• Program Overview
• Project Centers in the World
• Resources for Current Students
  • Health and Safety Resources
  • Handbook for IQP Advisors and Students
    • Detailed Table of Contents
• Resources for Advisors
• Information for Sponsors
• Resources for Families
• Incoming Exchange Students
• About WPI

Chapter 1: Introduction

The IQP and the WPI Plan

An Interactive Qualifying Project (IQP) at WPI is a project which deals with the relationship between technology and society. The IQP is a central feature of the WPI Plan, a new approach to engineering undergraduate education introduced at WPI in the early 1970s. The goals of the Plan are to promote learning by doing through project work, maximize student choice in designing their own educational programs, and ensure that students had not only passed courses but were in fact competent as professionals, literate in the humanities and understood the societal implications of their professional work. The IQP contributes importantly to the first two of these WPI Plan goals as well as, of course, the last.

Importance of the IQP

It has been frequently observed that the IQP is the only unique element of the WPI Plan. What is less commonly recognized is that the IQP is of critical and growing importance to WPI's entire undergraduate educational program and our ability to attract students. This importance is due to its uniqueness and distinctiveness and the following major factors:

• The IQP is vital to WPI's claim to have a project-oriented program. Many colleges, including liberal arts colleges, require senior year theses in a student's major discipline. The presence of the IQP doubles our program's commitment to project work relative even to those programs that do involve project work in the senior year. Recent surveys have shown that our emphasis on projects is clearly the most attractive aspect of the WPI plan for prospective students.
• The IQP is the means which WPI has chosen to make science and engineering students aware of the role of their professions in society. The importance of such an understanding has been reinforced by the proposed ABET Engineering Criteria 2000, which requires that engineering programs demonstrate that their graduates have "the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global societal context." The IQP is also a very effective means of meeting or helping to meet a number of other Criteria 2000 outcome requirements such as "an ability to function on multi-disciplinary teams", "an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility", and "an ability to communicate effectively".
• The IQP is by design interdisciplinary. Despite the fact that virtually all real-world problems of broad scope are interdisciplinary, technical education has found no good way to provide students with interdisciplinary experiences. Through their IQP's students obtain practice in dealing with unstructured, open-ended, interdisciplinary problems, opportunities to work independently with peers and extensive experience in writing about previously unfamiliar concepts utilizing new terminology.
• The IQP is the major element of another important pillar of the WPI educational philosophy, that is the freedom of students to make their own educational choices. However, course selections must satisfy distribution requirements and Major Qualifying Projects (MQPs) are frequently utilized to meet the design requirements of engineering accredited programs. Fortunately, in choosing their IQPs, students can truly be guided by their own interests. The ability of students to pursue their own interests is clearly another major selling point of our educational program.
• The IQP is essential for our off-campus programs. It would be very difficult to arrange to have students from a wide variety of disciplines, and concentrations within those disciplines, working together on their disciplinary projects (MQPs) at off-campus sites on a continuing basis. Therefore, we are not likely to be able to build up the level of our off-campus MQP activity to anything more than a fraction of what the IQP permits us to do. Many of the environmental concerns and other issues involving societal/technological interactions that are natural subjects for IQPs are inherently international in character and scope. Consequently, there is a natural synergy between the IQP and Global Programs. Though MQP numbers off campus are growing, it is no accident that almost all of the projects conducted abroad to date have been IQPs.

Perception of IQP Quality

The IQP is obviously very important for our undergraduate program and consequently, its quality has to be an issue of major concern. Unfortunately, we do not marshal all of our possible resources to prepare students for the IQP. For example, there is no specific set of courses or activities required as preparation for the IQP (except to a very limited extent for off-campus IQPs), and there is typically no correlation between students' social science and humanities coursework and choice of IQP topic. Most observers would assume that the social sciences and humanities have relevant analyses to contribute to an understanding of the relationship between technology and society and human values. However, it is clear from our program that we are not requiring our students to acquaint themselves with any of that background as preparation for their IQPs. Moreover, we know from our many past reviews of IQPs that even the best projects very frequently fail to apply clearly relevant methods of analysis or knowledge drawn from the social sciences, humanities, mathematics, and other disciplines. Methods of survey research, case studies, content analysis, comparative analysis, historical analysis, cost benefit analysis, statistics, interviewing and modeling techniques, among others, are not being used where appropriate or are being used incorrectly.

We also know that common methods of scientific inquiry (hypothesis formulation and testing) are frequently not brought to bear in IQP's and that , in the past, a great many IQPs, particularly those done on-campus, fell far short of reasonable intellectual standards for college level work. The issue of IQP quality has assumed added urgency recently as a result of our decision to be reviewed for the ABET reaccreditation under their new outcomes-based criteria.

Objectives of the Handbook

The primary purpose of this handbook is to provide faculty with information that will help them do a more effective job of advising IQPs and avoid the quality problems common in the past. The handbook describes the objectives of the IQP; expectations for IQP outcomes; grading standards; issues to be considered in selecting the topic and designing the project, including key problems in project design to be avoided. It provides advice on how to write project proposals, conduct literature reviews, form and manage project teams, schedule project activity; run project meetings, review drafts, conduct assessments, and organize and structure the reports. It defines, describes and illustrates the application of several commonly used methodologies in the social sciences, humanities, management and mathematics that are applicable to IQPs. It is intended to be useful to both faculty and students. Most chapters are clearly aimed principally at the faculty. For others the reverse is true. However, student familiarity with the content of this handbook, particularly the chapters directed at them, will facilitate the advising process.

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Last modified: October 17, 2006 14:34:20