Resumen de Nifty ideas and surprising flops in capstone design education
Susannah Howe, Kevin Caves, Carsten Kleiner, Glen Livesay, Judith Shaul Norback, Renee Rogge, Cameron Turner, Tristan Utschig
Following good design practice, capstone design instructors often try out new teaching strategies and activities in their capstonecourses, hoping to find useful tools to support student learning. Some of these ideas are a riotous success; others fall completelyflat. The ‘‘Nifty Ideas and Surprising Flops’’ panel session at the 2010 Capstone Design Conference featured eight such ideas—some of them nifty, some of them floppy, and some with aspects of both—presented in a rapid-fire manner with rich discussion.Several of the ideas addressed oral presentations in capstone courses: scoring rubrics utilizing engineering executive input, voice-over narratives, and elevator pitches. Two of the ideas focused on mentoring: graduate student mentors for capstone teams, andvertical mentoring. The other three ideas covered a design ‘‘boot camp’’, broader impacts essays, and back-of-the-envelopecalculations. This paper provides additional detail about the eight different ideas, including how they were implemented, to whatextent they were successes or flops, and how they have been modified as a result. Capstone instructors are encouraged to try outtheir own versions of these ideas, leveraging the successes and learning from the flops presented here.
