Resumen de Success factors for international students in capstone design teams
Gregory J. Kowalski, Bridget M. Smyser
As the number of international undergraduate students in U.S. universities grows, more students will be required to workon multicultural Capstone teams. The increase in multicultural teams is an opportunity to provide student experiences indiverse teams withtheir associated increase in successful,innovative solutions, ifmanaged properly. A total of 237 previousCapstone design project teams were studied to determine relationships between the number of international students on ateam and outcomes such as prototype completeness and writing grade. This database provides objective information toinvestigate the accuracy of anecdotal observations and to develop strategies to improve student outcomes. Other factorssuch as previous experience with group members, language proficiency, and whether or not a team was student formedwere also investigated. Results show that international students tend to perform better on student formed teams, and thattheir ability to create a student formed team tends to correlate highly with English language proficiency. The results of thisinvestigation provide insight for mentoring actions to improve student outcomes and to provide positive experiences for allstudents while remaining sensitive to cultural differences.
