Capstone Project Wiki

Coaches are involved in evaluating design review submissions in two ways. First, they review their own team's work and make suggestions for improvement before the submission. The coach should use the scoresheet to evaluate the report to provide the best feedback to the team.

Second, coaches evaluate artifacts and reports for two other teams in their instructional pod. These evaluations will be used to assign grades to the team. Please take your evaluation responsibility seriously. Use the scoresheet to evaluate the artifacts and reports. Provide feedback that can help the students improve.

As a Capstone coach, you will be responsible for evaluating the design of two other teams in your pod. You will evaluate their submitted stage approval package, provide comments and a grade, and attend the design review to give them verbal feedback as well.

The dates and times for each of the design reviews will be assigned by the instructors. The Opportunity Development Review, Concept Review, and Architecture Review times will be assigned during the Product Development Introduction. The Winter Planning Review, Subsystem Engineering Review, and System Refinement Review times will be assigned in late October based on the requested dates provided in the Project Milestones Table created during Opportunity Development. Instructors will make every effort to have your design reviews take place on days you have indicated will work with your schedule.

The evaluation process should take about 90 minutes. The process shown here may help you to effectively complete your evaluations without spending excessive time.

The team submits their stage approval package on the Capstone web site at least three class days (excluding weekends and holidays) before the review by 10:00 AM.

The team submission triggers an email to the review coaches, reminding them that the review is due within two class days (excluding weekends and holidays).

The review coach goes to the Evaluations section of the Capstone Dashboard to see the evaluations that are ready to be done. This page has links to the submitted stage approval package and to the scoresheet for the stage. It also indicates the date and time that evaluations are due.

You should collect the following:

1. The stage approval section from the Project Wiki for the current stage (this is also available as the Stage Reference link from the Evaluations Dashboard).
2. The scoresheet for the current stage (the Scoresheet Template link from the Evaluations Dashboard).
3. The stage approval package submitted by the team for the current stage.
4. If you are evaluating the final submission of a semester report, a change summary document.

Take a few minutes to review the stage approval section and the scoresheet for the current stage. Pay special attention to the Review Items and the Excellent criteria found in the scoresheet. These are the specific items you will need to be checking, in addition to your general evaluation of the overall work.

Plan about 30 minutes to read through the Design Report (if present) and the Primary Artifacts. You may wish to set a timer to help you stay within 30 minutes.

As you are reading, make comments about the materials you read. You may make comments in a separate file, or you may prefer to add comments to the PDF file. But it's really important for the team to get substantive comments about their work, not just editing suggestions.

When your time is up (or you have finished evaluating the Design Report and the Primary Artifacts), plan 30 minutes to evaluate a selection of the Supporting Artifacts. Again, it may be useful to set a timer.

Pick supporting artifacts that are important to the evaluation of the stage. You may wish to scan through all of the supporting artifacts and then focus on those that need the most work. But make sure that you can evaluate the completeness of the set of artifacts, as well as the quality of individual artifacts.

If the stage requires engineering drawings, be sure you evaluate at least a couple of drawings. If the project requires both mechanical and electrical drawings, evaluate at least one of each. If drawings are needed and are missing, do NOT give stage approval.

Pay special attention to test procedures. Are they complete enough for you to follow them?

For test reports, make sure there is evidence of actual measured data, not just summary assessments.

Check for engineering analysis. Have appropriate analyses been done? Are they done correctly?

Make sure you include comments on the supporting artifacts.

Armed with your comments and your reading, you should now be ready to enter scores on the scoresheet. Go through the elements one-by-one, evaluating the submitted work to see where it lies relative to the given criteria. As you go through this process, you may wish to add additional comments to your comment document.

You should be able to complete this stage of the evaluation in 30 minutes or less.

Don't forget to enter your name and the team name and/or number at the top of the scoresheet.

Once you've completed score entry, make a note of the total score. You'll need it for your submission.

With the score calculated, you're ready to submit your evaluation. Going back to the Capstone Dashboard, scroll down to the Evaluations section and click the link under the Evaluation heading. You will then need to enter a grade and click Save Grade, choose the scoresheet file and upload it, and choose the comments file and upload it. Then click the “Submission Complete” button to confirm you have submitted your evaluation.

The evaluation is due by 8:00 AM one class day before the design review. This allows the team to read the reviewer's comments and be prepared to discuss them in the review.

When the final grades on the submission are posted, if the grades given by the two review coaches differ by 7 points or more, the pod instructor will grade the submission and the final grade will be the median of the three grades awarded.

The review coach attends the design review at the scheduled place and time. The reviewer gives feedback to the team in a manner that is aimed at helping the team improve. Weaknesses should be clearly noted, but every effort should be made to give feedback in a kind and positive way, even when the feedback is negative.

Following the final reviews of each semester, the team has an opportunity to submit a revised approval package. If the team chooses to resubmit, they must prepare a revised package and a list of the changes that were made when the package was changed for resubmission. If the team chooses to make a resubmission, the review coach will receive an email when the resubmission is complete.

At any time, you can visit your Capstone dashboard to see what (if any) grading responsibilities are currently outstanding.