LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE DEVELOPMENT OF A KNOWLEDGE SHARING SYSTEM (KSS) USED TO DEVELOP AND SUSTAIN A CROSS-DISCIPLINARY OUTREACH APPROACH TO ENGINEERING DESIGN

摘要

The Capstone program is an opportunity for graduating senior students in engineering to apply their classroom knowledge to real-world problems. While the experience from this course is valuable for students in preparation for their careers, an opportunity exists through the use of information technology (IT) to improve the administration of the program while extending the positive aspects of this program to the community at-large and to future students. The use of an IT-based system enables the problems addressed by Capstone students to be preserved and subsequently reused, refined, and built upon to address the problems that arise tomorrow. This paper relates the details of an NSF-sponsored project that included the development of an IT-based Knowledge Sharing System (KSS) to assist with the capture and proliferation of accumulated student experiences. This project serves as a template for similar efforts and includes the theoretical background and system development methodology used in development. Additionally an overview of the system is presented followed by lessons learned from these efforts. By providing this information the authors hope to encourage the innovative application of IT in Capstone programs at other universities.