Jump-starting a senior-level capstone project through hands-on laboratory exercises

Many universities incorporate either a senior-level thesis research requirement or a senior-level capstone design experience for their engineering majors. One of the biggest challenges in advising such projects is providing a means for students to make meaningful progress early in the project timeline, very often due to the steep learning curve associated with the technical details of the projects. This paper reports on a technique that requires students to complete a series of laboratory exercises designed to give them an operational awareness of the technical issues associated with small wind turbines. The three main efforts required of students were characterizing the efficiency of small generators, characterizing the efficiency of different wind turbine designs, and determining the charging characteristics of lead-acid batteries. This technique has been found to be much more effective than classroom-style instruction or pure literature review, most likely because it appeals to active, visual, and sequential learning styles. This technique, which is based on earlier work in this area, is broadly applicable to many engineering capstone design efforts. Survey data and project performance data will be presented and the effectiveness of the method is evaluated.