Using Graduate Assistants as Project Advisers for Externally-Sponsored Capstone Design Projects

Capstone design is an opportunity for students to apply their newly obtained knowledge in a real-world setting. Oregon State University's School of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering provides students with choices of internally (originating from within the department offering the capstone course) and externally sponsored projects and uses an assessment system based on written reports and the quality of the deliverable (e. g. prototype). Providing different projects for each group of students has made tracking and managing the progress of each project difficult. The large amount of work required to provide the necessary support for students has historically fallen to faculty. However, recently, much of this work has been shifted to graduate student assistants. The graduate students serve as technical advisers, project managers, centralized communication hubs, and report graders. When compared to faculty, graduate students tend to be more accessible to students, project sponsors, and instructors; they seem more motivated to provide high quality results, they provide comparable levels of student assessments, and they are easier to hold accountable. For many graduate students, the capstone projects are extensions of their research. Concerns over graduate student inexperience are resolved by having a faculty member available for support as necessary. Several tiers of graduate advisers are used and are illustrated through case studies. The first tier uses graduate students simply as report graders. The second tier adds project advising. The third tier adds responsibility for creating a device, such as testing equipment, for the capstone students' use in validating that their design meets requirements. The fourth tier includes grading, advising and responsibility to extend, as necessary, the output of the capstone students' work to create a fully functioning deliverable for the sponsor. The fifth tier is similar to the fourth, but the project topic is a key component of the graduate students' degree research. Through case studies, faculty and graduate adviser grade comparisons, and content analysis from student reports, Graduate Assistants have been observed to be valuable contributors to an enhanced capstone course at all levels of involvement.