinoSpout, HarrellNut Company, General Motors, General Electric, and American Fiber Packaging. References [1] C. L. Dym, A. M. Agogino, O. Eris, D. D. Frey, and L. J. Leifer, “Engineering Design Thinking, Teaching,

and Learning,” Journal of Engineering Education, vol. 94, no. 1, pp. 103-120, 2005. [2] N. Hotaling, B. B. Fasse, L. F. Bost, C. D. Hermann, and C. R. Forest, “A Quantitative Analysis of the Effects

of a Multidisciplinary Engineering Capstone Design Course,” Journal of Engineering Education, vol. 101, no. 4, pp. 630-656, 2012.

[3] R. L. Miller, and B. M. Olds, “A Model Curriculum for a Capstone Course in Multidisciplinary Engineering Design,” Journal of Engineering Education, vol. 83, no. 4, pp. 311-316, 1994.

[4] J. T. Allenstein, B. Rhoads, P. Rogers, and C. A. Whitfield, “Examining the Impacts of a Multidisciplinary Engineering Capstone Design,” in 120th ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Atlanta, GA, 2013.

[5] M. Ardis, E. Hole, and J. Manfredonia, “Creating a Marketplace for Multidisciplinary Multi-university Systems Engineering Capstone Projects,” Procedia Computer Science, vol. 16, pp. 1036-1042, 2013.

[6] R. Bannerot, R. Kastor, P. Ruchhoeft, and J. Terry, “Challenges and Solutions in Developing a Three Department Interdisciplinary, Capstone Design Course at the University of Houston,” in International Conference on Engineering Education, Gainesville, Florida, 2004.

[7] "Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs," last accessed 12/31/2013, 2013; http://www.abet.org/uploadedFiles/Accreditation/Accreditation_Process/Accreditation_Documents/Current/eac-criteria-2012-2013.pdf

[8] A. Chandak. "Tech student body integrates for capstone," 12/31/2013, 2013; http://nique.net/life/2013/09/12/tech-student-body-integrates-for-capstone/.

[9] "What is Seelio?," 12/31/2013, 2013; https://seelio.com/about-us.

Paper ID #9523

Expanding and Improving the Integration of Multidisciplinary Projects in aCapstone Senior Design Course: Experience Gained and Future Plans

Dr. Michael P. Frank, FAMU-FSU College of Engineering

Dr. Michael P. Frank has been coordinating the involvement of Electrical and Computer Engineering stu-dents in the Senior Design program at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering since 2011. He previouslyadvised several individual senior design teams as an assistant professor in the ECE department during theperiod 2004-2007. Prior to that, he coached several industry-sponsored multidisciplinary senior designteams in the Integrated Product and Process Design honors program at the University of Florida’s Collegeof Engineering, when he was as an assistant professor in the department of Computer and InformationScience and Engineering there, during the period 1999-2004. He received his B.Sci. from Stanford Uni-versity in 1991, and completed his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at M.I.T. in1999.

Prof. Kamal E Amin, Florida A&M University/Florida State University

Over 35 years industrial experience with 3M Company, Norton Co., and Bendix/ Allied Corp. and around9 years academic experience at several universities including FSU, WPI, Univ. Massachusetts, WayneState Univ. Lawrence Inst. of Technology, and supervised MS theses. Was jointly awarded several mul-tiyear, multimillion dollars contracts from the Department of Energy, DOE, the Department of Defense(DARPA/ ARPA), and several CRETA ones (jointly with both Oak Ridge National Lab, ORNL, and Ar-gonne National Lab, ANL). The author holds 6 patents, over 20 record of invention, several individualand corporate awards, over 50 publications/ presentations, and chaired several sessions at internationalconferences, and served on couple of standardization committees. Areas of expertise and interest includecost-effective manufacturing, product, process, and material design and development, process modeling,nondestructive evaluation and sensors, improved performance and capacity of transmission lines, six-sigma, Design for Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma, QFD, Statistics, project management, consulting, andholding workshops on team building, leadership, and creativity and innovation. Presently teaching en-gineering design methods, and coordinating/ co supervising, and instructing senor design classes andprojects.

Dr. Okenwa I Okoli, Florida A&M University/Florida State UniversitySungmoon Jung Ph.D., FAMU-FSU College of Engineering

Dr. Jung joined the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the FAMU-FSU Collegeof Engineering in August 2008, after working at Caterpillar Champaign Simulation Center as a staffengineer for two and half years. Dr. Jung’s research interests include wind engineering, wind energy,structural health monitoring, and nonlinear finite element analysis. Dr. Jung is a recipient of the NationalScience Foundation CAREER award titled ”Offshore Wind Turbines Subjected to Hurricanes: Simulationof Wind-Wave-Structure Interaction and Aerodynamic Load Reduction”.

Prof. Robert A van Engelen, Florida State University

Dr. Robert van Engelen is professor and chair in the department of Computer Science at the Florida StateUniversity. Van Engelen received the B.S. and the M.S. in Computer Science from Utrecht University,the Netherlands, in 1994 and the Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Leiden Institute of Advanced Com-puter Science (LIACS) at Leiden University, the Netherlands, in 1998. His research interest include Pro-gramming Languages and Compilers, High-Performance Computing, Problem-Solving Environments forScientific Computing, Cloud Computing, Services Computing, and Bayesian Networks. Van Engelen’sresearch has been recognized with awards and sponsorships from the US National Science Foundationand the US Department of Energy Early Career PI award. He published over 80 refereed technical publi-cations in reputable international conferences and journals, He serves as a member of the editorial boardon the IEEE Transactions on Services Computing journal and has served on over 40 technical program

c©American Society for Engineering Education, 2014

Paper ID #9523

committees for international conferences/workshops. Van Engelen is a senior member of the ACM andIEEE member.

Dr. Chiang Shih, Florida A&M University/Florida State University

Dr. Chiang Shih is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering Department, FAMU-FSU College of Engineer-ing, Florida State University. He received his Ph.D. degree from the Aerospace Engineering Departmentat University of Southern California in 1988. He has served as the department Chair from 2002 until 2011and is currently the Director of the Aeropropulsion, Mechatronics and Energy Center established in 2012.He is also the coordinator of the ME Senior Capstone Design Curriculum since 2008.

c©American Society for Engineering Education, 2014

Expanding and Improving the Integration of Multidisciplinary Projects in a Capstone Senior Design Course:

Experience Gained and Future Plans

Abstract

Over the last several years, the multidisciplinary capstone Senior Design Project program implemented by the departments of Mechanical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering has continued to expand and improve, in terms of the number of multidisciplinary, interdepartmental project teams, the degree of coordination between different departments, the rigor of the structured engineering design process, and the excellence of the project outcomes.

Important features of our interdepartmental Senior Design program include: (1) a two-semester structured engineering design sequence, with regular design-review checkpoints at which students receive feedback on their written reports, oral presentations and demonstrations from multidisciplinary groups of faculty reviewers; (2) the inclusion of many projects sponsored by external clients/customers, including established industrial firms, new entrepreneurial ventures, and research institutions (both government agencies/labs and academic science departments); (3) international collaborations through student exchange programs and partnerships with foreign universities in several countries; (4) ongoing participation in regional, national, and international engineering design competitions.

Several new milestones in the evolution of our program have been attained in recent years, including a first-place victory in a regional design competition (SoutheastCon), the success of several of our industry-sponsored teams in developing viable commercializable products, the development of several international exchange partnerships, and the expansion of our multidisciplinary program to include students from an increasing number of different departments, with several students from the Civil and Environmental Engineering and Computer Science departments newly participating on our multidisciplinary teams this year.

In this paper, we review the development and present structure of our multidisciplinary program, discuss some of the administrative challenges faced and lessons learned in the course of our interdepartmental collaboration, and present our vision for making this program even more successful and well-integrated in the future, through enhancements such as improved synchronization of schedules and standardization of assignment requirements between departments.

Introduction

Increasingly today, many undergraduate engineering schools and colleges are striving to more extensively integrate multidisciplinary capstone design experiences into their Bachelors’ degree program curricula, impelled in part by the requirement1 from the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) for Bachelors’ degree programs to prepare their graduates to attain certain student outcomes, such as, in particular, the following two, highlighted here:

(c) an ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs within realistic constraints…

(d) an ability to function on multidisciplinary teams

These two outcomes can be quite naturally attained by interdepartmental student teams in the course of working on capstone design projects in a well-structured engineering design process.

Therefore, both to better satisfy this ABET requirement, as well as to more generally improve the quality of the degree programs at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering (a joint college of Florida A&M University and Florida State University), several departments at our College have been collaborating interdepartmentally in recent years to organize, coordinate and advise teams of students from multiple engineering departments to work together on multidisciplinary Senior Design projects. (In addition, on some projects, we strive to even involve disciplines outside of engineering, as appropriate; we will discuss this facet of our program in a later section.) The coordination of interdepartmental senior design projects helps our program to synergistically train our students towards attaining both ABET outcomes (c) and (d) simultaneously, and potentially several other ABET outcomes as well.

However, although interdepartmental collaboration on Senior Design projects is generally regarded as an activity that ends up being greatly beneficial to our students, and to the overall strength of our undergraduate program, implementing this kind of collaborative effort does present a number of significant administrative challenges, arising largely from disparities between the course structures and schedules and expectations that are placed on the students by the different departments that are participating in interdepartmental projects.

In this paper, we review the history of our interdepartmental collaboration at our College on our Senior Design program, discussing how it has evolved to its present state, reviewing what the major challenges are at present, and describing some of the recent accomplishments of our program, such as its integration of international and entrepreneurial aspects, and its increasing success in the realm of academic competitions, as well as in the development of useful artifacts, including scientific instruments for academic research, and also practical commercializable products for industrial and entrepreneurial sponsors.

We conclude by discussing some ideas and plans for improved methods of organization and administration of our interdepartmental Senior Design program that will hopefully help to make it even more successful and better-integrated in the future.

History of the Interdepartmental Senior Design Collaboration at Our College

Prior to 2006, many failed attempts had been made in our College to adequately integrate cross-disciplinary teams of engineering students in the senior capstone design projects. One of the main reasons for these earlier difficulties was the disparity between capstone design curricular structures between the different departments. Until 2006, the Mechanical Engineering (ME) department was the only engineering department at our College with a two-semester-long capstone design course, and so it had only been able to involve a few non-ME students in its multidisciplinary projects in an ad-hoc manner. Other departments, such as Electrical and

Computer Engieering (ECE), had capstone design projects that were “multidisciplinary” in the sense of involving students from multiple majors (e.g., both Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering) on projects, but these projects were not multidisciplinary to the extent of being interdepartmental, since both majors are taught within the one department.

The situation changed when both the ECE and Industrial and Manufacturing (IME) departments at our College modified their capstone design courses into a two-semester project format, compatible with the format already being used by ME. This has allowed a substantial expansion of our interdepartmental collaboration on multidisciplinary projects. In the rest of this section, we briefly review the evolution process of our efforts to foster a systematic integration of more multidisciplinary projects to enhance our College’s senior capstone design curriculum.

Curriculum Modifications. Several major changes in the capstone design curricula in both the ECE and IME departments have enabled better integration of the multidisciplinary design experience at our College.

First of all, starting in the 2006-2007 academic year, the ECE department adopted a new two-semester, six-hour capstone design sequence for both its electrical engineering and computer engineering Bachelors’ programs. This new structure for the ECE senior design sequence made it possible for all projects involving ECE students to be coordinated by a single faculty coordinator who was could ensure that all design projects included realistic design constraints and sufficient depth for a capstone design experience, and that when possible, the design projects could also be made multidisciplinary in nature. After a few pilot projects, a sustainable, collaborative model began to take shape.

Further improving the opportunities for interdepartmental collaboration, starting in Fall 2008, the ECE department’s Senior Design schedule became regularized so that all projects begin in Fall semester and finish in Spring, which is synchronized with the ME department’s schedule—whereas, in the past, some of ECE’s year-long projects were out-of-phase (started in Spring semester), which complicated course coordination and interdepartmental collaboration. The new arrangement matches well with the existing ME format allowing top-down coordination between coordinators early in the project solicitation and team recruitment process.

Also in 2008, the IME (a.k.a. IE) department, as well, came to the conclusion that their prior mode of conducting the senior projects over one semester was also outdated. In order to better fulfill customer design requirements, and to bring the IE department in line with other departments, the course schedule was modified to mandate a two-semester, Fall-Spring sequence, synchronizing with ME and ECE. In addition, the IME capstone design program reoriented its engineering design process to embrace the full six-sigma (6σ) methodology2 by dividing projects into five reporting phases3 such as Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control (DMAIC), with a gate (checkpoint) review at the end of each phase. This process can also be retrofitted as needed so that it interlaces well with either ME or ECE design sequence.

More detailed descriptions of the above changes were given in a previous conference paper4 by some of the authors and so they will not be further elaborated upon here. However, as a result of these changes, it is now possible to match up the senior design project sequence

between all three departments, and roughly coordinate expectations for design-review deliverables between them.

Organization of Multidisciplinary Projects. Formal collaborative efforts between the ECE and ME departments began in 2009 based on the concept of exchanging senior design students between courses to form multidisciplinary design teams in either department. A total of five interdepartmental projects were arranged in 2009-2010 to involve 17 ME and 15 ECE students, as shown in Table 1, below. Several iterations of schedule accommodations had to be made so that the two programs could carry out the collaboration more smoothly. Discussion of some of the challenges faced and overcome during this process will be discussed in a later section of the present paper; some of these experiences were also mentioned in our earlier paper.4

Table 1. Historical growth of our College’s multidisciplinary (MD) senior design program, showing the progression for each department, in subsequent academic years, in the number of

students from that department participating on interdepartmental MD teams (and the number of such teams that the department is involved with).

Academic Year

MD Project Students (Teams) in Each Dept. CEE ECE IME ME

2009-10: 0 15 (5) 0 17 (5) 2010-11: 0 18 (7) 9 (4) 25 (9) 2011-12: 0 32 (11) 14 (5) 37 (13) 2012-13: 3 (1) 24 (8) 0 22 (7) 2013-14: 3 (1) 42 (17) 14 (6) 52 (17) TOTAL: 6 (2) 131 (48) 37 (15) 153 (52)

Both ECE and ME departments started to also include IE students on projects during the

2010-11 academic year, when nine IE students participated in four projects. Another 14 students joined six projects in the following year. For the first two years, the IE students assigned were operating as “subcontractors” on the design projects, rather than as full members of the design teams. In this mode, the IE students provided design, construction and integration support for the design projects to aid the teams in meeting the requirements for the project, while also reporting directly to the IE department to fulfill departmental mandates.

Since 2009, a greater emphasis has been placed into selecting and assigning multidisciplinary teams from ME, ECE and IME departments each year. The following table depicts this evolution based on certain quantitative metrics. The columns in Table 1 show the total number of students from each engineering department that were involved in inter-departmental multidisciplinary projects over the time period Fall 2009-Spring 2014. The number in parentheses indicates the number of interdepartmental project teams that those students were distributed over. For example, within the Mechanical Engineering program, a total of 153 students (or 40% of all ME students) were involved in multidisciplinary projects over the past 5 years.

Note that overall, the number of multidisciplinary projects in most departments has been increasing each year except in 2012-13, when the IME program was unable to participate as a

result of low graduating senior enrollment. The percentage of all projects that are multidisciplinary has gradually increased as well. Overall, 45% of all of the ME-involved projects over this period were considered multidisciplinary, with the participation of one or more non-ME engineering students. Likewise, the percentage of ECE-involved projects that were multidisciplinary has steadily increased, up to a level of 77%, or more than three-fourths of the projects that involved ECE students in the current year. The trend has been similar in other departments.

More information about the present year’s multidisciplinary projects is provided later in this paper.

Current Structure of the Senior Design Course

At this point in the evolution of our multidisciplinary collaboration, the various Senior Design courses making up our program (from the various departments) have converged to the point where they all have largely the same overall structure, albeit still with many differences in details between them. Here, we are referring to the three engineering departments that are currently most heavily involved in our multidisciplinary program (ME, ECE, and IE). But, in each course, students in each department enroll in a two-semester sequence (under a course number in their home department) for their main work on their project; each such two-semester sequence starts in Fall semester, and ends in Spring.

On the multidisciplinary projects, students are exchanged between departments as needed to fill a specified number of positions in given disciplines. Students from a given department are appointed to available projects by the Senior Design course instructor for their home department. These appointments are based in part on students’ expressed project preferences, but the final appointment decisions are ultimately made by the course coordinators, to ensure that all projects’ staffing needs will be adequately met, insofar as possible. In the IME department, students are assigned to projects by collating data on GPA, race, and gender. A class average GPA is used to assign high, medium, and low scoring students to each group. This variability is introduced in conjunction with race and gender considerations to mimic the diversity of the workplace.

Once the teams are assembled, each project is thenceforth coordinated primarily (albeit with cooperation as needed from other coordinators) by its designated “lead” department, which is generally whichever department first solicited sponsorship and/or advising commitments for the given project, although occasionally a project will get handed off between departments in subsequent years, if that happens to be called for due to the changing technical needs of, or faculty interest in, the given project. The department that leads a project in any given year has primary responsibility that year for that project’s funding, advising, and general coordination, although oftentimes, multidisciplinary projects will receive some funding through multiple of the departments that are involved in that project. Also, generally, one or more faculty adviser(s) from each department that is participating on a given project will be appointed to help advise the student team on matters relating to that department’s engineering discipline, although levels of involvement in project advising tend to vary greatly between different faculty members. Most projects have a single main faculty advisor from the project’s lead department, who is largely responsible (albeit with help from course coordinators) for spearheading the project and steering it to best meet the needs of the particular sponsor/client (or competition effort); although,

occasionally, a project will be co-advised by faculty from multiple departments who wish to collaborate together.

One particularly important point that we feel should probably be made clear to all students at the start of the academic year, to avert certain kinds of conflict (a.k.a., “power struggles”), is that the question of which department is designated as the “lead” department on a given project is primarily just an administrative matter to facilitate an appropriate division of responsibilities at the course coordinator level, as well as to determine which department’s particular schedule of major design-review checkpoints the specific project team will follow. In particular, the “lead department” designation should not be interpreted as necessarily dictating the division of authority or leadership roles among the students on the team. Generally, teams are permitted to determine their own organizational structures for themselves. And certainly, students from other departments outside the project’s lead department are fully expected to contribute equally to the project work, including to the preparation of all major project deliverables, as well as to the team’s decision making, as full and equal members of the team. Teams should be made aware that their members from other departments are not necessarily expected to necessarily adopt a role that is subordinate to the students from the project’s lead department; in fact, not infrequently, one sees that students from other (non-“lead”) departments, depending on their personality or leadership skills, will end up leading their team’s efforts.

After team formation, over the course of the two-semester class sequence, the project teams proceed through a structured engineering design process, during the course of which they must pass through periodic checkpoints (formal design reviews and/or demonstration events). These checkpoints give all of the stakeholders who are involved with each project an opportunity to review and give feedback on the students’ progress on their design efforts, to hopefully help the students resolve any problematic issues that may arise as early as possible in the design process, as well as to assess the students’ progress for purposes of grading and departmental self-assessment. The list of stakeholders on any given project includes the course coordinators from all of the departments that are involved in that project, and any of their delegated teaching assistants; as well as the project’s main faculty advisor(s), and any other faculty reviewers that may have been assigned to help review the project by its lead department; and also any external technical advisors that may have been appointed by non-lead departments participating on the project; and finally, also, the project’s sponsor or client, for those projects that are externally sponsored by some interested party outside the Engineering school (such as a non-engineering academic department, an industrial firm, a government agency, or a private entrepreneur). We don’t expect that all of the various stakeholders on a given project will necessarily be able to attend each and every design-review event that is scheduled, but we generally do try to ensure that at least several (3 or more) qualified evaluators attend each review in person (perhaps with some others watching later by video), and that several of the reviewers contribute evaluations for each oral presentation and/or its accompanying written report (if any). The course coordinator for the project’s lead department (or their delegated TA) then averages together all of the different evaluations received in order to determine the overall team and individual scores on the assignment(s) corresponding to that checkpoint.

In addition to going through these major checkpoint events, which typically occur at a rate of roughly one every month or so (varying somewhat depending on the schedule of the project’s lead department), the student teams also meet with their main project advisor(s) and

course coordinator(s) to review their progress even more frequently, at least once every two weeks in between the major checkpoints. In a typical project’s timeline, most of the high-level design work will be completed in Fall semester, with some subsystem assembly/testing work having started, and Spring semester is (ideally) spent finalizing the remaining design details and completing full system prototype construction and testing. Usually, teams will hold two or more demonstrations of their prototypes at various stages of development during the Spring semester, concluding with the annual (ECE) Design Fair and (ME) Open House events in April, at which members of the public and external project sponsors have the opportunity to view the (hopefully) completed prototypes on display, and interact with the student teams.

At the end of each semester, the complete grade information about each student’s project work on their major project deliverables (as defined by the lead department, and evaluated by all contributing stakeholders) gets communicated from the lead department’s coordinator back to the coordinator for that student’s home department, who then assigns the student’s final overall course grade based on this information and other factors, such as peer review data and various smaller, department-specific assignments that may be associated with each individual course.

Current Year’s Interdepartmental Projects

Table 2 below lists the Senior Design projects this year that involve students (and faculty coordination/advising) contributed by multiple engineering departments at our College, out of the set: Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Mechanical Engineering (ME), and Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering (ME); the engineering departments that are currently involved in each project are indicated with an ‘X.’

The reader will note that currently, there is only one interdepartmental project that involves the Civil & Environmental Engineering (CEE) Department; this is because this department’s involvement in the interdepartmental Senior Design collaboration at our College is a new aspect of our program which is was only recently introduced (in 2012) and is proceeding on an experimental basis. The current CEE-involved project is funded by one of the authors’ National Science Foundation project on wind energy, and it will last for the next five years as a pilot program. Although traditional design problems in Civil Engineering had only a limited interdisciplinary aspect, we envision that emerging modern developments such as energy-efficient buildings or wind turbine structures will provide increasingly many opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration. One challenge that we faced was the size of the final product in Civil Engineering designs. Since it was not possible within the project budget to actually construct the kind of full-scale (e.g. ~50 m tall) wind turbine that would be most useful for civil-scale power generation, the students were asked to instead design the full-scale structure, but construct only a scaled-down model that will test key features of the design. We expect that CEE’s involvement with the multidisciplinary Senior Design program at our College may expand in future years as we gain more experience through this pilot project.

In addition to the projects listed above, there is one other currently active Senior Design project (RoboSub) that was interdepartmental between the ECE and ME departments during the three previous academic years (2010-11, 11-12, 12-13), but is currently only interdepartmental between the ECE department and Florida State’s Computer Science department; that project is not included in the above table because it currently actively involves only one engineering

department (although lab space for it is still being contributed by ME). There are no ME students on the team this year, because the bulk of the mechanical engineering work needed on the project was essentially completed last year.

Table 2. Current Interdepartmental Senior Design Projects at our College

Project Description CEE ECE IME ME

1. Autonomous Aerial Vehicle X X

2. Autonomous All-Terrain Vehicle X X

3. Bearing Bore Gauge Tester X X

4. Bridge Sensor X X

5. Conformable Battery Pack X X X

6. Friction Cone Penetrometer X X

7. Hand-Held Grinder X X

8. Hybrid Energy Storage for Off-Grid Zero-Emissions Building X X

9. Mars Lander Rover Recharger X X

10. Offshore Wind Turbine X X X

11. Oil Spill Radar Testbed X X

12. Orthogonal Interconnect Testbed X X X

13. Palm Harvester X X X

14. Protective Baseball Gear X X

15. Solar Arcjet Thruster X X

16. Solar Car for Shell Ecomarathon X X X

17. Indoor Quad-rotor Control X X

18. Robo-Ops Competition X X

There are also a number of other current Senior Design projects at our college, not listed above, that are at least somewhat multidisciplinary in nature, even though they may currently involve students (and faculty advisers) from only one department. For example, the SoutheastCon robotics competition effort normally requires electrical, computer and mechanical design elements, but our college’s teams involved in this competition have not been set up as interdepartmental projects; only the ECE department has been involved in them so far. (However, it’s possible that the ME department may choose to contribute students to some of the SoutheastCon project teams in some future years.) Likewise, there are similarly a number of projects that only have ME students on them, but which nevertheless involve at least a small

amount of design work in the area of electrical circuits and/or digital control systems. However, not every project that has some multidisciplinary aspect presents sufficient challenges to adequately engage students and faculty from multiple departments; therefore, in deciding which of the projects are appropriate to run as full-fledged interdepartmental multi-discipline efforts, the course coordinators must use their judgment, and be somewhat selective.

Collaborations with Non-Engineering Departments

Over the years, a number of Senior Design projects at our College have also involved collaborations with departments outside of the engineering school, thereby further extending the multidisciplinary reach and scope of our program.

For example, for the last three years, two of our departments (ECE and ME) have engaged in a partnership with Florida State’s department of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences department, and two of its associated research laboratories, to have teams of our engineering students develop various new scientific instruments (or instrumentation platforms) that would be of utility in oceanographic research. The senior projects that have been carried out so far in this ongoing partnership include:

• Robo-Boat for automated, GPS-navigated collection of temperature/salinity data. • Coastal Drifters for collection of current and temperature data in shallow coastal

waters. • Oil Spill Radar testbed for characterizing satellite radar response to oil slicks.

In addition, in some recent years, we have partnered with a laboratory within the Physics department of Florida A&M on a couple of projects to develop novel instrumentation for Cosmic Ray astronomy:

• COSMICi system for collection of directional cosmic-ray shower data. • Cosmic Cube, a low-cost desktop system for distributed collection of cosmic ray

shower data.

We have also collaborated with North Florida Community College’s science and mathematics department on a project involving the design of an enclosure for a telescope mirror.

Also, we are working with Florida State University’s Computer Science (CS) department to recruit upper-level CS undergraduates to participate in our senior engineering projects for special-topics credit. We had one CS student join a programming-intensive Senior Design project (RoboSub) starting in Fall 2013, and three more (including two graduate students) were added to other multidisciplinary projects (Oil Spill Radar, Penetrometer, Autonomous ATV) in Spring 2014. Hopefully, next year we will have even more participation from the CS department, and will work to recruit additional students from Florida A&M University’s Computer and Information Science (CIS) department.

Finally, although this is not strictly a collaboration with another teaching department per se, in the general realm of academic/educational projects, we have had two projects in recent years that were sponsored by local science museums.

Entrepreneurial and Product-Development Projects

Fostering entrepreneurship, and technology commercialization more generally, has, in recent years, emerged as a major new focus area for our College and for Florida State University, both to prepare our graduates to be better able to “think entrepreneurially” (or innovatively) in their engineering design and/or program management work when they get out in their careers (regardless of whether they actually start their own companies), and also, to hopefully help increase our local region’s economic development as new ventures started and/or staffed by former students increasingly “spin off” from the university.

In line with this trend, we have been working to add an entrepreneurial component to our Senior Design program, both by inviting entrepreneurs to sponsor projects in which teams of engineering students develop prototypes or demonstrations of new products supporting that entrepreneurial venture, as well as by encouraging students to come up with their own ideas for new entrepreneurial ventures which they can then seek funding for (e.g. through business plan competitions) and develop prototypes for in their Senior Design project. We are also currently in discussions with FSU’s business school, aimed towards the goal of integrating business school students into entrepreneurial engineering project teams in the future. For students who want to start their own companies based on their Senior Design project work, there are several local resources, such as business incubators, which can help students establish contact with the needed expertise to help them navigate through the difficult startup process. Also, even already-established companies can sponsor Senior Projects that are aimed at developing novel, commercializable technologies, fostering an entrepreneurial spirit within existing industry firms.

Some of the entrepreneurial and technology-commercialization-oriented Senior Design projects that have been pursued in recent years include:

• Bridge Sensor – Demonstrating a new technology for sensing structural fractures. • Electroluminescent Cap – A baseball cap product with a flashing sports logo. • Grinder Tool – Improving a handheld grinding tool for a local manufacturer. • Palm Harvester – Developing a machine to aid in harvesting of tall oil palms. • Pedibus Development – Designing a pedal-powered sightseeing bus for tourists. • Printer Cleaning Station – Accessory to clean the print head on a fabric printer. • Self-Stabilizing Pool Table – Student-led venture to develop this novel product. • Solar-Powered Phase Change Compressor – Developing a working HVAC

application of this invention patented by the project sponsor. • Turf Hardness Tester – Design & development of a manufacturable product for

a local manufacturer of turfgrass test equipment.

Several of us (the Senior Design course coordinators) also helped to organize and participate in an Entrepreneurship Kickoff Event (mixer and workshop) at our College in April 2013, in which experts from the local business community presented advice for student entrepreneurs, and students presented their ideas for new entrepreneurial projects that they wanted to pursue as Senior Design projects during the current academic year. One of this year’s entrepreneurial Senior Design projects (Self-Stabilizing Pool Table) came to us as a direct result of last year’s workshop, and we are striving to expand this aspect of our program in future years. We are seeking grant support to provide seed funding for student entrepreneurial projects.

Although our product-development oriented projects are ultimately run by the students, and the scope of what they can accomplish in two semesters is limited, we also encourage the external industry sponsors of our projects to provide the students with helpful feedback, during (live or teleconferenced) sponsor meetings, and during the Q&A periods of student presentations to which the sponsors are invited, to help our students better apprehend the real-world considerations that affect important business aspects of product commercialization, such as the manufacturability and marketability of their designs. This industry participation helps the students “keep their feet on the ground” and helps to ensure that their projects will be more than just an academic exercise that only looks good on paper – ideally, we would like their efforts to also have actual value in the real world.

Projects from Industry and Government Sponsors

External sponsorship of our capstone design program provides many benefits by exposing our students to real-world challenges and giving them the opportunity to engage with engineering professionals who serve as mentors. In addition, many industry-sponsored projects are intrinsically multidisciplinary in nature, which demands collaboration from engineers with diverse backgrounds. Over time, we have engaged many sponsors with consistent levels of sponsorship; these sponsors can, in many cases, provide solid mentorship through their appointed liaisons who help advise the students, as well as financial support towards the realization of prototypes. This sustained sponsorship has also provided strong incentives for departments to work together, and is one of the major reasons for our increasing multidisciplinary collaboration.

For many years, our Mechanical Engineering department, in particular, has been fortunate, with the participation of its Mechanical Engineering Advisory Council (MEAC), to cultivate many long-term industry and government sponsors who have provided high-quality real-world and engineering-relevant projects, encompassing more than half of our recently sponsored projects. Other departments in our collaboration have also been building up similar connections, which over time are further strengthening our cross-departmental design collaborations. In general, we have engaged with two types of sponsors:

1. Industrial sponsors from national/global companies such as Boeing, Cummins, Harris, Lockheed, and GE, along with a wide variety of local/regional companies;

2. Government agencies such as Air Force Research Lab, NASA centers, Department of Energy national laboratories, our state’s Department of Transportation, etc.

This year alone, we have four global/national and seven regional/local companies as sponsors. Collectively, this year their support is funding a total of 14 projects (see Table 3, below), several of which (marked with asterisk “*”) are currently multidisciplinary (or have been in past years).

In addition, typically a number of projects each year are sponsored or co-sponsored by government agencies. This year we have several projects that are primarily sponsored by government agencies:

• Friction Cone Penetrometer – Sponsored by the National Park Service. • Mars Lander Rover Recharger – Sponsored by NASA Kennedy Space Center.

• Indoor Quad-rotor Control – Sponsored by the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) and Eglin Air Force base (as well as co-sponsored by an industry sponsor).

• Solar Arcjet Thruster – Sponsored by the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

Table 3. Industry-Sponsored Projects in 2013-14. *Multidisciplinary projects.

# Project Title Industry Sponsor(s) 1 Solar Car for Shell-Ecomarathon (Competition Effort)* Boeing 2 Biaxial Tensile Test Fixture for Uniaxial MTS Testing Cummins 3 Mechanical Dump Valve 4 Turbocharger Compressor Casing 5 Phase Change Transient Heatsink for Power Semiconductor GE Aviation/

Unison Industries 6 SoutheastCon Mobile Robotics (Competition Effort) Harris 7 Orthogonal Interconnect Concepts for Phased Array Antenna* 8 RoboSub (Competition Effort)* 9 Indoor Quad-rotor Control* Jabil 10 Grinder/Battery Development King Arthur’s Tools 11 Automated High Volume Bearing Bore Gauge* Koyo Bearing 12 DTC Magnet Insertion Process Turbocor 13 Turf Hardness Impact Tester Turf-Tec International 14 Shuttle Valve Design Verdicorp

International Engagement

Our Senior Design program has increasingly many international facets. These help to expose our students to the kind of diverse, multinational environment that is the context for many real-world engineering projects in today’s increasingly globalized economy.

For example, we have a successful ongoing collaboration with two Brazilian universities as part of the Fund for Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), a program of the U.S. Department of Education which encourages international education collaborations. In this program, we alternate, in different semesters, between sending some our students to Brazil, and having some Brazilian students come here to study. During part of each year, the teams in this program are split between the two countries (with some team members in Brazil, and some in the U.S.), and during this period, the students must leverage teleconferencing and other technologies to collaborate effectively on their project. For example, in Fall 2013 semester, the American student on one team who was in Brazil delivered his portion of the required design-review presentations in the form of a pre-recorded video, which was integrated into a PowerPoint presentation that was delivered live by the rest of his team.

Our College recently also started up a new exchange program with the Federal University of Technology at Akura (FUTA) in Nigeria; as part of this program, some Nigerian exchange students on a BS+MS track are participating in our Senior Design projects this year.

Our College is also in the process of starting up several new international exchange programs in partnership with the Tianjin University of Technology (TUT), Anhui University, and the University of Macau (all in China); in these programs, similarly to the Nigerian one, a number of Chinese students will finish their B.S. degrees and earn their Masters degrees at our College. As a result of this program, we expect to have an increased number of Chinese students participating in our senior projects starting in the 2014-15 academic year.

Finally, one of our universities (Florida State) has a branch campus in Panama with a Computer Science department there, and we in discussions with them about collaborating to start up a new international, multidisciplinary Senior Design project next year, with one of our former students working on that project to finish his degree remotely.

Ongoing Particpation in Engineering Competitions

Despite the increasing number of projects in our Senior Design program that are aimed at developing practical products for science and industry, another continuing facet of our program remains our ongoing participation in regional, national, and international engineering design competitions. In recent years, competitions that our students have participated in (or at least, worked towards participating in) at some level include:

• The American Astronautical Society (AAS) and American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) sponsored CanSat competition (rocket-launched payload).

• The American Solar Challenge competition (solar car road race). • The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI)

sponsored Student Unmanned Air Systems (SUAS) competition to develop autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (AAVs/UAVs).

• The AUVSI-sponsored RoboSub (robotic submersible vehicle) competition. • The Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE) sponsored regional

SoutheastCon student hardware competition (mobile robotics competition) • The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) sponsored

Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts – Academic Linkage (RASC-AL) Robo-Ops (planetary rover) competition.

• The Shell Eco-Marathon Challenge (energy-efficient vehicle competition). • The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE International) sponsored Formula

Hybrid (gas-electric and all-electric racing vehicles) competition.

Overall, our College’s performance in these kinds of engineering competitions has been improving in recent years; for example, in the last two years, our student teams won 1st and 3rd place trophies at one competition (SoutheastCon), and last year one of our multidisciplinary teams won 5th place in another competition (Robo-Ops).

Environmental, Social and Sustainability Considerations

In the course of their projects, our students address and are taught how to consider the impact of their designs on the environment, safety and health hazards, product life cycles and lifetime cost of ownership, reliability, risk analysis, and how to analyze probabilities in their

designs. Statistical analysis is particularly important when not enough data is available, or the final product is used in uncertain and poorly defined conditions, and may be likely to be abused or misunderstood by the user. Our students must write Users’ Manuals for their products, and provide other documents that can help address all of these concerns.

Our students work closely with their sponsors/customers, and they implement midcourse changes on an as-needed basis. Sponsors’ evaluation of project progress and accomplishment is an integral part of the senior design grading process, to ensure that the customer’s input has weight with, and is respected by, the students.

Other Aspects of Senior Design Course Content

In the lecture content of our departments’ Senior Design courses, we focus not only on design approaches and project planning, but also on teaching our students the basics of professional conduct, including team-building, engineering ethics, oral and written communication skills, and other basic skills that they can adapt to think critically and to learn how to be creative and innovative. Although our basic approach has been to focus on problem definition, needs analysis, development of design concepts, and evaluation of such concepts and overall project-related needs, we also address the tools and methods that students need to think quantitatively and carefully, and to analyze all possible scenarios, risks, and limitations of their designs and implementations. Those tools include decision theory, analytical hierarchy process5 (AHP), quality function deployment6 (QFD), basic creativity7,8 and innovation9 techniques that students can build and enhance to improve on what they traditionally do, as well as effective time management, and conflict management/resolution10,11 strategies. Those approaches were derived from numerous experts’ writings (articles, books, papers, workshops, and others) that have screened those tools to determine the ones that best enhance the learning process and students’ critical thinking skills, and help students avoid impeding cultural, personal, and other social and self-limiting habits and performance barriers.

One of the key features of our approach is that we require evaluation and feedback from our students on the relative performance of themselves and their team members (self-and-peer evaluation) and review this information periodically, and take necessary steps to implement any needed correction measures. This usually saves time and helps our students focus more on ensuring project success and on having every member contribute as effectively as he or she can.

Challenges in Interdepartmental Senior Design Project Coordination

Over the years, we have found that working on multidisciplinary projects is a very rewarding experience for the students, as well as for ourselves. Working closely with our colleagues in other disciplines helps us all to gain an appreciation for our sister disciplines and to more effectively see and understand the “big picture” of engineering as a whole. Students, too, will benefit from this experience when they get out into the real world of industry, in which many, many real-world projects are highly multidisciplinary, and engineers from many backgrounds are expected to work effectively together. For these and other reasons, we feel that the multidisciplinary aspect of our program is invaluable, and is well worth the challenges.

Nevertheless, one does encounter difficult challenges in administering and coordinating such a program. Many of these arise from the relative newness of the multidisciplinary program, and from the historical tendency of many academics within particular engineering specialties to stay within their “silos” and not interact very much with their colleagues in other fields. Because of that history, we, as a faculty, are not always extremely familiar with the kinds of tools, techniques, methods, diagrams, analyses, etc. that would be expected to be seen from students in other disciplines, and sometimes this leads to “surprises” during the evaluation process, wherein a faculty member may be asked to help evaluate a team’s written report or oral presentation, and they get exposed, during the course of the review, to a type of technical material that they are not familiar with, and do not know how to appropriately assess. However, these kinds of problems can be expected to diminish by themselves over time, as the growth of our multidisciplinary program gradually helps to expose more of our faculty, over the years, to content material from other disciplines, and as a result, over time, this material becomes more familiar to them.

Other problems are more administrative and structural in nature. One classic source of tension in the interdepartmental projects at our college arises from the differing class schedules and meeting scheduling procedures used by the different departments. These in turn relate to (still) somewhat differing credit-hour structures for the course sequence in different departments. For example, at our College, currently there remains the following disconnect:

• In our Mechanical Engineering department, students take a 3 credit-hour Engineering Design Methods course their Junior year, in which they receive most of the lecture content of Senior Design. During Senior Year, they take Senior Design for 3 credit hours in both the Fall and Spring, and 3 hours/week worth of class periods are set aside for this purpose, but, since they have already had the lectures, this time can be used mostly for project meetings and presentations.

• In our Electrical and Computer Engineering department, students also take 3 credit hours for Senior Design in Fall and Spring of their senior year, but there is no separate Engineering Design Methods course in the curriculum; instead, students receive that lecture content during Fall semester of their Senior year, at the same time that they are starting work on their projects. As a result, those class periods are not available to use for team meetings and presentations; instead these events must often be scheduled at times outside of students’ normal class hours.

Probably more than anything else, this difference in these two departments’ credit-hour structures, and the resulting difference in the use of class periods, is the main problem that, in recent years, has led to recurring tensions between students (and occasionally also faculty) from different departments who are involved with the interdepartmental projects, since it makes it rather difficult to schedule meetings and presentations for projects at times during which both Mechanical and Electrical/Computer students are available, and, in recent years, the number of these projects has been increasing. However, because ultimately this particular problem arises from differences in departmental curricula, this is not the kind of problem that can finally be solved by the Senior Design course coordinators acting on their own; instead, it must be resolved by decision-making bodies at the departmental and college level.

The scheduling problems tend to be especially painful during the first weeks of Fall semester, during which the team members from the various departments are not yet finished coming together to comprise a well-coordinated and high-functioning team. (The importance of this team development process is well summarized in, e.g., chapter 9 of Ford & Coulston’s text.5) In the past, we have found that the mismatched course schedules can all too easily turn into an excuse for students to take a long time to establish their team cohesion. In response to this experience, we have developed several instruments (short assignments) which we hope will facilitate a smoother, more rapid and effective team development process during the first few weeks of Fall semester:

1. “Team Contact Information” and “Team Meeting Planner” forms, to force members of multidisciplinary teams to exchange contact & schedule information with each other immediately (within a few days) after team assignments are made.

2. “Meeting Scheduling Checklist” form, to push teams to also schedule all required meetings (team meetings, meetings with project advisor/sponsor, coordination meetings with course instructors, etc.) as early as possible in Fall semester.

3. “Code of Conduct” assignment (an agreement to be composed and signed by all team members), to force teams to sit down with each other and plan out the basic outlines of how they are going to work together, and what their responsibilities to each other are.

The instruments in item 1 above have been applied, on an informal trial basis, by the ECE department to all of the ECE-involved projects, and have been found to be very helpful; the ECE department will be including these assignments (as minor graded items) on its official course syllabus starting in Fall 2014, and they are also recommended for adoption by other departments.

The instrument in item 2 above was just developed this year, albeit too late to be used by all teams, but it will also be introduced as a formal requirement in the ECE course starting next Fall. It, too, is also recommended for adoption by other departments.

Regarding item 3, the Code of Conduct, we feel that this document is very important for giving all team members a sense of accountability to their team, and for establishing procedures to be followed in case a team member is not doing his or her part. On occasion, we have found that there have arisen disconnects between departments regarding the detailed expectations for this assignment, but we believe that such disconnects can be prevented in the future based on some new guidelines for this assignment that we have developed to standardize expectations for this assignment between departments; we plan to begin implementing these guidelines next year.

Finally, a third area of challenge arises from differences in course syllabi and evaluation rubrics between the different departments. The expectations and timing for major deliverables (project reports and presentations) are roughly similar between the different departments at our college, but are not identical. This sometimes leads to confusion among the students as to what the expectations are for their particular project, and among the faculty evaluators as to what standards they should be using to evaluate a given document or presentation. However, these problems can be alleviated somewhat by simply doing a methodical job, within each department, of providing clear assignment schedules to students in advance, and clarifying in writing (e.g., through written evaluation rubrics) what the expectations are for that department’s deliverables,

and providing that information in advance to the students as well as to all faculty (from every department) who are asked to help evaluate a given project’s deliverables.

However, sometimes the lead department’s evaluation rubrics, if they were overly narrow in scope, might not be adequate to encompass appropriate evaluation of student contributions from a different engineering discipline. To mitigate this problem, course developers should strive to compose their rubrics using language that is broad and flexible enough to allow evaluators from other departments to adequately express their assessment of the kinds of content that they expect to see from the team addressing aspects of the project that are important to his their (the evaluators’) own fields.

To some extent, over time, the various departments have also been borrowing ideas from each other’s evaluation rubrics and report/presentation guidelines to include in their own department’s materials. Eventually, we may see some degree of standardization of assignment materials arise between departments; certainly, there are many commonalities already. However, due to departments’ differing pedagogical interests, this is bound to be a gradual process.

Towards an Integrated, College-Level Senior Design Project Course

In the near term, we expect that our scheduling problems will be somewhat alleviated next academic year (2014-15), because our College will be adopting a new class schedule in which all engineering classes will be taught only two days a week (either Monday/Wednesday or Tuesday/Thursday). This means that Fridays should theoretically be available, for students from all departments, as a time during which they can hold team meetings or design-review presentations for Senior Design, since none of our students should have class conflicts on those days, except for the occasional student who may happen to be taking a course from another college that meets on Friday during their senior year.

However, despite the near-term alleviation of scheduling pressures that we expect this change may afford us, in the longer term, it may nevertheless be advisable for us to continue to work, at the departmental level, to better synchronize the schedules of the various departments’ Senior Design courses, because there may not be enough time on Fridays alone to satisfy the scheduling needs of all projects.

One idea that has been floated is to create a separate course number, managed at the college level (not by any single department), and put all of the multidisciplinary projects under that course heading, so that all students working on those projects will have the same class periods set aside for Senior Design during the week, and so, during any of the reserved class periods, on weeks when there are no lectures scheduled in the course calendar, it will be guaranteed that every member of each multidisciplinary team will be free during that time period to meet as a team, or with faculty, about their project.

However, to implement such a change would still require significant coordination between the departments, to make sure that that new course were designed to adequately satisfy the curricular needs of all of the participating departments. And, in some cases, accomplishing this may be quite challenging; for example, the ABET criteria for Civil Engineering mandate that only a licensed P.E. may teach the capstone design course. Also, having a separate course for

the multidisciplinary projects might introduce additional delay and confusion at the start of the Fall semester, since students would not even know which course number to register for until they knew whether they had been appointed to a multidisciplinary project or not. So at this point, this path is still only one of several possible solution approaches that we are considering. But, as we said, any solution anyway requires buy-in from several departments’ curriculum committees, and it may also impact other parts of the curriculum (e.g. if it changes the number of credit-hours dedicated to Senior Design), so it will be likely be administratively difficult to implement. Therefore, we remain the lookout for creative new solutions to these kinds of challenges.

Conclusion

Over the years, we have found that to interdepartmentally coordinate multidisciplinary Senior Design projects has been a challenging, but very rewarding experience. Usually, by the end of the year, each team has gained an enormous amount of practical engineering skills and knowledge, as well as having learned valuable lessons on how to work on a diverse team, address real-world needs, and resolve conflicts arising from students’ differing backgrounds and work habits, while also addressing unpredictable challenges that arise externally due to changing requirements from clients, occasional sponsor unavailability due to government shutdowns, etc. Frequently, our past students have expressed to us, after completion of our program, that they learned more in the course of their Senior Design projects than in the rest of their engineering curriculum put together. This type of feedback encourages us that we are on the right track. Although the administrative tasks involved in successfully coordinating >300 students and ~60 faculty from five departments (including, now, Civil & Environmental Engineering and Computer Science) on several dozen multi-disciplinary projects are complex and difficult, we nevertheless feel that the rewards for our students, and for the quality of our program, are substantial and well worth the effort. Every year, we learn new things about how to effectively manage this collaboration, and as a result, each year our coordination processes become more streamlined and effective, despite the increase in complexity resulting from an ever-increasing number of multidisciplinary projects. This allows increasingly many students each year to benefit from the multidisciplinary team experience, while having a better experience overall in Senior Design. Fortuitously for us, next year’s change in our College’s class schedules may alleviate some of our long-standing meeting-scheduling headaches. Further improvements in the interdepartmental synchronization of the capstone design course may also be possible. In future years, as word of our program’s successes continues to spread, and more new external (industry, government, and entrepreneurial) sponsors jump on board, we anticipate that the number of interesting, practical, well-funded and successful projects developed by multidisciplinary teams of senior engineering students at our College will only continue to grow.

Bibliography

1 ABET Engineering Accreditation Commission, “Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs: Effective for Reviews During the 2014-2015 Accreditation Cycle,” Oct. 26, 2013. http://www.abet.org/eac-criteria-2014-2015/.

2 Geoff Tennant, SIX SIGMA: SPC and TQM in Manufacturing and Services, Gower Publishing, Ltd., 2001. 3 Joseph A. De Feo, and William Barnard, JURAN Institute's Six Sigma Breakthrough and Beyond: Quality

Performance Breakthrough Methods, Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Ltd., 2005. 4 R. Hovsapian, C. Shih, B. Harvey and O. Okoli, “An Overview of our Experience Integrating Multidisciplinary

and International Design Projects within the Senior Capstone Design Course,” 2011 ASEE Annual Conference Vancouver, Canada, June 26-29, 2011.

5 Ralph M. Ford and Chris S. Coulston, Design for Electrical and Computer Engineers: Theory, Concepts, and Practice, McGraw-Hill, 2008.

6 Yoji Akao, The Customer Driven Approach to Quality Planning and Deployment, Minato, Tokyo 107 Japan: Asian Productivity Organization, 1994.

7 Shelley Carson, Your Creative Brain: Seven Steps to Maximize Imagination, Productivity, and Innovation in Your Life, Harvard Health/Jossey-Bass, 2010.

8 E. E. Lewis, Masterworks of Technology: The Story of Creative Engineering, Architecture, and Design, Prometheus Books, 2004.

9 John Kao, Innovation: Breakthrough Ideas at 3M, DuPont, GE, Pfizer, and Rubbermaid, HarperCollins, 1997. 10 Vivian Scott, Conflict Resolution at Work for Dummies, Wiley, 2010. 11 Dale Carnegie, The 5 Essential People Skills: How to Assert Yourself, Listen to Others, and Resolve Conflicts,

Simon & Schuster, 2009.

Paper ID #10095

Satellite Design for Undergraduate Senior Capstone

Mr. Joseph Thomas Emison, Taylor University

Joseph Emison is a Senior Engineering Physics Major at Taylor University. From spring 2013 to presenthe has served as the Project Engineer and VLF/E-Field Sensing Lead of the Taylor University ELEO-Satnanosatellite in the Air Force Research Lab’s University Nanosatellite Program competition. Joseph willgraduate in December 2014 and eager to continue doing research, whether in graduate school or industry.

Miss Kate Yoshino, Taylor University

Kate Yoshino is a junior at Taylor University studying Engineering Physics. Currently, she serves as theProject Manager for Taylor University’s Extremely Low Earth Orbit Nanosatellite (ELEO-Sat). Kate isresponsible for team management, stakeholder communication, schedules, and programmatic budgeting.Additionally, she is responsible for community and educational outreach and the development of one ofELEO’s primary sensors (Langmuir Probe).

Mr. Stephen Edward Straits, Taylor University

STEPHEN STRAITS is an undergraduate student in Engineering Physics at Taylor University, with afocus on mechanical and systematic engineering. He is currently the Lead Mechanical Engineer forELEO-Sat and has contributed to the design of TSAT and GEARR-Sat. He will be graduated May 2014.Email: stephen straits@taylor.edu

Dr. Hank D. Voss, Taylor University

Dr. Hank D. Voss received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from University of Illinois in 1977.He thenworked for Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratories prior to coming to Taylor University in 1994. Heis currently a Professor of Engineering and Physics at Taylor University. Some of the courses that he reg-ularly has taught include Principles of Engineering, Intro to Electronics, Statics, Advanced Electronics, Jr.Engineering Projects, FE Review, Control Systems, Fundamentals of Space Flight Systems, Astronomy,and Sr. Capstone Sequence.

He enjoys mentoring undergraduate students in aerospace, sensors, and energy-related research projects.Some of the research areas include spacecraft nano-satellite technologies, satellite payload instrumenta-tion, High Altitude research Platform (HARP) experiments, wave particle interactions in space, space-flight X-ray imagers, construction and renewable energy engineering and architecture, and philosophy ofscience. Dr. Voss has worked as PI on many NASA, Air Force, Navy, NSF, and DOE research grants andhas published over 120 scientific papers.

c©American Society for Engineering Education, 2014

Satellite Design for Undergraduate Senior Capstone

Abstract

This paper demonstrates the educational value of satellite design in an engineering

capstone course. Taylor University engineering capstone students participate in the Air Force

Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) University Nanosatellite Program (UNP) competition to design

and deliver a small satellite (nanosatellite), which will accomplish a mission with real-world

significance. Undergraduate educational merits and assessment are discussed and demonstrated

through overwhelmingly positive feedback from alumni. The capstone course focuses on

developing capable engineers with ABET a-k 1 proficiency. According to the Air Force Research

Laboratory, the objective of the UNP competition is to “train tomorrow’s space professionals by

providing a rigorous, two-year, concept-to-flight-ready spacecraft competition for U.S. higher

education institutions and to enable small satellite research and development (R&D), integration

and flight test” 15

. UNP and engineering capstone design processes are also detailed. Through

UNP and the senior engineering capstone class, students experience end-to-end development of a

project with real-world application in the aerospace industry. The project promotes creativity and

develops skilled engineers.

Figure 1: Taylor University Extremely Low Earth Orbit nanosatellite (ELEO-Sat) –

background photo take from high altitude balloon at SHOT Workshop 2013

Introduction

This introduction provides a brief overview of the content of the paper. Information on

the University Nanosatellite Program, the project mission, and the influence of the project on

undergraduate education is detailed in the background section. Further assessment of the

educational value of the program may be found in the Assessment section. Taylor University and

UNP design processes are explained in the Design section.

Background

The Extremely Low Earth Orbit nanosatellite (ELEO-Sat) (see Figure 1) is an

undergraduate senior design project in an engineering capstone course at Taylor University. The

project is made possible through the University Nanosatellite Program (UNP). The development

of a satellite provides a hands-on learning environment that challenges students and encourages

development of new skills. The benefits of participation in UNP are shared by hundreds of

undergraduate and graduate students across the country.

University Nanosatellite Program

The University Nanosatellite Program (UNP) is an educational program focused on

developing students by exposing them to professional engineering experiences while giving

universities an opportunity to contribute to innovative scientific research projects. The aim of

UNP is for “students to learn the tough lessons about satellite design by building one

themselves” 3. UNP was created to focus on three key areas, which are education, technology,

and university development. This is demonstrated in each two year UNP cycle by the

involvement of 10-12 universities whose individual projects exhibit advancements in education

and technology.

Taylor University’s involvement in the AFRL program began with TEST, a

microsatellite, in UNP-3 and now continues in UNP-8 with ELEO-Sat. UNP provides many

opportunities for each university and its students to glean vital, detailed knowledge about

designing functional aerospace systems. The AFRL features Expert Area Teleconferences, or

EATs, where field experts teach key aspects of the engineering process and subsystem design.

Examples of EAT topics include configuration management, attitude determination and control,

concept of operations, thermal control, and structural design.

Moreover, learning is encouraged through attendance to conferences and workshops such

as the SmallSat Conference, the Student Hands On Training (SHOT) Workshop, and the

CubeSat Developers’ Workshop. The SHOT Workshop and SmallSat Conference were held

during the summer of 2013; more than half of the Taylor University team attended one or both.

The focus of the SHOT workshop is to teach small teams from each university the skills

necessary to assemble a balloon satellite, which is a low-level satellite prototype for a high

altitude balloon launch. The SmallSat conference introduced students to new small satellite

technology and developments. Those who attended received an excellent learning experience

regardless of their engineering background. The next CubeSat Developers’ Workshop will be in

April 2014.

UNP also provides mentorship for each team. Each UNP team is assigned a point of

contact (PoC) at the AFRL. The point of contact can provide technical guidance for the design

process and connect a team with expert contacts for further assistance. Contacts provided by a

PoC sometimes become additional mentors on the project.

Mission Overview

The University Nanosatellite Program equips students to accomplish a satellite mission,

(see Figure 2). The multidisciplinary project may be summarized in a singular mission statement.

Figure 2: ELEO-Sat Mission statement and objectives diagram

The primary mission of ELEO-Sat is to explore the uncharted 120-350 km Extremely

Low Earth Orbit (ELEO) region of the ionosphere. As laid out in Figure 2, the mission may be

broken down into the scientific and technical objectives of developing an open source database

of in-situ wave, particle, and plasma ionospheric measurements and demonstrating new,

innovative spacecraft technologies. The Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) has

expressed great interest in ionospheric science 9 14

. The ionosphere has been studied from higher

LEO orbits (160-2000 km) and from vertical rocket profiles; however, few in-situ measurements

have been taken. The in-situ measurements from ELEO-Sat may help researchers to better

understand phenomena such as VLF-LEP coupling, plasma dynamics, VLF transionospheric

propagation/attenuation, and many others (see Figure 3). Additionally, ELEO-Sat complements

the current AFRL DSX and VPM missions.

Figure 3: Diagram of mission location

As a part of its exploratory mission, ELEO-Sat will demonstrate new, innovative

technologies for Low Earth Orbit (LEO), 160-2000 km, satellites. Technology objectives connect

to AFOSR relevance 14

. A Globalstar satellite-to-satellite communication link will allow global

throughput for LEO orbit satellites and potentially allow continuous command capability. The

new communications link will be flight tested for the first time in spring 2014 aboard TSAT and

GEARR-Sat, predecessors of ELEO-Sat. Uniquely, ELEO-Sat will rely primarily on passive

attitude control, including a gravity gradient and an aerodynamic control loop, and will utilize an

aerodynamic form factor to increase its lifetime in ELEO, where drag forces are high 8. In-house

developed Monte Carlo simulations will empower preflight analysis of drag effects 8 and

performance of a new ion engine.

The objective of education (shown at the base of Figure 2) expresses the educational

foundation of UNP. The educational experience of building a nanosatellite is one of the major

underlying purposes set forth by the UNP. Thus, the experience greatly contributes to student

learning.

Undergraduate Educational Merits

The ELEO-Sat project provides a unique opportunity for student learning through a real-

world design experience. At the end of the two year UNP cycle students supply a satellite to the

Air Force Research Laboratories. Hands on satellite development helps students develop

important career skills such as teamwork, systems engineering, and integration. Students learn

the importance of deadlines and scheduling throughout the design and development process. A

high expectation level encourages students to produce quality work and to present it with

competency at design reviews with the Air Force and industry professionals. The process

provides insight into the professional world and teaches students to develop individual

subsystems within a team.

Team members come from a wide range of disciplines. Students from each of Taylor

University’s engineering majors, which include Engineering Physics, Computer Engineering,

Environmental Engineering, and Systems Engineering, participate in the same senior capstone

course. Junior and underclassman engineering students are also involved in the project, working

on smaller subsystems or tasks, in order to mitigate risk presented by student turnover upon

graduation. Students in majors including Mathematics, Physics, Business, Accounting,

Elementary Education, and Computer Science also participate voluntarily in the senior

engineering project under the leadership of the faculty and engineering students. For example, an

undergraduate mathematician developed and calibrated Monte Carlo simulations of free-

molecular aerodynamics to determine drag effects in ELEO orbits. An example of non-technical

involvement is business students who organized events to promote campus awareness of ELEO-

Sat. Moreover, the senior capstone course involves local high school students considering STEM

careers through outreach programming including participation in high altitude balloon projects.

Similarly, the project provides outreach opportunities to local elementary schools, using space

science curriculums developed by Taylor University elementary education majors. Working on

projects like ELEO-Sat equips students from many disciplines with skills they need for the

future. Collaboration between non-capstone students, professors, and engineering students

benefits student learning as a whole.

Design Process

The design process in the engineering capstone course facilitates end-to-end design and

traces ABET a-k objectives. Figure 4, a diagram adapted from Ford-Coulston 2008, illustrates

how the engineering capstone course connects the ABET a-k objectives 1, listed below, to an

intentional, directed, thoughtful, and sustainable design process. The curriculum emphasizes

each of the four design processes at different points in the course as indicated by the associated

dates. The multiple node lines in the decagon represent many feedback and discussion pathways.

The black abbreviations underneath the process headings indicate documents required within

each phase and the highlighted outcomes indicate ABET a-k objectives linked to each process

and stage of the design. Subsequent subsections in the Design Process section indicate

connections to the Figure 4 design process by identifying corners of the decagon e.g. “Figure 4 –

2 Brainstorming, Research, Scope.”

Figure 4: Capstone design process

ABET A-K Objectives

Students are expected to possess or develop:

a. an ability to apply knowledge of mathematics, science and engineering

b. an ability to design and conduct experiments, as well as to analyze and interpret data

c. an ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs within realistic

constraints such as economic, environmental, social, political, ethical, health and safety,

manufacturability, and sustainability

d. an ability to function on multidisciplinary teams

e. an ability to identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems

f. an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility

g. an ability to communicate effectively (3g1 orally, 3g2 written)

h. the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a

global, economic, environmental, and societal context

i. a recognition of the need for, and an ability to engage in life-long learning

j. a knowledge of contemporary issues

k. an ability to use the techniques, skills, and modern engineering tools necessary for

engineering practice.

Additionally, the design process is guided by UNP standards for design reviews. Figure 5 and

6, below, illustrate the electrical and mechanical design processes, respectively 13

. Review

deliverables, e.g. concept, breadboard, brass board, are expected at the reviews indicated, e.g.

SRR, PDR, CDR.

Figure 5: UNP Electrical design process

Figure 6: UNP Mechanical design process

UNP review deliverables include required documentation. Deliverables for the Flight

Competition Review (FCR) include:

● Assembly Procedures

● Block Diagrams

● CAD of Spacecraft

● Concept of Operations

● Data Budget

● Document Tree

● EMC/EMI Mitigation Design

● Experiment Plan

● Ground Support Design

● Interface Control Documents

● Personnel Budget

● Power Budget

● Press Related Information

● Pressure Profile

● Proof of Licensing

● Protection Plan

● Quad Chart

● Radiation Mitigation Design

● Requirements Verification Matrix

● Schedule

● Link Budget

● Mass Budget

● Master Equipment List

● Materials List

● Mechanical Drawing Package

● Mission Overview

● Silver Board Test Results

● Software

● Structural Analysis

● System Functional Test Results

● Thermal Analysis

The UNP User Guide describes the documentation deliverables in depth 12

. Work on the design

deliverables is expounded upon in subsequent subsections of the design process.

Design Challenges

In order to achieve mission success, students must address real-world spacecraft design

challenges. The multidisciplinary nature of the design challenges is one of the reasons why a

multidisciplinary team is so important. Spacecraft design requires electrical, electromagnetic,

mechanical, thermal, embedded systems, and systems engineering skills.

The wide variety of environmental factors is among the most difficult and critical

challenge to overcome. Radiative heat transfer and internal heat production set the nominal

thermal environment inside the spacecraft, which must be maintained within operating

temperature ranges. The satellite must additionally be able to survive the high intensity vibration

and stress experienced in the launch environment. Students design to wide margins to account

for uncertainty. For example, since the satellite will be a secondary payload, the design must

address uncertainty in launch date and orbit, which are not guaranteed and may greatly influence

the ambient thermal environment and battery charging cycle. Moreover uncertainty in the launch

date brings new factors into play such as mechanism creep. The design must also account for the

high drag forces experienced in low earth orbit, which may decrease satellite lifetime and cause

spacecraft rotation.

Many other design factors are considered in satellite design. Subsystems must be

spatially allocated to eliminate mechanical crowding, simplify cable routing, and mitigate the

risk of electromagnetic interference between subsystems. Other factors are captured in design

budgets (see documentation requirements for FCR above). Students respond to uncertainty in

design budgets by providing margins of at least 20% in the early design phases.

Spacecraft Overview

The satellite payload utilizes three primary instruments, which are supported by

secondary instruments and the spacecraft bus. Measurements from the three primary spacecraft

instruments will be compared to investigate the interactions between waves, particles, and

plasmas in the ELEO region. Figures 7 and 8 provide illustrations of the system design that is

discussed briefly below.

Figure 7: Spacecraft system exploded view

Figure 8: Spacecraft system diagram with labels

Electric fields in the range DC-30kHz will be measured utilizing four deployable booms,

two that will act as a gravity gradient, orienting perpendicularly to the earth, and two that will

point in parallel and antiparallel directions relative to the motion of the spacecraft. The voltage

differential between the booms on each axis will be used to determine the magnitude and

direction of the in-situ electric fields. Measuring the electric field at points distant from the

spacecraft will reduce the risk of electromagnetic interference (EMI) and potentially increase

instrument resolution.

Two solid state detector (SSD) telescopes, each containing two detectors in coincidence,

will be used to measure the pitch angle distribution of particles precipitated from the radiation

belts. The SSD array will count electrons and ions in the energy range 30keV-1MeV, separating

counts from each into bins by energy level. The detectors will be aligned on an optical bench

(see Figure 9) at 90˚ and 30˚ relative to the L=2 through L=3 magnetic field lines. The solid state

detectors are isolated behind an EMI shield to mitigate EMI risk.

Figure 9: Instrument optical bench

The density and temperature of plasma will be measured using two Langmuir Probes.

The probes will be mounted on the exterior of the spacecraft, parallel to the direction of motion.

The plasma temperature is proportional to the slope of the I-V curve, generated by sweeping the

probe voltage, and the plasma density is proportional to the current at a constant bias voltage.

ELEO-Sat will utilize secondary scientific instruments that are not considered part of the

payload, including a 3-axis magnetometer, ultraviolet photodiodes, and a GPS unit. The

secondary instruments are necessary to support the primary scientific mission. The

magnetometer, photodiodes, and GPS are used to gather valuable information about position and

pointing direction for the Attitude Determination and Control System (ADCS).

The spacecraft bus supports the spacecraft instruments so that the primary mission can be

accomplished. The Attitude Determination and Control System (ADCS), described briefly

above, will orient the spacecraft instruments in the proper pointing direction through a

combination of both an aerodynamic control loop and a 3-axis magnetorquer. Power will be

supplied from solar arrays and batteries by the Electrical Power System (EPS), which will

additionally provide watchdogs to mitigate the risk of electrical power failure. Command and

Data Handling (CDH) will manage the spacecraft operational modes and data collection. On-

orbit data downlink and command uplink will be facilitated by the Communications System.

Problem Identification

Figure 4 – 1-2 Problem, Proposal, Big Picture Brainstorming, Research, Scope

Mission scope is identified in the initial proposal; however, the scope for each individual

subsystem must be defined. Some advanced science and engineering topics are new to many

incoming capstone students, so it is necessary for each to develop a foundation in the subject

matter before identifying subsystem scope in a Project Scope Statement. The learning process is

accomplished through both student interaction with the Primary Investigator (PI) and

independent research. Evaluation of Project Scope Statement documents is conducted by the PI

and other supervising faculty.

Requirements Analysis

Figure 4 – 3 Requirements Specification

After students have gained a thorough understanding of their projects, the student scopes

are broken down into requirements. Students use Ford-Coulston, Design for Electrical and

Computer Engineers as a primary tool for learning requirements analysis. IEEE std. 1233-1998

states that requirements must be abstract, verifiable, unambiguous and traceable 4. Ford-Coulston

adds that requirements must be realistic 4. Although the literature is intended specifically for

electrical and computer engineers, the design process is relevant to each of the engineering

disciplines represented on the project. The UNP User Guide specifies that requirements should

be captured in a Requirements Verification Matrix (RVM) 12

. The flow-down of requirements in

the RVM (see Figure 10) ensures that all requirements are mission relevant.

Figure 10: Requirements flow-down

The flow-down of the requirements is captured in sources either from within the RVM or

from outside documents (see Table 1). UNP satellites must additionally comply with UNP and

California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) requirements (see Table 2). Each requirement

is initially assigned one of four verification methods: inspection, analysis, demonstration, and

test 6. Test and analysis verifications are given short descriptions in the RVM and specific

procedures are determined at the beginning of testing phases.

Ref Requirement Source Verification

ThEEF-

1

ThEEF shall measure E-fields over the

frequencies DC-30kHz

Instrument requirements

- data budget document

Test:

calibration

ThEEF-

2

ThEEF shall have an equivalent noise

input of less than 1 mV/m

Instrument requirements

- data budget document

Test:

calibration

ThEEF-

3

ThEEF Will measure E-fields with

magnitudes up to 2.5 V/m

Instrument requirements

- data budget document Demonstration

ThEEF-

4

ThEEF shall measure E-fields on two

axes Mission Overview Inspection

Table 1: RVM Sample - ThEEF Instrument Subsystem Requirements

Ref Requirement Source Verification

MS-1 The SmallSat shall be designed to

withstand the launch and on-orbit

environments of the launch vehicle

without failure, leaking fluids, or

releasing anything.

UNP-2, CP-7, CP-8 Test: vibration

table, thermal

vacuum

MS-2 The SV shall be designed using the

MAC curve in Figure 7 in section

6.3.1 of the NS-8 User Guide

UNP-3 Test: vibration

table, thermal

vacuum

MS-3 Factor of safety to be used are 2.0 for

yield and 2.6 for ultimate for

structural design and analysis

UNP-4 Analysis:

SolidWorks

simulation

MS-4 The SV volume shall depressurize

safely at a rate of 0.5 psi/sec

UNP-5 CP-4, CP-5 Test: thermal

vacuum

MS-5 The SmallSat shall be designed to

withstand the launch vehicle shock

environment as shown in Table A and

Figure A (Table A and Figure A are

available in actual RVM)

UNP-6 Test: vibration

table

Table 2: RVM Sample - Mechanical chassis requirements

Concept Generation

Figure 4 – 4 Concept Model Generation

Requirements are synthesized into design concepts, which are most commonly

represented on a block diagram level. Figure 11 exhibits a student’s concept for an instrument

processor subsystem. The appropriateness of project scope, requirements, and concepts are

assessed by the PI, other supervising faculty, and peers in concept reviews.

Figure 11: Instrument processor subsystem concept

Evaluation of real-world design tradeoffs is critical for determining which concepts will

be implemented in the design phase. Technical Readiness Level (TRL) and risk are two of the

primary judging criteria in UNP; thus, design trade-offs are evaluated accordingly using TRL

charts (see Figure 12) and Likelihood-Consequence (L-C) Charts (see Figure 13) 13

. TRL charts

indicate overall system and subsystem progress measured by readiness of review deliverables.

Moreover, TRL charts may be used to identify critical paths for project work. Subsequently,

design trade-offs are evaluated on the basis of adherence to the critical path.

Figure 12: Bus systems TRL Chart from Preliminary Design Review

An L-C Chart displays how the likelihood (y-axis) of a risk and the resulting

consequences (x-axis) relate to the overall risk (color, green is low risk). Figure 13 also identifies

the design risks corresponding to numbers in the L-C Chart. The expectation is that risks are

unambiguously identified in a manner understandable to reviewers who may not be familiar with

the project.

Figure 13: L-C Chart for 3U to 6U size Design change from Critical Design Review

L-C and TRL charts encourage thoughtful design and demonstrate effective preparation

to UNP judges. Other methods of evaluation are used as appropriate. For example, along with L-

C Chart analysis (see Figure 13), students used a cost/benefit analysis when evaluating a design

change from a 3U size (10x10x34cm) to a 6U size (10x20x34cm) 2 (see Figure 14).

Figure 14: 3U to 6U Design Change Graphic from Critical Design Review

Design

Figure 4 – 5 Design, Prototype, Analysis

When concepts are approved, students begin the iterative process of design, prototype,

and analysis. Applying undergraduate learning to hands-on experience is one of the most

valuable elements of UNP. Students apply a variety of tools to the design of their subsystems.

Mechanical designs are implemented in SolidWorks and MatLab. SolidWorks Simulation

Premium is capable of performing multiple analyses for required deliverables including pressure

profiles, static loading, and vibration simulations. Figure 15 illustrates the exaggerated results of

mode frequency testing.

Figure 15: SolidWorks analysis of chassis vibration modes (Exaggerated)

SolidWorks is also used for 10+ node thermal analysis. Thermal models with fewer than

10 nodes are implemented in MatLab Simulink because it allows students to fine tune

assumptions used in the analysis. For the same reason, lower node Simulink models are used to

verify higher node SolidWorks models. MatLab has other useful plugins including the CubeSat

Toolbox which was used to determine solar power gathered over a typical ELEO orbit (see

figure 16).

Figure 16: Solar power simulation in MatLab CubeSat Toolbox

After initial analysis in SolidWorks, mechanical models are fabricated on a BFD

3DTouch 3D-printer. Prototyping the mechanical model facilitates development of assembly

procedures and cable harnessing (see Figure 17).

Figure 17: 3-D printed chassis

Electrical designs are tested on breadboards and analyzed in LTspice or PSpice. Success

with preliminary analysis and testing is channeled into schematic and board development in

Eagle CAD. Printed circuit boards (PCBs) are subsequently fabricated on an LKPF ProtoMat

S63 PC Mill. Figure 18 exhibits a design (left) and prototype (right) of the instrument processor

board, which was developed from the concept in Figure 11.

Figure 18: Instrument Processor Eagle CAD Layout and PCB

Electrical brass boards are then tested and calibrated. Figure 19 (left) exhibits an

oscilloscope screen shot of the response of a Solid State Detector (SSD) to a calibration pulse.

Similarly, Figure 19 (right) displays calibration curves of the VLF search coil in response to an

applied magnetic field.

Figure 19: SSD Pulse Scope Shot (Left) and VLF Search Coil Calibration Curves (Right)

System Integration

Figure 4 – 6-8 Parts, Construction, System Integration, System Test

After all subsystems are designed, they must be integrated into a functioning system.

Interfaces are the most important place to improve a design and the easiest place to make

mistakes. Students learn many of their lessons the hard way on interfacing. The High Altitude

Research Platform (HARP) is Taylor University’s high altitude balloon program and a primary

testing method for ELEO-Sat (see Figure 20). The near-space environment that HARP balloons

encounter is similar to the thermal-vacuum and vibration testing that the satellite will undergo

before acceptance. In-house tools, including a 3D-printer, a PC-mill, and a laser cutter are

utilized for fabrication of spacecraft prototypes. By participating in HARP launches, students

learn project engineering and communication skills through team integration and assembly.

Figure 20: Integrated ELEO-Sat balloon satellite.

Even though each sub system is fully functioning in bench testing phases, bringing them

together reveals many undiscovered problems, not only for individual subsystems but also for the

overall system. These problems, both electrical and mechanical, are only discovered once

everything is assembled.

Delivery & Maintenance

Figure 4 – 9-10 Delivery, Acceptance, Maintenance, Upgrade

If the team successfully completes the Flight Competition Review (FCR) it will proceed

to the next stage of UNP, where the team will continue the development of the satellite alongside

the AFRL. The second phase of the program continues until the satellite is flight ready.

Maintenance and upgrade, if necessary, occur after the acceptance of the satellite.

Assessment

Establishing an efficient design process through the capstone class requires assessment of

the program to determine what works and what does not. A good capstone class encourages

vision and challenge while capturing imagination. Students should be encouraged, but much is

expected from them. When there is strong team spirit, trust, and vision in a capstone project, the

potential for learning is high. Figure 4 helps define the ABET outcomes and the design process

sequence that is used for development of each student’s subassemblies and the integration of the

complete and tested satellite. It can be very hard for students to appreciate the many feedback

and feed-forward lines in the classic design process between decagon vertices and the ABET

outcomes a-k (see Figure 4). The ABET outcomes are reinforced and developed continuously

throughout the full design cycle.

The formal student documents required for evaluation and assessment include the

following: POP (Project Big Picture Overview Proposal), PSS (Project Scope Statement), PRD

(Product Requirements Document), TDD (Team Definition Document), SOW (Statement of

Work/Work Breakdown), NAS (NASA CubeSat Requirement Documents), PSD (Product

Specification Document), PDR (Preliminary Design Document & Review), CDR (Critical

Design Document & Review), PPD (Pre-Procurement Review, WBS, Schedule), ASEE1

(Submit ASEE Draft Papers), HARP (High Altitude Balloon Research Platform), ASEE2

(Submit final Papers and Posters), SCR (ELEO-Sat System Concept Review), SRR (ELEO-Sat

Systems Requirements Review), and FINAL ( Final Notebook and Documentation).

Also included in assessment is individual progress on the hardware subsystems, software

architectures, CAD mechanical drawings, thermal and testing methodologies, and overall design

process. Project management, Work Breakdown Structure, Bill of Materials, schedules, and

overall status were also assessed by faculty members in individual meetings throughout each

semester.

The Capstone class faculty assessment was consistent with the student assessment

questionnaire. The student assessments to the question “Did the Capstone experience open your

eyes and abilities to better implement the full design process and accomplish many of the ABET

objectives A through K?”, resulted in 86% students with the highest mark (“Strongly Agree”)

and 14% with a reply “Agree” giving a score of 3.9 out of 4.0 scale. A student (S1) comment

associated with this question is, “I learned tons about timing, prototyping, testing failure

analysis, project management, and much more”.

Assessment of the quality of a national level project with documentation and lab work

was excellent. This is also similar to what the students reported in the questionnaire assignment.

A second question received a 3.7 score, from 71% “Strongly Agree” response and 29% “Agree”

response. The question was, “Do you value that TSAT and ELEO-Sat are national level projects

with interaction with other universities (ASEE, UNP), students, industry (ITT Aerospace),

NASA and the Air Force and undertake important research?” Student comments (S4, S6, and S7)

stated the following: “This project, and its level of recognition, means a lot to me. I would not

feel I was getting my money’s worth in the engineering curriculum if we did not have this sort of

project, and I may have considered transferring schools”, “This experience has been priceless to

put on a resume and learn what industry is like. I hope more students have this opportunity.”, and

“everyone seemed shocked”.

Grading for the capstone course is based on each student’s weekly status and spreadsheet

reports, the formal design reviews, all formal documentation, the hands-on design and

prototyping and testing of their systems, the team effort to integrate their PC boards, SolidWorks

mechanical drawings, each student’s completion and acceptance of their ASEE papers and

Posters, the oral, individual finals taken each semester, each student’s detailed Design

Notebooks, and a final analysis of each student’s weaknesses and strengths. A spreadsheet was

made of all their points. Also shown in the table below is the grading rubric, Table 4, for last

semester 3 hour Capstone class.

1 Design Notebook and Logbook (Depth and Breadth of project) 15%

2 Engineering Analysis, simulations, and ABET i-k proficiency 15%

3 ASEE Paper and/or Small Sat Paper/AHAC paper 10%

4 Your system maturity, Proto-flight fully working, Flight system 15%

5 Understanding, Calibration, test data, and Thermal/Vacuum

testing

10%

6 Sustainability, ICDs, EDR Material for Summer Handoff 10%

7 Overall team work, class participation, field trip, and work ethic 15%

8 Your Creativity, Research, Problem Solving, Completeness,

Details

10%

Table 4: Senior engineering capstone grading rubric

Some typical example quotes from alumni surveys include the following:

Graduate A: For the past 15 years, the Physics and Engineering department has

integrated a rare blend of theoretical rigor and practical application. At Taylor University, I

learned "where there's a will, there's a way." I have found that this basic outlook on life is a

prerequisite to becoming a successful entrepreneur, who must challenge the status quo and beat

incumbents on a shoestring budget. In my days at Taylor University (1997 - 2001), we were

pushing the limits of undergraduate education in a variety of categories. From space probes

under contract to NASA, to building a solar racing car on 5% of the budget of our competitors,

to the nanosatellite program, where our design was built around non-radiation hard

componentry, my time at Taylor University was saturated with creative, entrepreneurial problem

solving opportunity. Directly following graduation from LACU, I teamed up with Dr. Voss

(Chair at the time) and student graduate (fellow 2001 Physics graduate) to create a new startup

called NanoStar. Our collective goal was to commercialize the nanosatellite technology we built

in the lab and deliver a store-and-forward communications system to the World. We pitched this

concept to venture capitalists in six cities across the country and learned a great deal about how

to design a robust startup in the process. These lessons undergird my current venture,

MyFarms, which is going head-to-head with agricultural giant, Monsanto, to apply big data

concepts to day-to-day farming practices and dramatically increase food production worldwide.

My experience at LACU was truly transformational. I learned the core principles of managing

science, technology and entrepreneurship; lessons that continue to serve me well each day.”

Graduate B, “TSAT has played a tremendous role in my career decision and has been a

major stepping stone in adjusting to my current job. I am currently doing ECU development in

the automotive industry, and working on TSAT gave me the flexibility of learning more about the

academic side and the practical side of embedded systems”

Graduate C: My senior project was good preparation for the "real-world." The

experience of going through the entire design process of developing a scope, working hard to

make sure the project is successful, and presenting the final product is similar to what I do now.

I think that having the freedom to develop an idea and also to fail is important. I have some

specific tasks that I must complete, but a lot of my job requires taking the goals of my department

and developing "projects" to fulfill those high level goals. I do not have a "professor" or boss

telling me everything I need to do. Allowing students to develop their own "project" as long as it

meets the high level requirements of the engineering curriculum is a good way to grow and

develop engineers. The science building project that I worked on was not my original project.

We had started a different one, and realized it really was not a feasible project midway into fall

semester. This was good experience, because sometimes you need to be able to swallow your

pride and admit that your original idea was not as good as it initially appeared.

Conclusion

The University Nanosatellite Program and the senior engineering capstone class allow

students the opportunity to develop a project with real-world scientific relevance. Student

involvement in satellite design promotes creativity, ingenuity, and the development of vital

engineering skills that are applicable to a wide range of engineering disciplines. The educational

value of satellite design in a capstone course cannot be overemphasized.

Abbreviation and Acronym List

Note: some abbreviations not included

ADCS Attitude Determination and Control System

AFRL Air Force Research Labs

AFOSR Air Force Office of Scientific Research

Cal Poly California Polytechnic State University

CDR Critical Design Review

CDH Command and Data Handling

DSX Demonstrations and Science Experiment

EAT Expert Area Teleconference

EDR Engineering Design Review

ELEO Extremely Low Earth Orbit

EMI Electromagnetic Interference

EPS Electrical Power System

FCR Flight Competition Review

GEARR-Sat Globalstar Experiment and Risk Reduction Satellite

HARP High Altitude Research Program

ICD Interface Control Document

L-C Likelihood-Consequence

LEO Low Earth Orbit

LEP Lightning-induced Electron Precipitation

PDR Preliminary Design Review

PoC Point of Contact

RVM Requirements Verification Matrix

SHOT Student Hands On Training (workshop)

SCR System Concept Review

SRR System Requirements Review

SSD Solid State Detector

TEST Thunderstorm Effects in Space and Technology

ThEEF The Earths Electric Field

TRL Technical Readiness Level

TSAT Test Satellite Lite

UNP University Nanosatellite Program

VLF Very Low Frequency (light)

VPM Very Low Frequency and Particle Mapper

Table 5: Abbreviation and Acronym List

References

1. ABET Criterion 3. Student Outcomes (a-k). (1920, March 11). ABET Criterion 3. Student Outcomes (a-k).

Retrieved January 1, 2014, from http://ecee.colorado.edu/~mathys/ecen2250/abet/criterion3.html

2. CubeSat Design Specification. (n.d.). CubeSat. Retrieved January 1, 2014, from

http://www.cubesat.org/images/developers/cds_rev12.pdf

3. Factsheets : AFOSR: University Nanosat Program (UNP). (2012, August 7). Factsheets : AFOSR: University

Nanosat Program (UNP). Retrieved January 1, 2014, from

http://www.wpafb.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=19801

4. Ford, R. M., & Coulston, C. S. (2008). Design for electrical and computer engineers: theory, concepts, and

practice. Boston: McGraw-Hill.

5. Gilliland, S., Williams, B., Akard, C., and Geisler, J. (2014, March). Learning Through Efficient Processor

Systems for a Nanosatellite. Paper presented at ASEE Illinois-Indiana Section Conference. Terre Haute, IN: Rose-

Hulman Institute of Technology.

6. Guerra, L. (Director) (2008, March 1). Verification Module: Space Systems Engineering, version 1.0. Space

Systems Engineering. Lecture conducted from University of Texas at Austin, Austin.

7. Research Interests of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. (2012, March 27). FedBizOpps.gov. Retrieved

January 1, 2014, from

https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=3b38eaf2fffaa831c576dbc762a2a5e8&tab=core&_cvie

w=1

8. Sargent, T., Kiers, J., and Voss, H. (2014, March). ELEO-Sat Design Process for a Boom Deployment System

with Monte Carlo Aerodynamics Simulation. Paper presented at ASEE Illinois-Indiana Section Conference. Terre

Haute, IN: Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

9. Schoenberg, J., Ginet, G., Dichter, B., Xapsos, M., Adler, A., Scherbarth, M., et al. (2006, September 13). THE

DEMONSTRATION AND SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS (DSX): A FUNDAMENTAL SCIENCE RESEARCH

MISSION ADVANCING TECHNOLOGIES THAT ENABLE MEO SPACEFLIGHT . NASA Goddard Space

Flight Center. Retrieved January 1, 2013, from http://lws-set.gsfc.nasa.gov/documents/DSX_paper.pdf

10. Straits, S., Mathioudakis, M., and Voss, H. (2014, March). 6-Unit Cubesat Design and Learning for Mechanical

System, Solar Arrays, and Thermal Modeling. Paper presented at ASEE Illinois-Indiana Section Conference. Terre

Haute, IN: Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

11. Theien, T., Yoshino, K., Emison, J., Newhall, B., and Dailey, J. (2014, March). ELEO-Sat Instrument Suite.

Paper presented at ASEE Illinois-Indiana Section Conference. Terre Haute, IN: Rose-Hulman Institute of

Technology.12. United States Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicles Directorate (2013). NANOSAT-8

USER’S GUIDE. Albuquerque, NM: U.S. University Nanosat Program Office.

13. Voss, D. (Director) (2013, April 12). Concept of Operations (CONOPS) and Risk Management in UNP. Expert

Area Teleconference. Lecture conducted from United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Albuquerque.

14. Voss, David L., K Alaxander, M. Ford, C. Handy, S. Lucero, and A. Pietruszewski, Educational Programs:

Investment with a Large Return, 26th Annual AIAA/USU, Conference on Small Satellites, Logan, Utah, SSC12-

VII-1, Aug. 2012

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Retrieved March 19, 2014, from http://prs.afrl.kirtland.af.mil/UNP/index.aspx

Paper ID #10701

Integrated Capstone Design in Architectural Engineering Curriculum

Dr. Ahmed Cherif Megri, North Carolina A&T State University

Dr. Ahmed Cherif Megri, Associate Professor of Architectural Engineering (AE). He teaches capstone,lighting, electrical, HVAC and energy design courses. He is the ABET Coordinator for the AE Program.His research areas include airflow modeling, zonal modeling, energy modeling, and artificial intelligencemodeling using the support vector machine learning approach. Dr. Megri holds a PhD degree from INSAat Lyon (France) in the area of Thermal Engineering and ”Habilitation” (HDR) degree from Pierre andMarie Curie University - Paris VI, Sorbonne Universities (2011) in the area of Engineering Sciences. Priorto his actual position, he was an Associate Professor at University of Wyoming (UW) and prior to that hewas an Assistant Professor and the Director of the AE Program at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT).He participated significantly to the development of the current architectural engineering undergraduateand master’s programs at IIT. During his stay at IIT, he taught thermal and fluids engineering (thermody-namics, heat transfer, and fluid mechanics), building sciences, physical performance of buildings, buildingenclosure, as well as design courses, such as HVAC, energy, plumbing, fire protection and lighting. Also,he supervises many courses in the frame of interprofessional projects (IPRO) program.

Areas of Interests: - Zonal modeling approach, - Integration zonal models/building energy simulationmodels, - Zero Net Energy (ZNE) building, - Airflow in Multizone Buildings & Smoke Control, - ThermalComfort & Indoor Air Quality, - Predictive modeling and forecasting: Support Vector Machine (SVM)tools, - Energy, HVAC, Plumbing & Fire Protection Systems Design, - Computational Fluid Dynamic(CFD) Application in Building, - BIM & REVIT: application to Architecture and Electrical/LightingDesign systems.

c©American Society for Engineering Education, 2014

ASEE Annual Conference, 2014

AC 2014 - 10701: Integrated Capstone Design in Architectural Engineering

Curriculum

Ahmed Cherif Megri, North Carolina A&T State University

Dr. Ahmed Cherif Megri, Associate Professor of Architectural Engineering (AE). He teaches

capstone, lighting, electrical, HVAC and energy design courses. He is the ABET Coordinator for

the AE Program. His research areas include airflow modeling, zonal modeling, energy modeling,

and artificial intelligence modeling using the support vector machine learning approach. Dr.

Megri holds a PhD degree from INSA at Lyon (France) in the area of Thermal Engineering and

”Habilitation” (HDR) degree from Pierre and Marie Curie University - Paris VI, Sorbonne

Universities (2011) in the area of Engineering Sciences. Prior to his actual position, he was an

Associate Professor at University of Wyoming (UW) and prior to that he was an Assistant

Professor and the Director of the AE Program at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). He

participated significantly to the development of the current architectural engineering

undergraduate and master’s programs at IIT. During his stay at IIT, he taught thermal and fluids

engineering (thermodynamics, heat transfer, and fluid mechanics), building sciences, physical

performance of buildings, building enclosure, as well as design courses, such as HVAC, energy,

plumbing, fire protection and lighting. Also, he supervises many courses in the frame of

interprofessional projects (IPRO) program.

Areas of Interests:

- Zonal modeling approach,

- Integration zonal models/building energy simulation models,

- Zero Net Energy (ZNE) building,

- Airflow in Multizone Buildings & Smoke Control,

- Thermal Comfort & Indoor Air Quality,

- Predictive modeling and forecasting: Support Vector Machine (SVM) tools,

- Energy, HVAC, Plumbing & Fire Protection Systems Design,

- Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) Application in Building,

- BIM & REVIT: application to Architecture and Electrical/Lighting Design systems.

ASEE Annual Conference, 2014

Integrated Capstone Design in Architectural Engineering Curriculum

Ahmed Cherif Megri

North Carolina A&T State University

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Department

Email: ac_megri@hotmail.com

Abstract:

All Architectural Engineering students are required to complete a two capstone senior design project

course (Senior Project I and Senior Project II). The students work in groups on projects covering

architectural design, structural design, mechanical design, and lighting/electrical design. These projects

are open-ended and get a chance to pull together the many things they've learned in classes throughout

their undergraduate degree. The classes are taught by four instructors and judged by both instructors and

practitioners.

The senior capstone design course 1 (Senior Project I) requires a group project involving a complete

design that may contain a host of modules including architectural design, structural and foundation

design, cost estimating, building mechanical and lighting/electrical system design, building occupancy

and accessibility studies, elevator design, etc. The Capstone design course is a multi-disciplinary effort;

and as such it may involve other disciplines in addition to those in architectural engineering. As a

minimum, the project always involves an architectural design, mechanical (HVAC), electrical and

lighting systems design, structural and foundation design, and at least one other module such as cost

estimating, construction scheduling, green building and sustainable concept design, etc.

Within the senior capstone design course 2 (Senior Project II) students are divided into two offices or

more, each office is divided into design groups, and each group is responsible of only one design

component: architecture, structure, HVAC or Lighting/electrical. An office standard prepared by the

department of civil, architectural and environmental engineering is distributed over the students.

This paper proposes a curricular paradigm which allows students to work in groups on a single, large,

real-world problem over multiple terms. Experiences and outputs from the course can be used to provide

guidance and insights into curricular changes, teaching methods, and exposure to the practice. It also

helps in establishing durable connections with the industrial sector.

Most importantly, project methodology will be discussed. We discuss the capstone design program from

students’ point of view, and the experience earned in design, integration, and also in written and oral

communication skills. Methodology used to evaluate the effectiveness of the capstone design program in

term of learning outcomes is also described.

1. Introduction:

Capstone senior design experiences are both a graduation requirement for undergraduate engineering

majors and for ABET accreditation of these programs. A senior design course is typically the last bridge

for students between undergraduate education and the engineering profession in their respective

disciplines. The course differs from other lecture and laboratory based courses in the engineering

curriculum in fundamental ways.

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The purpose of capstone design course, required of all seniors, is to provide a realistic experience by

integrating basic material learned during the engineering undergraduate program to address real-life

design problem from schematic phase into the construction design levels, including advanced engineering

design aspects in certain selected focus areas of technical discipline.

There is no unique model for teaching multidisciplinary capstone design in Architectural Engineering.

Capstone design courses are different from one University to another. While, few Universities focus only

on one topic (mechanical or structural for example), others focus on multiple trades: architecture,

structural, mechanical, and lighting/electrical. Few have one semester capstone; others have it for two

consecutive semesters. This paper will highlight the multidisciplinary projects. Multidisciplinary projects

where collaboration between disciplines on projects usually working on design teams, but usually is being

enrolled in separate independent courses or in a one unique course.

This paper proposes a curricular paradigm which allows students to work in groups on a single, large,

real-world problem over multiple terms. Experiences and outputs from the course can be used to provide

guidance and insights into curricular changes, teaching methods, and exposure to the practice. It also

helps in establishing durable connections with the industrial sector.

Most importantly, project methodology will be discussed. We discuss the capstone design program from

students’ point of view, and the experience earned in design, integration, and also in written and oral

communication skills. Methodology used to evaluate the effectiveness of the capstone design program in

term of learning outcomes is also described.

2. Architectural Engineering Design Experience

All Architectural Engineering students are required to complete a two capstone senior design project

course sequence (Fall-Senior Project I and Spring-Senior Project II). We believe that a two-course

sequence is more effective for the level of design assignments that the students are required to solve. The

two-semester sequence allows the students to spend more time to acquire design knowledge and to

consult with practitioners and faculty. It also allows the faculty to require work that is of a higher-level of

detail and engineering standards. This arrangement provides 30 weeks of contact with the professors. This

set-up allows for more interactions, reporting and presentations.

The students work in groups on projects covering architectural design, structural design, mechanical

design, and lighting/electrical design. These projects are open-ended and get a chance to pull together the

many things they've learned in classes throughout their undergraduate degree. The classes are taught by

four instructors and judged by both instructors and practitioners from the AE industry.

The senior capstone design course 1 (Senior Project I) is a course where students apply what they have

learned in earlier courses to prepare schematic designs and design development drawings and calculations

for a midsize building. This course requires a group project involving a complete design that may contain

a host of modules including architectural design, structural and foundation design, cost estimating,

building mechanical and lighting/electrical system design, building occupancy and accessibility studies,

elevator design, etc. The Capstone design course is a multi-disciplinary effort; and as such it may involve

other disciplines in addition to those in architectural engineering. As a minimum, the project always

involves an architectural design, mechanical (HVAC), electrical, and lighting systems design, structural

and foundation design, and at least one other module such as cost estimating, construction scheduling,

green building and sustainable concept design, etc. The deliverables required for these courses include

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oral and poster presentation of the project and a complete set of documents including BIM drawings of all

designs. The capstone design course is intended for students to use their knowledge gained in all previous

courses in a realistic project that would involve a major design experience.

The senior capstone design course 2 (Senior Project II) main objective is to provide students with an

opportunity to gain design experience in a simulated professional office environment. Each student

prepares calculations and construction documents for one discipline, while serving on an interdisciplinary

team including the following disciplines: Architecture, Structures, Heating and Air-Conditioning, and

Lighting and Electrical. Within the senior capstone design course 2 students are divided into two offices

or more, each office is divided into design groups, and each group is responsible of only one design

component: architecture, structure, HVAC or Lighting/electrical. An office standard prepared by the

department of civil and architectural engineering is distributed over the students.

This course teaches the student how to prepare a final set of discipline specific construction documents,

including engineering calculations production drawings, and specifications. The student will discuss

contracts, ethics, and construction administration as they relate to the project.

Autodesk Revit 2013 is pivotal in system design. This program allowed students to layout the architecture

plans, sections and elevations of the architecture plans, structural, ductwork, piping, lighting fixtures,

power panels, power and lighting circuits, schedules, and system components. It provided students with

3D views of everything they design so they could visualize exactly how everything fit in the building

structure. It also allowed them to make numerous iterations quickly and effectively. On top of these

features Revit is also capable of doing pressure loss calculations, sizing procedures, and system

classifications. Annotations were placed throughout the model at the end and it indicates the size and flow

of every component in the system. This was a vital tool that helped the design team provide a quality

product.

The members of the advisory board represent the most common specialties of Architectural Engineering

including HVAC, electrical, lighting, plumbing and fire protection, energy, construction management,

and structures. This group of professional engineers has been donating their time and efforts to help in the

capstone design courses and help the program in aspects such as the response to the support survey for the

Program Educational Objectives. As well, this group of people serves for guidance and as evaluators for

the final work.

The capstone design experience lasts a full year. The project commences with a meeting between

students, practicing engineers and the instructors and a site visit. The project ends with a report and oral

presentation. This provides students with a proposal writing experience and clarifies the project for the

student team and the client.

Progress reports are due over the semester. These reports include different steps of the project, codes and

standard research, and design alternatives. Oral reports of the project and progress report are made to the

senior class by each office.

While student teams have been successful in their projects, the process has not always been without

exempt of problems. It is important to have the necessary information circulating between the different

groups of the same office and each group provides the necessary information needed from the others. For

instance, the structural group needs to know about the weights and locations of the HVAC equipment

located on the roof. In the same time, the electrical group needs to know about the rating, voltage and the

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power of different HVAC equipment. Activities and interactions between the groups are very primordial

at the beginning of the project, so that problems can be identified and addressed early.

Design is not only project-based for public or private works, but can also involve problem solving and

innovation in terms of technological applications and development of new means and methods. It is

important to have a program that satisfy ABET requirements and not to use ABET as program

development guide.

3. Project Methodology and case study:

The two capstone design courses are complementary. In Fall semester, all the students are divided into

groups of two or three students. All the groups have to go through the design process for all trades (at

least architecture, structural, mechanical and lighting/electrical), starting from schematic design and

moving toward the design development. The semester is divided into two distinctive parts for schematic

and design development.

The second semester, the construction documents is being accomplished. Based on the number of

students, usually the students are divided into two offices or more, where each office includes 4 groups.

Each group is assigned to one trade (architecture, structural, mechanical, lighting/electrical).

The integration and collaboration between the groups of each office is primordial for each office. The

information moves between the groups continuously. The first meeting of the spring semester, all the

students meet with the instructors and the best two projects from Fall semester are selected for the two

offices.

Depending on the situation and the opportunities, usually the project is suggested by an AE firm or an

MEP design company. This connection with the industry is resourceful in multiples ways. First, these

companies serve as guidance for the students, provide them with resource of information and knowledge

and most importantly serve as judges for the final work. The most important aspect of these two capstone

courses is the coordination with other trades, architectural, structural, mechanical, lighting/electrical,

plumbing, and others to minimize conflicts in the work execution.

The study starts by gathering information about the project, building AutoCAD drawings, building area

and height, and rooms’ dimensions. Next, the building’s group occupancy identification, and decide if the

building is mixed-use or separate-use. The construction type is determined depending on the construction

materials and the materials combustibility.

The next step is to determine if any special use and occupancy requirements will apply, such as the case

of malls, and high-rise buildings, and other special occupancy. The building zoning is designed by

different groups and the occupant load is then estimated. The means of egress are established, such as the

number of required exists with respect to the remoteness.

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Case Study:

Mechanical Components:

Trade-offs and choices are made to achieve the proposed design/construction solutions, usually for

economic reasons. For the actual project, multiple integration and/or trades-offs have been made between

different disciplines:

- If possible, the HVAC units are not located on the roof, consequently the structural system is

more simplified and economic, since it does not include the mechanical systems weights.

- Electrical/lighting criteria, take into account the energy code and energy saving (0.8 W/ft2 was

considered as the maximum density for lighting).

- Use of VFD system to control the HVAC fans to save energy: the integration of HVAC, electrical

and controls design, and the vital role of information in managing an efficient and comfortable

environment.

Objectives

Our objective is to design the mechanical systems for an 18,000 square foot commercial building and to

utilize integration approaches to achieve minimum energy waste, as well as maximum human comfort

satisfaction. This is a new building with the majority of the building being finished space, while a small

portion on the second floor, the west side of the building roughly spanning 2840 square feet is to be

leased or used at a future date. The building is designed for the location, Laramie, Wyoming. The owner

of the building requires that the building needs to be heated to 70 degrees Fahrenheit, and cooled to 75

degrees Fahrenheit. The relative humidity can vary from 10-50%.

To satisfy the building load calculations, we determined that the best system for this building was an air-

water system. A hydronic system is needed to heat the perimeter spaces of the building. The rest of the

system is all air. To satisfy each zone, a VAV was sized and placed to take care of the heating and

cooling conditions. On the first floor, there are 19 zones and consequently 19 VAV boxes and on the

second floor, there are 16 zones and 16 VAV boxes. Design of the zones was done repeatedly and

scrutinized heavily to ensure the satisfaction of every building occupant.

Throughout the design process there were several codes which were adhered to. The main code used

throughout the design process was the 2011 International Building Code (IBC). We also used the

appropriate NFPA documents, along with the NEC. For outdoor air quality, both IBC and ASHRAE 62.1

were utilized, and for all wall and window U-values the ASHRAE 90.1 Standard and ASHRAE handbook

fundamentals 2009 were employed.

Psychrometrics Processes and Load Calculation

Psychrometrics

Using the psychrometric chart, the process of heating or cooling air for supply to building spaces could be

determined and adjusted. The first step in determining the psychrometric processes at work in the air

handling unit was to determine the outdoor conditions for heating and cooling in Laramie, WY. Design

temperature for heating was found in the ASHRAE handbook fundamentals 2009 to be -30˚F. At this

temperature, there is no relative humidity, humidity ratio, or wet bulb temperature. This value is not

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found on the psychrometric chart provided by ASHRAE, so its position was estimated in the margins of

the diagram. This condition was found to be at 84˚F dry bulb, and 54˚F wet bulb.

After plotting the outdoor conditions onto the psychrometric chart (Figure 1), the interior design

conditions were determined. These conditions were determined from the project guidelines to be 70˚F for

heating conditions and 75˚F for cooling conditions. Appropriate wet bulb temperatures were determined

by design team to be at 60˚F for both conditions. These conditions were plotted onto the psychrometric

chart, and a line between this “return” state and the original outdoor state was determined, known as the

“mixing line”. Using an equation to determine the humidity ratio of the mixing condition by knowledge

of the outdoor and return conditions, the mixing condition was found by intersecting the humidity ratio

and the mixing line. As a rule of thumb, it was determined that air would be supplied at 20˚F above

design conditions for heating, and 20˚F below design conditions for cooling. This allowed the “supply”

state to be determined by locating the respective dry bulb temperatures, and following the vertical line up

until its intersection with the humidity ratio found at the mixing condition.

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Figure 1: Psychrometric charts for heating (a) and cooling (b) seasons

Wall and Windows Input: In determining our walls and windows U-Values ASHRAE Standard 90.1

and ASHRAE handbook fundamentals 2009 were utilized. We went with all of the base values stipulated

by them.

Outside Supply Air: To determine the amount of required outside supply air we used a spreadsheet

which utilized both IBC and ASHRAE standard 62.1. In this spreadsheet room occupancy classifications

were given along with their areas and the normal number of occupants. Based on these simple variables

the program then calculated the optimum required amount of outdoor air needed to satisfy ASHRAE

Standard 62.1. These values were then used in our project to ensure our complete compliance with the

IBC and ASHRAE standards.

Zoning: Zoning the building was a process done in iterations with the load calculations. One of the

parameters that can be adjusted with the software used for load calculations is the grouping of spaces, or

zoning. Part of adjusting the load was adjusting zones, to ensure that a given space was not demanding

too much of the air handling unit. Many rounds of trial and error were completed before arriving at the

final zoning design. The zonings of these two floors are shown below (Figure 2).

Load Calculations: Before design work could begin, an understanding of the building load requirements

was needed. Load analysis was run using CHVAC Elite software. The software required a variety of

inputs to determine the load that the building would be subjected to. Information about the location of the

building was needed to determine climate conditions. Dimensions of each space in the building were

needed, along with placement of windows, area of glass, and U values for all windows, walls, ceilings,

and floors. Information about air changes, infiltration rates, and air handling equipment were input.

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Many of these values were based on educated assumptions made by the design team, as well as values

recommended by the program. Load calculations were run, and adjustments were made as needed in

order to put the loads into a reasonable range.

Figure 2: Zoning for both first and second floors

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System selection

Heating system: The heating of the central zones is assured partially by the air handling unit and by the

VAV boxes where the air is heated to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. For the perimeter zones, the load is

additionally handled by baseboard heaters.

Baseboard Heating Procedure: To design the baseboard heating system the program “HVAC solutions”

was utilized. The load calculations from the Elite software were plugged into the program and the system

selection and sizing was completed. The results were two main pumps running at 26.1 GPM. Also the

glycol feeder was accordingly sized at 26.1 GPM. There is also a small pump before each individual

VAV box. The two main pumps and the glycol feeder are located in the second floor mechanical room.

The small VAV pumps are located in the piping system right before each VAV.

Hydronic System: Our hydronic system has several main components. It consists of a boiler, two main

pumps, an expansion tank, VAV pumps, air separator, strainer, piping, and the numerous baseboard

heating units. The boiler heats the fluid which brings energy to the system for space heat. The main

pumps move the fluid throughout the system. An expansion tank relieves excessive pressure or generates

pressure when needed for the system. The VAV pumps provide heated fluid to each VAV. The glycol

feeder feeds glycol into the system just as a pump would. When the pressure in the loop falls below a set

point glycol is added to make up for losses due to leakage. The air separator removes air from the system

to ensure the efficiency of the system. The strainer removes any impurities in the liquid to again optimize

the system. Piping simply carriers the fluid throughout the building to the various baseboard heaters, and

the baseboard heaters deliver thermal energy to the space.

Cooling System: The cooling is assured using a DX Unitary Systems, where the evaporator is in direct

contact with the air stream, so the cooling coil of the airside loop is also the evaporator of the refrigeration

loop. Factors affecting the decision to select DX Unitary or Chiller-Based Applied systems include:

- Installed Cost

- Energy consumption

- Space requirements

- Freeze prevention

- Precision

- Building height, size, shape

- System cooling and heating capacity

- Centralized maintenance

- Stability of control

- Individual tenant billing

This system is composed in our air handling unit and our condensing unit, both of which are located on

the roof. Our air handling unit has two of the DX Unitary cooling coils to ensure that for the worst

Laramie weather conditions we can supply cooled air at 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

Air Handling Unit: To size the air handling unit the information from out load calculations along with

Carrier AHU Builder software was utilized. The result was one two phase air handling unit, which

indicates the method in which. This air handling unit has a capacity of 1,500 to 60,500 nominal CFM.

From our Elite load calculations we determined that we would operate our air handling unit at 28,800

CFM. Because of the high mixed air temperature, 65 degrees Fahrenheit we did not need heating coils,

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but we did need two DX coils for cooling. The heating was done by the VAV’s and complimented by our

baseboard heating system. Our air handling unit also contains variable frequency drives to help with

efficiency. On top of that we did not need louvers in our air handling unit because we decided to place

the unit on the roof. It was simply too large at 15’ 4”x 19’ 11”x 8’ 8” to place in either of our mechanical

rooms. This unit also weighs 7,338 pounds.

Air System: Our air system has several main components. The system contains an air handling unit,

various VAV’s of varying size, the duct work, the plenums and the return grilles. The air handling unit

treats the air for cooling conditions and distributes air throughout the system. The VAV’s heat the air for

each of the zones they are responsible for. The ductwork carries all of the air throughout the building.

All of the main trunks of the ductwork are rectangular. The ductwork heading into each VAV needed to

be circular, and all of the small trunks of the main lines consisted of circular ductwork which transitioned

into flexible ductwork as it attached to the plenums. The plenums distribute the air to the varying spaces

and the return grilles return the used air to the air handling unit. These components work together to

ensure the indoor quality.

Fans: Fans are a major component of the air handling system. Fans move air through the ductwork

system and within spaces. In VAV air distribution systems, fans must operate at capacities varying from

as low as 20% to 100% capacity. Because of this fluctuation in demand, selecting an appropriate fan is

one of the most important parts of air distribution design.

Pumps: Pumps drive the fluid flow in HVAC systems. For our project, pumps were required for VAV

units and the boiler. Selection of both pumps was done using the WebCAPS selection tool available

through the Grundfos website at http://www.grundfos.com. The boiler pump selected was a NB 32-

125.1/140 A-F-A-BAQE which is a non-self-priming, single stage centrifugal pump. The VAV pump

selected was an ALPHA 15-55 LCF 165 which uses a permanent magnet motor design to circulate water.

Boiler: Boilers provide heat to air-handing unit’s heating coil for space heating, baseboard, and heater

units used to heat the stairs. A Mach all aluminum condensing boiler was selected that provides 96%

efficiency with a capacity of 1,500,000 BTU/hour, and uses untreated glycol.

Lighting/Electrical Component:

A building electrical system is composed of different components, designed and assembled into a safe,

functional power-delivery system, according to the NEC code. The building’s electrical system is

connected to the utility system. A pad-mounted transformer or a bank of transformers mounted overhead

on a utility pole. The underground service connects the utility system to building’s main distribution

panel (MDP). Located within the MDP is the main building over-current device, or main disconnect, as

well as individual over-current devices for the system components connected to the MDP. The MDP may

also contain provisions for utility metering, as well as instrumentation for the measurement of system

voltage and current.

The main disconnect device can be either a circuit breaker or a fused switch. The Electrical load

estimation is based on considering all the systems, such as estimated general illumination load,

heating/cooling electrical load, power load, and any other electrical loads, such as elevators and kitchens.

An estimated load of 0.1 kilowatt per square meter of habitable area may be used to countercheck the

estimated load.

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The exact electrical rating of all equipment, HVAC, plumbing are provided by the HVAC design group.

Other loads, such as elevators and escalators, kitchen and others are provided by specialized companies.

Consultation of the local company as regards the point of service entrance, service voltage, metering

equipment and other requirements for power connections; the same should be done for the telephone

system.

The feeder is the wire feeding the panelboard. The branches are the branches coming off of the

panelboard. For example one spreadsheet can be used for the Main Distribution Panel of a buildings

electrical service with a limited number of larger circuit breakers feeding risers, elevators, air

conditioning equipment etc. Other schedules may be developed for lighting panels, power panels, heating

and air conditioning equipment panels and elevators panels and the loads from each of these other panels

can then be used as the loads for each branch of the MDP.

The preparation of the riser and/or one-line diagrams to include the main distribution panels, load centers,

switchboards or switchgears, and other service equipment. The feeder, sub-feeder sizes and all protective

equipment ratings are computed.

4. Survey and Project Evaluation:

The design course instructors are having discussion regarding the selection between two-semesters

integrated capstone design course versus two independents capstone design courses, where the first one

will be prepared by the students to participate to national competitions, such as ASHRAE and AIE design

competitions and the second semester will be oriented toward an integrated design performed in

collaboration with the industry. Another important aspect of this course is how the students see this

course toward their preparation to their future. The importance of integration in also surveyed.

The survey questions are:

Question 1: The importance of having two semesters capstone integrated design course vs. two

independent design courses? (Not at all Important, Very Unimportant, Neither Important or Unimportant,

Very Important, Extremely Important)

Question 2: How you see the importance of integration between the four design trades (architecture,

structure, mechanical, lighting/electrical)? (Not at all Important, Very Unimportant, Neither Important or

Unimportant, Very Important, Extremely Important)

Question 3: The importance of this course to help you to be prepared for the industry? (Not at all

Important, Very Unimportant, Neither Important or Unimportant, Very Important, Extremely Important)

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Figure 3: The importance of having two semesters capstone integrated design course vs. two independent

design courses?

Figure 4: How you see the importance of integration between the four design trades (architecture,

structure, mechanical, lighting/electrical)?

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Not at allimportant

VeryUnimportant

NeitherImportant norUnimportant

Very Important ExtremelyImportant

Question 1

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Not at allimportant

VeryUnimportant

NeitherImportant norUnimportant

Very Important ExtremelyImportant

Question 2

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Figure 5: The importance of this course to help you to be prepared for the industry?

Here, responses of design students to Questions 1, 2, and 3 are summarized. The survey focuses only on

global questions regarding the course. A detailed questions need to be surveyed in the future to recognize

the importance and also how to improve different aspects of this course.

As a second step, the instructors’ point view need to be surveyed regarding these aspects, since the

students’ answers are conditioned by other considerations, such as those who are concerned by graduation

in December, where two independent capstone courses are more suitable for them. Also, the aspect of

participating to national competition affects the result of the survey.

In parallel with the self-evaluation of each course by the instructor, we also conduct a course evaluation

by students. This topic is a part of the HVAC laboratory course. The course objectives introduced earlier

in the course are again provided to the students at the end of the semester. The students’ input on whether

the materials offered have met the objectives is then complied and used in the program outcome

assessment process. Results of instructor course evaluations (conducted by students) are reviewed by the

Department Chair and the Dean and shared with the faculty.

Each faculty member also conducts an evaluation of performance of students in his/her courses as part of

the Program objectives and outcome assessment process. A summary report on the performance of

students (to meet the Program objectives) and compliance with the Program outcomes is prepared and

submitted to the Department Chair for the assessment purposes.

Future plans to evaluate the effectiveness of the capstone in term of learning outcomes: Actions that will

be implemented to improve the effectiveness of the curriculum in term of learning outcomes:

We expanded on the instructors’ self-evaluation such that more direct assessment of students’

learning outcomes is obtained. A set of standards for instructor’s self-evaluation will be prepared

by the faculty and the Board of Advisors and will be implemented with the annual assessment

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Not at allimportant

VeryUnimportant

NeitherImportant norUnimportant

Very Important ExtremelyImportant

Question 3

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cycle. The main point of these standards is that the evaluation of students’ performance will based

on samples of work in three categories of students: those in the upper 75 percentile, those in the

50 – 75 percentile and those below the 50 percentile populations. Thus the assessment results

compiled are based on course performances and grades, exams, projects, presentations of

students, and writings as required in some courses. Furthermore, each course specifically

addresses the learning outcomes and relation between the course and the Program outcomes, the

methods used for the evaluation of students’ performance and the relevance of the course

materials to the Program outcomes following the standards adopted for the assessment process.

Students will be provided with the course descriptions including learning objectives and

outcomes. Students also will provide their input on the Program outcomes. The results from this

instrument are used along with those from the instructors’ self-assessment of courses as a means

to ensuring compatibility in results obtained.

A more rigorous process in assessing the learning outcomes of this lab course will be

implemented, which are in parallel with the Program outcomes. The following outlines process

will be used for this capstone course assessment.

o Individual instructor evaluation of the degree of learning achievement of individual

students on a capstone team, which includes consideration of the collective achievements

of the team.

o Peer evaluation (optional by instructor).

o Grading of deliverables by the instructors.

o Teamwork survey.

o Self-assessment.

5. Conclusions:

Capstone design are courses where students have the freedom to make their design of the architecture

design, structural, mechanical systems, and lighting/electrical on a real building, under the supervision of

four instructors and the guidance of multiple designers from the industry. Student progress is discussed

twice a week and during the office hours. Participation in the capstone course provides another

opportunity for students to apply knowledge they learned during several other courses. In the first course,

the trades are conducted in sequence. However, in spring, the trades are conducted in parallel. All

students collaborate to achieve a final project. For example, the weight of HVAC systems is transmitted

from mechanical students to structural students to be considered for mechanical loads and later the

structural students transmit the structural design to mechanical students to be considered for duct layout.

The capstone design is conducted in two phases: preliminary and final design. Within the preliminary

design an estimated budget is calculated based on simplified assumptions. The final design is based on

actual data regarding weather data and the building information collected from different sources.

The capstone design program has been positively accepted by the students, and has provided them with a

comprehensive experience in both design and systems integration. Students are required to use multiple

software programs that are commonly used within the industry, and learn the fundamentals of

architecture, structural, mechanical, lighting/electrical design process through an actual project, from its

architectural drawings through its construction. Finally, it provides the students an opportunity to improve

their skills in both written and oral communication.

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6. References:

Steve Beyerlein, Denny Davis, Mike Trevisan, Phil Thompson, Kunle Ha, “Assessment Framework for

Capstone Design Courses”

Sobek, D.K., and V.K. Jain. (2004). “Two Instruments for Assessing Design Outcomes for Capstone

Projects.” Proceedings of American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference, Salt Lake

City, UT.

McKenzie, L.J., M.S. Trevisan, D.C. Davis, and S.W. Beyerlein. (2004). “Capstone design courses and

assessment: A national survey.” Proceedings of American Society for Engineering Education Annual

Conference, Salt Lake City, UT.

Stiggins, R.J. (1997). Student-Centered Classroom Assessment, Second Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ:

Prentice Hall.

Olds, B., Moskal, B., and Miller, R. (2005). Assessment in engineering education: evolution, approaches

and future collaborators, Journal of Engineering Education. 94(1), pp. 27-40.

Todd, R., Magleby, S., Sorensen, C., Swan, B., and Anthony, D. (1995). A survey of capstone

engineering courses in North America, Journal of Engineering Education, 84(2), pp. 165-174.

Wiggins, G. and McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by Design. Association for Supervision and

Curriculum Development, Alexandria, VA.