Resumen de Incorporation of poverty alleviation in third world countries in a first- year engineering capstone course
The engineering curriculum at Ohio Northern University includes a one year introduction to engineering course sequenceculminating in a one quarter first-year capstone design course. A requirement for projects to involve the design of apoverty alleviation device was recently introduced. The initial implementation required student teams to identify an impoverishedcountry (using the World Bank’s definition) and address a specific need of the population. The project requirements includefollowing and documenting the engineering design process, preparation of a proposal, regular verbal and written status reports, andboth development and presentation of a prototype. The poverty alleviation requirement has allowed students to directly experiencemultiple learning outcomes as specified in ABET assessment criteria including understanding engineering in a global and societalcontext, along with criteria typically found in a capstone course such as the ability to function in teams and to communicateeffectively. Quantitative and qualitative assessment of the project showed that students felt the experience related to societal andrealistic constraints. Based on the evaluation of data from the initial offering of this course, recommendations for both courseimprovements and future research are presented.
