The influence of prior industrial experience and multidisciplinary teamwork on student design learning in a capstone design course

In a recent study, the design process knowledge of students entering their senior year without any industrial experience was shown to be no different than that of first-year students at the end of an introduction to engineering course. Seniors with industrial experience, however, showed some differences compared to the firstyear students: they were more aware of documentation' role throughout design, less aware that idea generation is an important part of design, and less able to allot time to different design activities. The focus of this current study is to follow the seniors to the end of their capstone design course and reassess their design process knowledge. By doing so, the impact of the capstone course and the effects of having prior industrial experience and of being on a multidisciplinary capstone project are investigated. Results indicate that a capstone experience increases students’ understanding of needs identification, the overall layout of design including iteration, and relative time allotments of different design activities. A capstone course also reduced the differences seen before this study between students with and without prior industrial experience. Students in multidisciplinary and single disciplinary capstone courses scored similarly, although data suggests multidisciplinary students understood the role of needs identification slightly better.