Enhancing and assessing life long learning skills through capstone projects

With rapid advances in new technology, graduates from an engineering technology program have to constantly acquire new knowledge and skills during their professional career. Thus, one of the ABET program outcomes requires students to recognize the need for, and an ability to engage in lifelong learning. In most of the Engineering Technology (ET) programs, capstone projects are designed for students to utilize their technical knowledge, problem solving skills, and project management skills to develop a product or a system related to their discipline. This paper presents a methodology of utilizing the capstone course as a vehicle to enhance and assess student's life long learning skills. During the semester long course, one student team signed up to learn the subject of adhesive technology that is not taught in the current curriculum. The student team designed and built an adhesive test apparatus that can be used for outreach activities. Another student team was assigned to learn rapid prototyping. The student team installed a Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) rapid prototyping machine and designed and produced FDM parts for demonstrations. To assess student learning, surveys on students' knowledge and skill in adhesive technology and rapid prototyping were conducted at the beginning and the end of the semester. The paper summarizes the survey results and discusses the students' self learning experience. American Society for Engineering Education, 2008.

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