Converge, Diverge, Converge: Our Capstone Journey

The whole process of working on this capstone presentation has been amazing to look back on. As a team with Dieer, we went through a process of converge–diverge–converge. At the very beginning, we first came together as a team to align on our goals and expectations for the project. This laid a solid foundation for us to move forward and build upon. After a few interviews with subject matter experts at Dartmouth, we started to diverge in our research paths based on our interests and time. I focused on conducting market research on existing online engineering programs, while Dieer worked on a comparative analysis of the affordances of Canvas and Coursera. Even while working on separate pieces, we met regularly to keep each other and Megan updated on our progress. Eventually, we brought our findings together for the capstone project, creating a Canvas-redesign proposal that integrated both of our perspectives. It was such a fun journey. Not only was it efficient and effective, but it also helped us deepen our understanding of online engineering education on both platforms. I genuinely loved the process and enjoyed seeing how different pieces and threads came together in the final stage.

I also really appreciated the Gallery Walk. It gave us a chance to step back and practice telling the story of our design process. Things definitely felt a bit messy while we were in the process, but stepping out and becoming the "narrator" made it all feel much clearer. Just before the presentation, we realized our narrative might be missing a clear theoretical foundation, even though we had thought about what theory to use during the process. During the Gallery Walk, we also got a bunch of brilliant, thought-provoking questions like: “Where is the flexibility if all the courses are still sequenced?”, “Will flexibility lead to better learning outcomes?”, and “To what extent should we promote flexibility?” These are all really important questions for us to reflect on as we think about the project going forward.

Another thing I valued from the Gallery Walk was the public speaking practice. Having to do our pitch multiple times helped me become more confident and made my delivery feel more assertive and professional each time.

In a nutshell, these past few weeks have been a wonderful learning experience. We didn’t just design and build our idea, we also had the chance to validate parts of it. The only thing I regret is not getting more feedback from Megan. We had planned to go over it in this week’s meeting, but we ran a bit out of time. Getting feedback from our “subject matter expert” in learning design could really help us evaluate our project from a more informed perspective - definitely something I want to follow up on next week!