Project-based learning has become popular and prevalent across higher education. Additionally, the Accrediting Board for Engineering and Technology also emphasizes the ability to function in multidisciplinary teams. These educational practices have resulted in the implementation of team-based projects throughout engineering curriculums. Team formation, however, is not a trivial process and occasionally can result in conflict or issues when completing project tasks. At University of Indianapolis' R.B. Annis School of Engineering, we noticed that student interest level in a project topic is a significant factor toward commitment and contribution to project completion. Our institution's senior capstone course requires students to participate in design projects as members of multidisciplinary teams solving open-ended real-world problems. Assigning students to projects can be a complicated process, especially considering student preferences, majors, skills, and the needs/nature of the project. We are a young program continuing to grow and are interested in a systematic approach to assign teams. Currently, a rank-based survey is used to gauge student interest in each individual project for assignment purposes. Faculty leaders consider students' ranking of the projects and the project needs to assign student teams. While we consider our current assignment method effective, it is a manual, time-intensive, and highly iterative process. This paper presents a work-in-progress of a new assignment method using weight-based integer programming techniques. Some of the considerations for assignment weights and constraints include student preferences, student technical skill sets, and team sizes. A comparative analysis between our proposed optimization model and the current assignment method is shown. Discussions of the similarities and differences between these two assignment methods are also presented. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2023.
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