RFID in a Computer Engineering Capstone

The capstone experience for computer engineering students at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo provides teams of students with, purposely undefined, design projects of significant scope. Students deal with a real customer and are expected to do a significant amount of independent learning during their time. Students learn of these things on the first day of a two-quarter capstone sequence. Students spend the remaining 19 weeks finding out precisely what they mean. Unique to the course is that it involves a substantial amount of independent learning. Past and current projects are in the area of radio frequency identification (RFID) yet students typically do not select RF and wireless courses as one of their three technical elective courses prior to the capstone sequence. They are therefore required to quickly come up to speed in the area. To this end, students are grouped into Knowledge Teams. Students are expected to become experts in their assigned topic and share their knowledge with other members of their project team and knowledge team. Knowledge teams give weekly oral presentations to the entire class and students write a large technical paper on the subject of their knowledge team. Desired outcomes from the independent learning and both oral and written communication in the capstone include increased technical competence, increased technical communication skills, and an understanding of the importance of lifelong learning. The capstone is currently in its second offering. Surveys administered to students in the first offering are largely in line with expected outcomes. An unexpected outcome, as the knowledge teams were initially formulated to increase technical competence, was that students reported an increase in the ability to work on teams