A longitudinal study of a capstone course

• Main Authors: GAN, Benjamin, OUH, Eng Lieh, LEE, Yin Yin Fiona
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2020
• Subjects: Capstone course; longitudinal study; project-based learning; deployment status; industry partner; organization type; industry classification; number of meetings; application platform; database; tools; Software Engineering
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/5278; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/6281/viewcontent/A_Longitudinal_Study_of_a_Capstone_Course.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

This is a 7 years study on a capstone course completed by 1700+ students for 200+ organizations involving 300+ projects. Student teams deliver a system to solve real-world problems proposed by industry partners. We want to understand what independent variables influence student performance. We analyzed the deployment status of systems delivered, the type of organization/industry, the number of meetings and the technology used. Our results show some organization value proof of concept over fully deployed systems, student strengths are in Infocomm and Finance projects, the number of meetings is a weak correlation to performance and best performing projects are fully deployed on iOS using Microsoft technologies. Faculty can use these insights to focus on factors such as the type of industry projects and technology used. They may not be overly concern if student teams have fewer meetings or did not fully deployed their system, so long as they create value.