(351f) Capstone Objective: Develop the Skill of Time, Scope and Depth of Analysis in Complex Projects

At the University of Oklahoma, the capstone experience consists of projects conducted in groups of two students, all projects being different.

In this presentation, we will explain why we found two students to be the optimal group size, despite the obvious instructor effort.

We will also explain in what form we challenge students to develop the skill of time, depth and scope management in projects that are required to provide realistic answers to a variety of problems: process design with investment strategies, process operations with economical objectives and product design using microeconomics.

We will finally illustrate how this strategy enabled us to be able to submit papers to this conference out of work done during the capstone experience and finally, we will discuss the confidence building associated to going through our class experience.