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SENIOR DESIGN PROJECT STANDARD January 31, 2017

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Senior Design Project Standard

School of Engineering

American University of Ras Al Khaimah

January 2017


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Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Proposed Project Process Flow

3. Proposed Grading Policy

4. Proposed Articles of Policies


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Introduction

Senior design Projects are adopted by many universities around the world. Students need

a complete engineering exercise to challenge their knowledge and given a chance to develop basic

skills in engineering projects. Unfortunately, not all the students tend to fully exploit this chance

and they try to sneak out with minimum effort, forgetting that slow starts does not build enough

momentum in the direction of their engineering careers. Consequently, a complete overall look is

needed to evaluate the current situation, trying to reestablish the original deliverable outcomes of

the Senior Design Project.

Overview

Typically, senior design projects should be tailored to run as a scaled down real engineering

projects. Just like any practical engineering project, one should pay attention to engineering

planning, analysis, problem solving, task and time management, documentation…etc. The

concentration on problem solving parts with the exclusion of the rest has devastating effects on

the senior design projects ABET related outcomes. Many long life learning skills should blossom

in the project environment when the setup is right.

Attention should be drawn to the importance of the senior design project in all levels.

Engineering planning and management hands on skills could be accomplished, logical and creative

thinking atmosphere maybe induced, and finally engineering imagination possibly flourish.


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Proposed Senior Project Process Flow

The proposed process flow chart will be divided into sections to enable discussions and

commenting.

The first step is to announce the collection of proposals from the faculty members

(minimum one and maximum three) at the beginning of each semester. The maximum number of

students should be four with a minimum of two to induce team work and enable proper task

distribution. Supervisors need to submit their proposals for department approval using the project

proposal. The project proposals are expected to achieve the goals of SDP by:

Proposing projects that are up to date

Including ABET requirements for environmental, economic and ethical issues

Selecting projects that are related to community and industrial needs

Proposing multidisciplinary projects

Once all the project proposals are collected they need to be analyzed by the Department to

verify ABET requirements and approved. This step is needed to guarantee suitability, level, quality

and ABET requirements adherence and it will give the whole department a rounded overview and

awareness of who is doing what. The following flowchart summarizes this step.

The next logical step is to prepare and orient the students for Senior Design Project I and

Project II. There should be two separate workshops conducted in the School of Engineering to

facilitate the senior design project standard and its requirements.

Typically, Senior Design Project I workshop should be conducted in the fifth week of the

semester and it should train the students over planning using Gantt charts, task distribution, how

to use the project log book, MS project…etc.


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Senior Design Project II workshop should train students over the format, the write-up of

the project technical report and the presentations. A tentative date for this workshop will be

scheduled at the end of the fifth week. Please note that these workshops will be conducted in mass

numbers. Hence, the collaboration of all engineering departments is needed for these workshops

to succeed.

The next sequence mainly involves the direct supervision of the students by their

supervisor. Early contacts with the project’s supervisor are mandatory in order to create task

distribution, Gantt chart, and project’s Milestones. During the course of the project the supervisor

should closely monitor the progress of the project and mentor his students and keep documented

Logbook records to alleviate the level of achievements of the project’s outcomes. Depending on

the students’ individual performance and their evaluations of Project I short progress report, they

may proceed to Senior Design Project II or repeat Project I.

Once the students proceed to Senior Design Project II, they are expected to finish all the

announced project’s outcomes, meet all the milestones and fulfil all the requirements of the

Project’s Standard. The supervisor should evaluate the ability of the students to finish the project

on designated time and take a decision either to instruct the students to wrap the project for the


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final stage or he should file an incomplete for those individuals who did not succeed in fulfilling

the project requirements.

Please note that the supervisors close monitoring to the project cycle is vital for the smooth

successful flow of the whole process. For example instructing the students to perform tasks in

parallel processing sequence will speed up the execution of the project cycle in a more efficient

way than sequential approach. Hence, report writing and documentation should be done

continuously in all projects’ stages and not few weeks before presentations. It is the supervisor’s

role to create such an efficient engineering project management approach and he should mentor

and transfer such an experience to his students (Thus, lifelong learning skills maybe induced).

Once the students finished their project manuscript within the projects milestones and

according to the senior design project’s report writing guidelines and template they should submit

their work for their supervisor for evaluations, corrections and comments. The supervisor must put


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enough effort in criticizing the students work and direct them in the right direction; because all

subsequent steps will be penalized in both language, engineering content and ABET adherence

requirements.

The students should perform all the supervisor’s required changes and they should resubmit the

project manuscript to their supervisor for final approval. The supervisors should verify all their

required changes and scan the students’ manuscript

In the following step, the students need to submit copies of signed project manuscript to the

coordinator one week before announced presentation dates in order to have enough time to dispatch


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it for the Examining Committees. Parallel to that the students should be finalizing their

presentations and Posters.

Once the students’ presentation date is due many forms need to be filled out in order to compute

the team’s final grade. The Examining Committee (EC) need to bring their reports evaluations’

forms completely filled out and should pass their comments on the projects’ manuscripts to the

students in order to make the changes. Please note that the project’s team grades will not be

released until the students perform all the required changes by the EC members.

The student teams should rehearse in English their presentation before small audience to

alleviate their self-esteem, practice on the flow of segments, and induce more confidence. Project

Supervisors should inspect the students’ presentation slides and they should check for all the

needed items in the presentation to guarantee a high grade.

The following figure shows the complete flow of the senior design project process. The

integrity of the flow chart needs to be preserved in order to generate all the expected outcomes

with minimum complications. The ABET requirements need to be kept in mind all the time in

order to support the program outcomes in their intended arrangements.


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Proposed Grading Policy

The supervisor grades are based on the Supervisor’s direct interaction with his students;

hence his inside information judgment is vital. At the end of Senior Design Project II, Supervisors

should fill out Senior Design Project II Supervisor Evaluation Form.

The next grade portion belongs to the coordinator. The coordinator grade is to be used to

manage the students and to direct them to accomplish needed items that are necessary for the

Project’s Process Flow. Hence, the 5% grade is to be used to award the students on items on their

report in Senior Design Project II, which are related to task distribution, Gantt chart, Milestones,

and Logbook. The grade is based on the poster structure and content. 10 % of the grade is assigned

to Senior Design Project Audience who attend SDP II presentations. For this purpose 2 forms were

prepared; poster evaluation form and presentation evaluation form.

The engineering technical content and students’ comprehension of the project should be

verified by the Examining Committee. The EC members should read the projects’ manuscript

before attending the students’ presentations; also each member should fill out the EC Evaluation

form. An EC member evaluator should scrutinize and verify the submitted report for technical

sound and get familiar with the project’s deliverables. Also, the EC members should leave their

comments, concerns, and corrections on the project manuscript using either RED or GREEN ink

pens. The coordinator should after presentations pass the required changes for the students for

corrections in the final manuscript report, which is submitted to the coordinator for ABET record

keeping. In case of student’s failure to do the changes their grade will not be released unless the

changes are performed.

In the presentations, the EC members should evaluate the students’ soft skills,

comprehension, inspect hardware/software if applies and deliverables of the project’s outcomes.

The EC committee is also asked to evaluate the posters which will be collected.


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TotalGrade

Examination Committee

40%

Coordinator

5%

Supervisor

45%

Audience

10%


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Proposed Articles of Policy

Articles

I. Failure to complete the senior design project

a. Project I stage

Students maybe given a no pass grade based on supervisor’s evaluation and/or their

progress report that is submitted their supervisor.

b. Project II Stage

i. Supervisor Evaluation

The supervisor needs to closely monitor the progress of the project and

evaluate the students efforts based on the first month Task Distribution,

Milestones, and Gantt chart.

The supervisor final decision should be either to direct the his students to

finalize the Senior Project and manuscript in preparation for the Examining

Committee (EC) evaluation or fill out an incomplete form for the

students who did not perform well and are unable to complete their

project within the required time frames.

ii. Plagiarism

Engineering ethics are expected to be used and highlighted throughout the

project’s stages. Zero tolerance for cheating and Plagiarism and all

offenders will be prosecuted severely.

Hence, in case the Examining Committee (EC) encountered a plagiarism

issue then an incomplete grade shall be given or the students shall be asked

to rewrite the copied parts and resubmit the project’s manuscript for further

evaluations depending on the severity of the Plagiarism. The Jordan

University cheating and plagiarism penalties shall be enforced.


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iii. Project Final Grade

Students may get a failing grade (F) in case if ones total grade based in all

the different evaluation parts (see the grad computation related section)

below 60% on the fixed letter grade scale.

II. Forming SDP Committees

These articles lay guidelines for forming the different needed SDP committees and their

corresponding duties for the Senior Design Project process.

The duties of the coordinator include the following:

Responsible for applying and monitoring the process flow Senior Design

Project Standard

Receiving and posting all approved Senior Design Project Proposals

Organizing workshops to orient and prepare the projects’ student teams

Evaluating Project I short report and logbook

Forming Examining Committees (EC)

Aggregating the final project grades

Performing the required ABET documentations

The duties of the Supervisor include the following:

The role of SDP supervisor is very crucial. Supervisors are requested to work

closely with their designated students, while students should allocate time in their

schedule to meet regularly with their supervisors. The main responsibilities of each

SDP supervisor are:

To suggest topic(s) that is (are) within his area of expertise.

To give general description of the suggested topic.

To define the maximum number of students to be involved in the proposed

research topic(s)

To meet with student(s) regularly for efficient guidance and

communication.


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To guide students for the purpose of efficient work

To ensure that student(s) meet(s) planned schedule

To maintain record of regular meetings with students (Logbook form)

To evaluate work produced by student(s) based on the evaluation policies

set by the School of Engineering for the SDP course

To assign grade to the work progress in accordance with the grading policies

set by the School of Engineering for the SDP course.

Examining Committee (EC)

The EC members’ duties include the following

Reading and evaluating the projects’ manuscripts for technical content and

plagiarisms issues.

Evaluation of the projects’ presented work, students understanding and

project’s difficulty and novelty

III. Organizing Workshops

a. Senior Design Project I workshop

The workshop should be held on the third week of the beginning of each regular

semester on Wednesday at 12:30pm.

The workshop will touch on the following items:

Introduction of the new Senior Design Project Standard and ABET

outcomes and requirements

Overview of the students’ motivation and regulations

Training on planning and organization: Gantt charts, Milestones, Time

management, Team work, Task management…etc.

b. Senior Deign Project II workshop


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The workshop should be held on the fifth week of the beginning of each regular

semester on Wednesday at 12:30pm.

The workshop will touch on the following items:

Overview of the new Senior Design Project Standard and ABET outcomes

and requirements

Discussing Report manuscript template

Training on Abstract, Discussion and Conclusion sections on the report

Highlighting presentation slides’ contents and format

Enlisting the poster elements

Illustrating the grading scheme and hints how to score high

IV. Project Change after DB Approval

In case of a need to change project’s title or description or both the following applies sub

articles:

1. Project’s Title Change

The supervisor should submit a change form to the coordinator.

2. Project’s Description Change

The supervisor must resubmit the project’s proposal form to the DB for re-approval. Please

note that this process is only allowed during the senior design project I period but not

possible during senior design project II period.

V. Supervisor Change

The following applies in case of supervisor project discontinuity with an approved student

project:

In case of supervisor leave of absence (sabbatical, emergency, unpaid leave…etc.)

the supervisor needs to plan and arrange for the project’s continuation with another

faculty member and an official handover must be performed via the Project


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Handover Form. Note that the change process should meet the senior design project

requirements. Changing the supervisor is not allowed after approving the project.

VI. Student’s Issues

This article deals with different unforeseen issues that might appear with the project

students

a. Dispute Among Team Members,

The supervisor must try his best to solve the dispute issue internally; highlighting

the teamwork concept and he should activate the task distribution more effectively.

In case of failure in resolving the issue internally team members should be advised

to meet with Project Committee for further counseling.

b. Inactive Project Member

The supervisor first should motivate all inactive students’ project members and

he/she should warn of issuing an incomplete grade project penalty. This includes

frequent absentees to project’s meetings and delinquent project tasks.

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