Multidisciplinary teams: Lessons Learned in EPICS William Oakes, P.E. Director, EPICS

1. Multidisciplinary teams: Lessons Learned in EPICS William Oakes, P.E. Director, EPICS www.purdue.edu/epics

2. EPICS teams can tackle projects of significant size, scope, and impact EPICS Characteristics • Long term projects: • Long-term partnerships with community organizations • Vertically-integrated teams: first-year to fourth year • Extended design experience: academic creditthroughout the student’s undergraduate career, • Large-team experience: teams of 8 - 20 students • Broadly multidisciplinary teams: 30 disciplines • Open-ended design:define-design-build-test-deploy-support

3. Learning Design • Design is done by many disciplines • Involving people • Human-centered • The Design Process allows for contributions from many diverse perspectives • Complex designs have opportunities for diverse tasks to be done • Contributions from many disciplines • Talk about design as a way to bring disciplines together

4. Integrating Multi-Disciplinary Teams • Need multidisciplinary faculty to create learning environment for students • Learn each others’ language(s) • Do not assume students will integrate • Team dynamics activities • Team expectations • Peer assessments/feedback • Explicit learning opportunities

5. Defining Learning Objectives • Started with ECE Senior Design: A student who successfully fulfills the course will demonstrate: • an ability to apply technical material from their discipline to the design of engineering products; • an understanding of design as a start-to-finish process; • an ability to identify and acquire new knowledge as a part of the problem-solving/design process; • an awareness of the customer in engineering design; • an ability to function on multidisciplinary teams and an appreciation for the contributions from individuals from other disciplines; • an ability to communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical audiences ; • demonstrates an awareness of engineering ethics and professional responsibility; • an appreciation of the role that engineering can play in social contexts . • Common set of outcomes across disciplines • Engineering  your discipline

6. EPICS Course Outcomes (Design)

7. Setting Expectations • Teams set goals for the semester through a project plan • Faculty advisor approves plan • Students set individual personal goals for each semester • Goals in week 4, updates weeks 8 and 12 • Advisor approves goals and adjustments • Self assessments weeks 4, 8, 12 and 16 • Allows customization based on discipline

8. Artifacts: Data to Assess • Students produce artifacts that can be assessed during their EPICS experience • Design Notebooks • Blogs/wiki’s • Reflections • Self-assessments • Presentations • Reports and Project documentation • Delivered • projects and supporting manuals • Options and flexibility

9. Formative Grading = Calibration • Midsemester grading is formative • If the semester were to end today, you would receive a _____ • Students provided with a team and individual grade or range and comments • What would they have to do to improve? • Calibrates students and faculty • Problems can be identified early • Need for documentation reinforced • Allows dialogue if expectations are not aligned

10. Questions/Comments?