Success Factors for International Students in Capstone Design Teams

As the number of international undergraduate students in U.S. universities grows, more students will be required to work on multicultural Capstone teams. The increase in multicultural teams is an opportunity to provide student experiences in diverse teams with their associated increase in successful, innovative solutions, if managed properly. A total of 237 previous Capstone design project teams were studied to determine relationships between the number of international students on a team and outcomes such as prototype completeness and writing grade. This database provides objective information to investigate the accuracy of anecdotal observations and to develop strategies to improve student outcomes. Other factors such as previous experience with group members, language proficiency, and whether or not a team was student formed were also investigated. Results show that international students tend to perform better on student formed teams, and that their ability to create a student formed team tends to correlate highly with English language proficiency. The results of this investigation provide insight for mentoring actions to improve student outcomes and to provide positive experiences for all students while remaining sensitive to cultural differences.