Senior design and capstone courses are an integral part of any engineering curriculum around the world. These courses perhaps provide the only opportunity for students to apply the theoretical knowledge and technical skills they have acquired throughout the engineering degree. Moreover, they are often the (sole) environment in which students get some of the professional and transversal skills too. In addition, such courses present a great degree of nonuniformity since the students engage in projects of different nature (e.g., research oriented versus application oriented). Furthermore, not only do these courses prepare students for real-life engineering practice, they also serve as a major component in measuring program outcomes. The survey conducted over two decades ago by Todd et al. [item [1] in the Appendix], which collected responses from 360 departments across 173 schools, highlighted many of the issues related with capstone courses that are still relevant today. Such issues include course format, different degrees of faculty involvement, and project completion requirements. Indeed, all points highlighted thus far emphasize the importance of adequately designing and assessing capstone design courses.

中文翻译：

---

工程教育中基于项目、高级设计和顶点课程的客座编辑特刊

高级设计和顶点课程是世界各地任何工程课程的组成部分。这些课程可能是学生应用他们在整个工程学位中获得的理论知识和技术技能的唯一机会。此外，它们通常也是学生获得一些专业和横向技能的（唯一）环境。此外，由于学生从事不同性质的项目（例如，面向研究与面向应用），因此此类课程存在很大程度的不一致性。此外，这些课程不仅让学生为现实生活中的工程实践做好准备，它们还是衡量项目成果的主要组成部分。托德等人在二十多年前进行的调查。[附录中的项目[1]]，该报告收集了 173 所学校的 360 个部门的回复，强调了与顶点课程相关的许多问题，这些问题今天仍然具有相关性。这些问题包括课程形式、不同程度的教师参与和项目完成要求。事实上，迄今为止强调的所有要点都强调了充分设计和评估顶点设计课程的重要性。