Implementation of the house of quality as a tool to assess products of design in a capstone design course

• Autores: Ben Sherrett, John P. Parmigiani
• Localización: The International journal of engineering education, ISSN-e 0949-149X, Vol. 27, no. Extra 6, 2011, págs. 1324-1332
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • While serving a vital role in the undergraduate curriculum, capstone design courses face a variety of challenges. These challengesinclude lack of student value & utilization of course objectives & assessment tools, sponsor retention & funding issues, and largeinstructional demands. Many of these challenges may be addressed by placing a larger and more genuine emphasis on assessing theproduct of the design project, not only the process by which the design occurs. Oregon State University’s (OSU) Mechanical,Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering capstone course currently organizes, manages, and evaluates capstone projects using theHouse of Quality (HoQ). In general, the HoQ is a tool used to relate project requirements to design performance specifications.Additionally, at OSU the HoQ serves as (i) a contract between students, sponsors, course instructors, and faculty advisers detailingexactly what is required from the design project, (ii) a guiding tool to allow students to self-monitor their progress throughout thecourse, and (iii) an objective means of evaluating the students’ performance in terms of the product produced by their capstonedesign projects. This paper describes the OSU course, introduces the HoQ, and presents a time-line of the implementation ofproduct assessment at OSU. Key changes are shown during the move from a purely process based assessment framework to thecurrent state where 50% of total points in the design implementation term of the capstone course are awarded based on the studentdesign team accomplishing design product metrics per sponsor defined design requirements. In addition, the authors report on thecourse instructor’s perception regarding the effect of implementing the HoQ in the OSU capstone course. Finally, conclusions andimplications of the work are presented.