Criteria for Capstone Design Courses

Criteria for CSE Capstone Design Courses

[This is a new set criteria for capstone courses for the BS CSE program. These criteria were approved by the CSE faculty at its meeting of April 26, 2004. The previous set of criteria are also available. An item-by-item rationale for these new criteria, as well as some thoughts on how capstone courses might be organized, is available elsewhere. Some possible alternative models of how the capstone courses may be organized were also considered by the Undergrad Studies Committee, but these models are not part of the criteria.]

The EC 2000 document is being revised so that the set of requirements for the capstone course(s) reads as follows:

Students must be prepared for engineering practice through the curriculum culminating in a major design experience based on the knowledge and skills acquired in earlier coursework and incorporating engineering standards and realistic constraints.

Courses that meet the following requirements will be considered by the Undergraduate Studies Committee for designation as Capstone Design courses for the CSE program. Courses currently designated as capstone courses will be reviewed regularly to ensure that they continue to be appropriate for designation as capstone design courses.

All CSE majors must take one of the capstone design courses, most commonly the one appropriate to their specific option. If a course currently designated as a capstone design course loses that designation, students who took the course when it was so designated may use it to meet their capstone course requirement.
The current list (as of 4/28/'04) of capstone design courses is: CSE 682, 731, 758, 762, 772, 776, 778. (776 is no longer offered.)

Criteria:

Level: Must be at the senior level.
Prerequisites: Must include as prerequisites all relevant courses that are part of the CSE core or the option for which the capstone course is intended. Specifically, CSE 560, and at least one upper division course that is either in the CSE core or is in the required part of the option for which the course is intended, should be prerequisites. CSE 601 should also be a prerequisite (601 helps develop oral and written communication skills, and addresses important ethical and professional issues).
Design component: Design must be the major component of the course. Student teams (see item (7) below) should explore and evaluate possible design alternatives. Each member of each team should play an active role in the design activities.
Course content: The course must incorporate consideration of as many of the following issues as are appropriate to the course:
- Realistic constraints: This may, for example, involve performance (space and time) considerations in the implementation or platform restrictions imposed by the intended user. These issues may be addressed in the lectures, and students should be consciously aware of these considerations.
- Standards: Where appropriate, consideration of relevant standards such as Posix and XML should be included. Where appropriate, standard techniques such as UML should be used in describing designs.
- Maintainability: The design should include consideration of how to make the system maintainable to perhaps accomodate changing requirements or to continue functioning in a somewhat different environment etc.
- Ethical, social, and professional issues: Issues relating to such matters as security, privacy, etc., are often directly related to the general area of the capstone courses even if not necessarily with the particular projects. Students should again be consciously aware of these issues, perhaps via class discussions. Other professional issues include awareness of new methodologies, languages, tools and systems that may be used in industry and students' ability to learn about these on their own and capstone courses often present opportunities for students to develop these skills.
In summary, any of these considerations that relate directly to the specific project must be addressed explicitly and carefully in the project. For those that are in the general area of the course but less directly related to the project, students should, as noted above, be consciously aware of the issues involved; this may be ensured via lectures, student presentations, informal (in-class) discussions, etc.
Documentation: Deliverables should include suitable documentation of both the design and any significant implementation performed in the project. The grading scheme should account for the quality of the documentation.
Oral presentation: Each student should be required to make at least one significant oral presentation (10 minutes or longer), or two or more shorter presentations about his/her design/implementation. The grading scheme should account for the quality of the presentation(s), possibly using peer evaluation for the purpose.
Team working: Students should be organized into appropriate teams for working on their design projects. Where possible, these teams should be multi-disciplinary
Course size: Enrollment in each section of capstone courses should be capped at 30 students.

All capstone courses are expected to meet all of the requirements specified above. In individual cases if a course coordinator is able to present compelling reasons why a particular course cannot meet a particular requirement, as well as an explanation of how students taking that course will satisfy the intent behind the requirement, the Undergraduate Studies Committee will consider these reasons in deciding whether the course should be designated a capstone course.

Each capstone course must include a specific set of activities and follow a well-defined set of assessment procedures described separately. These activities and procedures were established in order to help develop students' soft skills, in particular, team working, communication, and lifelong learning skills; and to assess the extent to which the course as well as the entire curriculum are helping students develop these skills. The results of these assessments will be used to improve the individual capstone courses as well as other parts of the curriculum.

Each capstone course will be reviewed regularly to ensure that it meets all of these requirements.