Resumen de Exploring student perceptions of capstone design outcomes
Capstone design courses are pivotal in engineering curricula, and understanding and assessing the resultant learning iscritical to both researchers and practitioners. While current scholarship does provide tools for such assessments, most arebased on outcomes derived through research with faculty, administrators, and various industry stakeholders. As a result,students’ self-reported learning gains have been largely overlooked. Addressing this gap, this paper presents a qualitativethematic analysis that explores student perceptionsof capstone learning. Drawing on 50 semi-structured interviews with 31students from three different institutions, we describe four emergent themes: (1) Engineering Design Skills; (2) Teamworkand Communication; (3) Self-directed Learning Skills; and (4) Development of an Engineering Identity. These themes aregenerally consistent with current outcomes identified from other sources, but students’ discussions also highlight areas ofpersonal development that move beyond acquisition of technical and professional skills. That is, students’ perceptions oftheir own learning in capstone reflect not only those outcomes currently desired by various stakeholders and accreditationbodies, but also outcomes that might be more subtle and less tangible than those demonstrated via traditional assessmentapproaches. Thus, we argue that in order to more meaningfully support student growth, both technical and professional,capstone faculty should incorporate opportunities to actively promote and provide evidence for the kinds of criticalreflection that students engage in throughout the course.
