Implementation of the House of Quality as a Tool to Assess Products of Design in a Capstone Design Course

摘要

While serving a vital role in the undergraduate curriculum, capstone design courses face a variety of challenges. These challenges include lack of student value & utilization of course objectives & assessment tools, sponsor retention & funding issues, and large instructional demands. Many of these challenges may be addressed by placing a larger and more genuine emphasis on assessing the product of the design project, not only the process by which the design occurs. Oregon State University's (OSU) Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering capstone course currently organizes, manages, and evaluates capstone projects using the House of Quality (HoQ). In general, the HoQ is a tool used to relate project requirements to design performance specifications. Additionally, at OSU the HoQ serves as (i) a contract between students, sponsors, course instructors, and faculty advisers detailing exactly what is required from the design project, (ii) a guiding tool to allow students to self-monitor their progress throughout the course, and (iii) an objective means of evaluating the students' performance in terms of the product produced by their capstone design projects. This paper describes the OSU course, introduces the HoQ, and presents a time-line of the implementation of product assessment at OSU. Key changes are shown during the move from a purely process based assessment framework to the current state where 50% of total points in the design implementation term of the capstone course are awarded based on the student design team accomplishing design product metrics per sponsor defined design requirements. In addition, the authors report on the course instructor's perception regarding the effect of implementing the HoQ in the OSU capstone course. Finally, conclusions and implications of the work are presented.