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The Engineering Capstone Course

Fundamentals for Students and Instructors

  • Textbook
  • © 2014

Overview

Authors:
  1. Harvey F. Hoffman

    1. Fairfield University, Fairfield, USA

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  • Identifies the most important competencies and deliverables engineering/project executives expect before embarking on a project effort
  • Challenges students to defend the use of resources and demonstrate the likely return on investment (ROI)
  • Focuses on the practicalities of project completion in the environment in which the majority of students will work
  • Provides specific outlines for weekly presentations, the proposal report, and the final report
  • Simplifies instructors’ class planning with ideas for how to organize, structure, and manage an engineering capstone course
  • Describes the likely phases that a team might go through using the well-known Tuckman model
  • Enlightens engineering instructors who teach a capstone or senior project course but have not worked in industry
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxviii
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  2. Engineering and the Capstone Course

    • Harvey F. Hoffman
    Pages 1-5

  3. The Capstone Team

    • Harvey F. Hoffman
    Pages 7-24

  4. Basic Team Communications

    • Harvey F. Hoffman
    Pages 25-38

  5. Capstone Class Written and Oral Submittals

    • Harvey F. Hoffman
    Pages 39-86

  6. Project Development

    • Harvey F. Hoffman
    Pages 87-98

  7. Innovative Capstone Project Examples

    • Harvey F. Hoffman
    Pages 99-112

  8. Intellectual Property

    • Harvey F. Hoffman
    Pages 113-122

  9. Epilogue

    • Harvey F. Hoffman
    Pages 123-125

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 127-144
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Keywords

About this book

This essential book takes students and instructors through steps undertaken in a start-to-finish engineering project as conceived and presented in the engineering capstone course. The learning experience follows an industry model to prepare students to recognize a need for a product or service, create and work in a team; identify competition, patent overlap, and necessary resources, generate a project proposal that accounts for business issues, prepare a design, develop and fabricate the product or service, develop a test plan to evaluate the product or service, and prepare and deliver a final report and presentation. Throughout the book, students are asked to examine the business viability aspects of the project. The Engineering Capstone Course: Fundamentals for Students and Instructors emphasizes that a design must meet a set of realistic technical specifications and constraints including examination of attendant economics, environmental needs, sustainability, manufacturability, health and safety, governmental regulations, industry standards, and social and political constraints. The book is ideal for instructors teaching, or students working through, the capstone course.

Reviews

From the book reviews:

“The author brings his experience to bear in this book to formulate his ‘recipe’ for a very good engineering capstone course. … this short book provides a useful thoughtful outline about how to proceed in designing a capstone course as well as insights into how to teach and evaluate the students. Summing Up: Recommended. Engineering faculty and professionals.” (A. M. Strauss, Choice, Vol. 52 (6), February, 2015)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Fairfield University, Fairfield, USA

    Harvey F. Hoffman

About the author

Professor Harvey Hoffman is a Professor of the Practice of Engineering at Fairfield University.

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