Education Commons^™

A Semi-Automatic Approach For Project Assignment In A Capstone Course, Mark Chang, Allen Downey

Mark L. Chang

This paper presents a semi-automatic approach to assigning students to project teams for a year-long, industry-sponsored senior capstone course. Successful assignment requires knowl- edge of at least individual project requirements, student skills, student personalities, and student project preferences. This mix of hard skills, soft skills, and interpersonal impres- sions requires human involvement to produce a high-quality assignment. The importance of faculty input often requires that the assignment process be labor- and time-intensive.

Our approach attempts to reduce the time required to perform this assignment by selectively automating parts of the task flow. An automated search uses a randomized greedy algorithm …

Building Momentum For Business School Curriculum Change: Measurable Lessons From A Pilot Course In Real Business Experience, Mark Uchida, Craig Caldwell, Friel Terry, Lawrence Lad

Lawrence J. Lad

Curriculum change requires thoughtful planning and a willingness to experiment with different modes of content delivery. While many business schools are experimenting, few measure student outcomes against the traditional courses they replace. One element of Butler University's College of Business Administration curriculum revision was a pilot course, "Real Business Experience ", in which students developed a professional business plan, sought and received funding from a professional level funding panel, and ran their businesses. To determine whether the pilot course was successful in reaching its goal of "teaching students about the messiness of business and developing more adaptable and confident business …