We have implemented a jigsaw framework in our biomedical engineering capstone design course by overlaying strategic consideration groups across our design teams. Collaboration in design courses is usually focused within a design team with some peer feedback, but opportunities to work across teams are often limited. The purpose of this teaching tip…

A teaching module for HAZOPs is presented here that was included in the capstone subject. The module included a lecture, class exercise and an advisors' led workshop. Some students undertake HAZOPs individually, representing academic misconduct. A verification strategy, based on Zipf's law, is presented that analyses word frequency and key words…

Many higher education institutions have responded to the significant shortage of professionals with strong analytical expertise by offering graduate programs in business analytics and data science. These programs are typically designed to be practitioner focused and many of them offer a Capstone course that gives students the opportunity to…

What role does advertising play in product development as part of owned media? For three years, a capstone advertising campaign course collaborated with STEM courses to form interdisciplinary teams composed of advertising, engineering, and computer science. The study provides insight into how teams can be more entrepreneurial by building on the…

Many authentic BME projects require system integration. This year, before the start of the open-ended Capstone projects, three connected modules were used as an initiative to practice systems integration and thus promote readiness. To this aim, a Do-It-Yourself spectrophotometer/colorimeter was used as the interconnecting theme. In the first two…

A required undergraduate computer science 15-week project course at North Carolina State University, Department of Computer Science, USA, has grown rapidly in 29 years from serving 3 student teams to up to 39 teams. To maintain the integrity of the award-winning program and to facilitate the collaboration of hundreds of students in an academic…

Undergraduate students entering the classroom are often expected to have the skills needed to find, utilize, and synthesize academic scholarship. Yet, few feel prepared to do so. The research methods classroom provides immense opportunities for developing a meaningful foundation for students to enhance information literacy such that they feel…

A Statistics Practicum course is offered as another option besides an internship or research experience for students to fulfill a required statistics major capstone experience. This article discusses the first and fourth offering of this practicum course, which provides a unique perspective on the initial implementation of the course and its…

Current educational systems are making shifts from teacher-centered to learner-centered environments. This shift creates space for more involvement from students in their own instructional and assessment processes that sets them up for success in a method that allows them control of their achievement. Teachers have to assess and reflect on their…

Learning is inherently a social act occurring through individualized interpretation and negotiations with diverse others. The ability to work with others within the learning environment and beyond is an essential skill. Student-centered teaching methods that emphasize active learning in a team setting have garnered much support across higher…

Acid-base titration concepts and experiments are ubiquitous, yet challenging, aspects of the general chemistry curriculum. Most general chemistry courses include at least one acid-base titration laboratory experiment, though the focus is often on determining the concentration, pK[subscript a], or molar mass of an analyte rather than on the details…

While biomedical and life science research have embraced interdisciplinarity as the means to solving pressing 21st century complex challenges, interdisciplinarity in undergraduate education has been more difficult to implement. As a consequence, disciplinary rather than interdisciplinary capstones have become ubiquitous. Disciplinary capstones are…

The author empirically tested an in-class experiential team formation exercise that combines the benefits of professor- and student-directed methods. Previous studies have focused on analyzing the advantages or disadvantages of one method or the other but have not brought together the benefits of both. The present study was conducted over a…

According to national labor market information study, access to talent is the greatest business challenge Canadian biotech companies are facing. We, therefore, developed, implemented, and assessed a pharma industry-inspired, medicinal research laboratory module in an experiential capstone biotechnology laboratory course. This involves developing a…

This article describes a major capstone course centered on public writing, whose underlying pedagogical principles are transferable to courses across the curriculum. The course aims to strengthen students' mathematical agency and their ability to effectively communicate mathematical ideas. In its unique format, students repeatedly take turns…