iCapstone

Integrated - Interdisciplinary - Immersive - International Capstone Design

In the above quote, the problem we are trying to solve becomes the patient, and this requires a special kind of knowledge.

Donald Schön refers to a kind of [design] intelligence “that is different that standard professional knowledge”.  He refers to this as Artistry.  It includes knowledge that is less easily characterized, quantified and taught.  It is an art – an art of problem framing, and art of implementation, and an art of improvisation.  He asks whether any programming can adequately deal with the complex, unstable, uncertain and conflictual worlds of practice, and whether anyone, having studies and described it, can teach artistry by any means [Schön, 1983]

We believe iCapstone is this very programming, developing design artistry in the wild [Nespoli et al 2021]

Inspired by the Stanford eBiodesign fellowship program [Ward et al, 2013], interdisciplinary teams of coop students working in industry/healthcare/practice settings to need-find, formulate and solve tough challenges while being clinically taught remotely by Waterloo Faculty.

• Students learn to become creative problem solvers of the future through work-integrated learning and faculty clinical instruction

• Opportunities are identified and solved systematically

• Students bring significant challenges back into their final Capstone courses and solve them with world class researchers as an interdisciplinary team

What is it?

Analogous to medical clinical training, an interdisciplinary team of students will deal with real needs/problems in a real clinical industry settings with faculty instructional guidance during their coop term.

Why is it important?

• “Necessity is the mother of invention” – Plato

• “The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution” – Albert Einstein and Leopold Enfeld

• This program aims to deepen student creative design thinking, specifically problem finding, framing, formulation, and construction skills. This is difficult to teach during an academic term since the learning opportunities for ill-defined problems and their contexts are largely unavailable.

• It will facilitate the learning of interdisciplinary collaboration and communication

• It will challenge students to address global, cultural and societal elements as part of the designs and the act of designing.

How does it work?

The iCapstone program consists of a partner hiring an interdisciplinary team of students, and placing them into highly authentic situations. This team of 2-4 coop students would work in one of the partners’ facilities/customer use contexts to identify and formulate a number of significant problems. 

During their coop placement, students would present a design project proposal to a panel of partner and academic members.  If approved, students could return to their academic term and continue to work on one of the problems as the basis for their final year capstone design project, with the partner as the client (IP would be retained by the client, by agreement), and academic researchers as advisors.

Benefits to students

• Deeper learning of need finding and formulating skills

• Deeper learning of interdisciplinary collaboration skills

• Deeper learning of global, cultural and societal issues

Benefits to industry partner

During Coop Term

• Hire a team of interdisciplinary students, for 8 months if required

• Students find, formulate and record significant problems/opportunities to solve

• iCapstone studio master and faculty mentor students during coop term

• Trial and development of future employees

During Academic Term

• Solve a real problem during Capstone Design course with partner as a client

• Potential to engage research faculty through separate agreements

Program Pilots

A total of seven successful pilots have been undertaken with two (2) international placements with great success for the employer partners, students and faculty alike [Nespoli et al, 2018]

WHAT PEOPLE SAY

“I think you can learn more while you are in the co-op environment versus a class environment.  During the co-op term you can constantly and actively apply the learned concepts and techniques because the opportunities are right in front of you.  While if you are learning these concepts in a class environment you are no longer directly engaged with the problem, so I don’t think the learning is as effective”

"I'd like to roll this program out to all of Latin America"