Ingenieur Vol.72 ingenieur October 2017-FA3 | Page 38

INGENIEUR
student commitment than invented projects.
Collaborations with industry are usually done
during the evaluation process [22] whereby the
representatives from industry are invited to
project presentations. Student teams present the
results of their project in a formal presentation
setting. Later, the industry partner gives feedback,
comments and discusses the results with both
students and course coordinators.
Ir. Assoc. Prof. Abdul Aziz Omar [1] mentioned
that it is an encouragement to have industrial
insights for an interdisciplinary capstone design
project; however, industry members cannot give
their full commitment throughout the duration of
the project due to their own workloads.
Collaborations with other faculties
Challenges in coordinating a capstone design
project require greater amount of time compared
with other engineering courses. Besides, the
amount of work in a capstone design project
outweighs the credit hours assigned for the
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course. Researchers [24; 26] agree that faculty
educators charged with heavy teaching and
research loads are unable to fully invest in the
projects. Fair and Smith [38] stated that “the
manpower commitment to support a really
effective, professional process design course….
requires at least twice as much time to teach
as an ordinary lecture course”. This might result
in disinterest by many engineering educators to
contribute in interdisciplinary capstone design
projects.
Collaboration with other faculties is often
carried out via a faculty supervisor rather than
engaging students from another faculty in a
project team. This type of project would not be
considered an interdisciplinary capstone project,
which requires integration with other disciplines
or programmes. Olsen [31] stated that recruiting
and maintaining collaboration between faculties
is difficult due to the nature of their courses.
Typically, each faculty has full autonomy and
control over the curriculum. However, for an