(19i) Using Concept Mapping to Teach Students Critical Thinking for Fragmenting Senior Design Projects Into Coherent and Manageable Tasks

The senior capstone design sequence is challenging to students for several reasons, many of them concerning the complexity of topics and the need to balance the large workload around their other schedules.  Students seem to be vaguely aware that the capstone experience is to integrate prior topics they have passed into a coherent whole, but have often forgotten details they had previously mastered.  This work introduces a systematic approach for teaching students how to quickly make progress on a complex and comprehensive project.  A series of scaffolded assignments leads students through the new process.  First, students read a process description and draw a block flow diagram representing the major pieces.  They then eliminate blocks that would be handled off-site or that represent processed materials that are outside the scope of their own study.  They then consider the specific engineering courses they have taken and then identify, in the broadest sense, what courses could be needed to investigate pieces inside the block.  The layer of detail increases as they then make a list of topical areas from each class they suspect may be necessary in a block; if they are unsure and do not know enough about a block to apply chemical engineering topics confidently, they leave question marks in that block to indicate they need to quickly assimilate more information in that area.  The final cut of detailing at this level is to then list the raw physical properties like density, molecular weight, etc. that would be needed in order to begin calculations.  A sample document leads the student through these developmental levels of fragmenting a complex design into components they can begin to analyze prior to the students applying the techniques to another case and then beginning their own design projects.  Specifically, discussions are held on how to use the knowledge, or lack thereof, for each block in order to delegate work effort on the team in order to reach their goals.  Feedback indicates that students are more focused on their projects and are able to jumpstart quickly to levels of performance that normally took 5-6 weeks of frustrated effort as experienced by students in years prior to implementation of the critical thinking approach for design.