Ingenieur Vol.72 ingenieur October 2017-FA3 | Page 36

INGENIEUR
Issues And Challenges
Some of the issues and challenges discussed
include scheduling, fairness of grading, team work,
roles of course coordinator, collaborations with
industry and collaborations with other faculties.
Scheduling
Scheduling is a major challenge with an
interdisciplinary course [13; 21- 25]. Each
department in the faculty of each discipline has
their own schedules; thus, finding a slot for a
course can be challenging and require lots of work.
In addition, students face difficulties in organising
meetings or work time with their team members
and with their faculty advisor. This results in more
challenges when discussing and conducting a
project to meet set datelines.
Ir. Assoc. Prof. Abdul Aziz Omar [1] also
mentioned that time limitation is the main issue
when implementing an interdisciplinary capstone
design project. Engineering students are required
to learn as much knowledge as possible in the
engineering field and other general knowledge
throughout their four years in universities. It
is not impossible to introduce interdisciplinary
learning in the project; however, it requires the
full responsibility and commitment from other
faculties, educators and students.
An agreement and understanding from
the faculties involved in the project of an
interdisciplinar y capstone design project
creates an opportunity for students to work as
interdisciplinary team members. Departmental
course schedules can be coordinated and
re-arranged to find an intersection time slot
convenient for each faculty. Providing laboratory
time can help team members meet and gather
information in completing their projects.
Grading
Apar t from scheduling and coordination
difficulties, ensuring complete fairness in grading
has proved to be among the significant challenges
[13; 23; 26]. Course coordinators have difficulties
in giving a fair grade to all the students due to
several factors such as different expectations,
personalities, experiences and time constraints.
A common way to evaluate individual
contributions to team effort is through peer
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reviews and evaluations [22; 23; 27-30; 31], which
can be done at the mid point of the project or at
the end of the project. The feedback obtained
from peer evaluations can help the faculty improve
interdisciplinary capstone design projects. Others
have suggested the use of weekly logbooks and
self-evaluations for the students. To make a
project more similar to the industrial world, some
faculties have invited industrial panel members
to evaluate students’ presentations and projects.
The collaboration from various industries and
universities provides students with a great
experience throughout their project.
Distribution of work/Team work
Building a positive working relationship among the
team members has been found to challenging when
implementing an interdisciplinary capstone design
project [13; 22-23; 26; 31]. In interdisciplinary
teams, some teams are able to work smart,
are fully functioning and team members can
communicate well with each other for the duration
of the project. Other teams face difficulties and
struggle to complete the whole project. It is very
important to ensure that all disciplines involved in
an interdisciplinary capstone design project can
contribute equally. Students can be overwhelmed
or even discontented with a project if they feel that
the requirements for different disciplines are very
unbalanced [23].
To reduce the stress among team members,
a simple ‘ice-breaking’ activity helps them to get
to know each other and get comfortable at an
early stage of a project. Questionnaires are often
used to help the instructor learn more about
the students’ interests, academic strengths and
experiences [30; 32; 33]. Furthermore, at the
initial stage of a project, an evaluation on the
pairings of students from multiple faculties or
programmes can be conducted. Utilizing software
systems including Comprehensive Assessment
for Team-Member Effectiveness (CATME) to
gather peer and self-evaluation data can aid the
interdisciplinary capstone course coordinator
during this evaluation [13; 34].
Role of Course Coordinator
Studies have demonstrated the important role
of the course coordinator/faculty advisor in an
interdisciplinary capstone design project [13; 23;