Capstone Project Wiki

We appreciate your desire to work with our capstone students to help them become successful engineers. Students will value your experience and expertise, and you will be an example to them of a professional that can blend technical and interpersonal abilities with faith. Spending time with students (in group and one-on-one) is one of the best ways to help them develop. While projects and sponsor relationships are important, your top priority is the welfare and development of the students in your stewardship. Capstone aims to be a culminating experience in accordance with the mission of Brigham Young University.

Here we outline our expectations for the time you will spend with them as a coach and reviewer. Some of this time can be done remotely, e.g., using Zoom and other communication channels, but we also expect that you will spend time meeting with them in-person on campus throughout the school year. The amount of time required will be variable, depending on the progress of your team, your project, and the needs of the individuals on your team. The following guidance will help you to schedule your interactions:

• Capstone activities take place between 8 am and 9:50 on weekdays. This is when you will be doing most of your student interaction, including team meetings and pod lectures.
• During the first week of class you and your team will meet for the first time, start team building, learn about your project, develop initial project documents and an overall schedule, and learn about the key steps of design. We hope you can meet with your team multiple times during this initial time . At least one of these meetings should be in-person on campus.
• You should plan on meeting with your team at least once a week in a formal team meeting. You should attend in person on campus at least once per month. The other meetings can be done remotely, e.g., using Zoom. We encourage your team to set up a permanent Zoom meeting and schedule. Share this with your instructor so he/she can also attend periodically.
• You should plan on meeting individually with team members several times each semester to discuss individual contributions. These meetings benefit from personal interaction, but this is not required. At the middle and end of each semester you will be asked to assess (grade) the individual contributions of each student on your team using a rubric spreadsheet we will provide.
• After the first week of Fall semester, hour-long pod lectures are held once per week on a fixed day of the week, six or seven times each semester. You are expected to attend and participate with your team. Your team can arrange for you to attend virtually with them through Zoom links that they set up for you.
• We have monthly coach training meetings. You are encouraged to attend in-person when possible, but we will Zoom the meeting live, as well as record it for future viewing.
• As a coach you will help review and evaluate the work of two other teams. This will require:
  • reading their design stage packages,
  • providing written feedback and a grade based on a grading rubric we will provide, and
  • participating in a live review session lasting 25-50 mins.
    There are three reviews for each team each semester. We will try to schedule those at convenient days for the coaches involved during capstone time. Your live participation can be either in person or via Zoom (so you do not have to be on campus for these reviews). You should also attend your own team’s reviews, preferably in-person. Note: you will only be grading other team’s work at these reviews, not your own team’s.
• We provide a one-time small amount of money ($10/student on the team) for you and your team to have a special team-building activity early in the fall semester. The money can be used for food, e.g., having breakfast or lunch, a BBQ, or an activity such as bowling. We expect you to help plan and attend this activity. It probably should be no longer than an hour or two. The purpose is to strengthen relationships between you and between team members informally.
• We recognize that you have other responsibilities that will occasionally interfere with being on campus or participating in remote meetings as expected. We understand, but we hope these are infrequent. Please let your pod instructor know in advance when there is a problem with reviews as we can reschedule these. (Pod lectures and coach training meetings are on fixed schedules and will be announced well in advance for the entire semester.)
• When the team is working on hardware, in-person on-site contact with the coach is invaluable. During hardware-intensive periods, you may need to be in the lab at least weekly.
• Capstone’s expectation is that you spend approximately 6 hours per week as a coach:
  • 1 hour meeting with the team
  • 0.5 hours (average) in pod lectures
  • 1 hour (average) reviewing your own team’s submissions
  • 1 hour (average) evaluating other teams’ submissions
  • 0.5 hours working with the sponsor
  • 2 hours guiding and mentoring students

The table below shows the expected time requirements.