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Chapter 4: The Interactive Qualifying Project: Selection and Design

The Determinants of IQP Quality

Since 1976, IQP reports have been reviewed by faculty, generally on an annual or biennial basis. These reviews have shed considerable light on the factors that influence the quality of IQP outcomes. Our accumulated experience shows that project quality is heavily influenced by the following: the scope of the literature review, location (whether the project was conducted on or off campus), team size (one or larger than one), the number of IQP goals addressed, the balance between society vs. technology, the size of the report as measured by the number of pages in the main body, and the number of analytical methods employed. In the most recent report on these annual reviews, that for 1997, a multiple regression of project quality on all seven of these factors revealed a very high statistically significant relationship between overall project quality and each of them, so high, in fact, as to indicate a virtual one hundred percent probability of a positive relationship. These findings indicate that each variable has a definite impact on quality, even after account is taken of the influence of all of the other variables. They show that when projects deal with both societal and technological issues, achieve several IQP objectives, and employ recognized methodologies, they tend to be complex multi-faceted projects that involve intellectually challenging work on the part of the students and a substantial amount of writing , and for all of these reasons are judged to be high in overall quality.

The use of recognized analytical techniques in IQP work is very important. The past reviews have checked for the use of the following analytical methods: participant or natural observation, interviews with experts, focus groups, case study, content analysis, comparative research, historical analysis, experimentation, survey research, risk analysis, statistical analysis, investment decision analysis, life cycle costing, modeling, and simulation. They have found frequent use of these techniques. The average rating for overall project quality for projects making no use of recognized analytical techniques has been much lower than for those projects that did.

The results of the past reviews of IQPs have demonstrated that successful IQPs require the following:

1. Topics that are chosen explicitly for their suitability for achieving the IQP objectives and to insure that both technological and societal aspects are represented and ideally are 'real life' projects conducted with off-campus agencies. (As our off-campus IQPs generally are.)
2. Team sizes of two or three students -- in contrast to one person, isolated projects.
3. The preparation by students of careful project proposals -- as opposed to just 'diving in'.
4. Thorough and extensive literature reviews of topics which challenge students to search out existing literature rich in material which elucidates the complexities and multiple possible solutions to real problems.
5. Problem analysis, hypothesis or model testing, the framing of conclusions and recommendations -- instead of the mere recording of daily experiences uncritically; and, of course, explicit attention to the correct application of recognized methods of analysis, such as the sixteen mentioned above.
6. Final reports which contain the essential sections a professional reader expects, from abstract and introduction, through conclusions, references and bibliography, and appendices (as relevant to their topic).
7. The kind of close attention to all phases of the development of the project, characteristic of the work done off-campus.

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Last modified: November 15, 2006 12:51:58