The Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Alabama offers its BSME degree through distance education to students in Dothan, Alabama, located approximately 240 miles from the campus in Tuscaloosa. These off-site students are full-time employees, many are machinists or technicians working swing shift, with the desire to become engineers. The goal of the program described here is to provide these non-traditional students with the same technical and professional content in their courses as students on campus. As the first group of students finished their degree program, the latest challenge has been to create a team-based design experience with traditional student team members and these distance education students. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the challenges and solutions for teaching capstone design to teams with members at multiple locations. For companies with multiple and multi-national locations, these students should be seen as having an important skill set as new employees.
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