Resumen de Launching for success: a review of team formation for capstone design
Rick Parker, Shraddha Sangelkar, Matthew Swenson, Julie Dyke Ford
In practice, engineering capstone project teams form through any of a variety of methods, including random assignment ofstudents, assignments based on existing or desired skills of students, student preference-based assignments, having students bid forprojects, using computer-aided team formation, and others. This paper discusses tradeoffs of different approaches for formingteams at the launch of engineering capstone projects, drawing from literature about team formation and from shared experience inrunning capstone courses. Building on a literature review, we present a summary of team formation approaches with mechanismsfor performing team formation. We recommend that capstone directors consider desired learning outcomes and pedagogicalperspectives as well as industry expectations when considering tradeoffs for different team formation approaches. Team formationis the first step in the full project lifecycle and overall team success. As such, a desired outcome of team formation is theopportunity of engendering a sense of ownership in students of their project from ‘‘cradle to grave.’’
