A Quantitative Analysis of the Effects of a Multidisciplinary Engineering Capstone Design Course

BACKGROUND Capstone design courses seek to prepare engineering students for industry by challenging student teams to solve real-world problems. To improve this preparation, university programs have recently focused on creating multidisciplinary teams. However, there is limited quantitative evidence showing that multidisciplinary student engineering teams develop higher quality projects or are better prepared for the work force. HYPOTHESIS Students who take a multidisciplinary capstone design (MCD) course have better outcomes than monodisciplinary capstone students as measured by job placement and/or independent evaluation by industrial professionals of students' products. METHODOLOGY A single treatment was administered to Georgia Tech capstone design students for one semester with three course conditions: (1) monodisciplinary biomedical, (2) monodisciplinary mechanical, or (3) multidisciplinary biomedical and mechanical engineering. After course completion, students' cumulative GPA, job placement, and design exposition score were obtained and analyzed. This analysis used a generalized linear model for the exposition score and a logistic model for job placement outcomes. RESULTS A general linear model showed that all students who took the MCD course, regardless of major, produced an engineering solution that was better than that of their monodisciplinary contemporaries as measured by external industry professionals. Logistic and multinomial regressions showed that the MCD course increased the odds of employment significantly for biomedical engineering students. CONCLUSIONS In this preliminary investigation, the MCD teams' holistic performance in innovation, utility, analysis, proof of concept, and communication skills was superior to that of their monodisciplinary counterparts, and, on average, they were hired more frequently.