Abstract:

Capstone Projects have always been a critical part of any degree program. There are many delivery modes in which capstone projects are implemented in different higher education institutions. Some of them provide industry-based projects with opportunities to either directly engage with the industry environment or interact with industry as potential employers in a full-time mode. However, institutions that offer the capstone project unit as one of the subjects taught along with other subjects face a considerable challenge to meet the required learning outcomes. This situation becomes even more complex when capstone projects within a Bachelor of Information Technology (IT) are offered to cater to several specialisations to achieve professional readiness of students in their major field of study. With fast-paced advancements in IT, the delivery of capstone projects in such contemporary programs becomes much harder to manage, maintain and stay up-to-date.

The quality of Capstone Experience subjects is important in meeting the requirements of Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) and Australian Computer Society (ACS) accreditations. The students from each Major (Network Security, Business Information Systems and Software Development) of the BIT program are required to demonstrate the integration and application of the knowledge from their specialised Majors. This research aims to address this gap in literature by undertaking a pragmatic methodology incorporating contemporary initiatives of engaging all the stakeholders such as students, discipline experts, teaching team and industry partners through an agile process-driven framework for the design and delivery of an IT capstone course.

A massive re-engineering of the processes involved in the subject delivery resulted in high quality projects as observed by the examination panel. Feedback during the Bachelor of IT Team meetings, Advisory Panel meetings, Majors and Discipline Experts meetings, School Examiners Board meeting, and the Higher Education Curriculum Advisory Committee (HECAC) meeting have uniformly agreed that the capstone project implemented with the proposed approach has reached a higher level of quality and standards. There are more industry partnerships and the number of industry projects have increased with more than 50% of the students able to work on real-life industry problems.

Due to the continuation of the project from one semester to the next semester, additional challenges such as changes in the project team and industry environment and scope creep require close intervention. For students, working in the professional work environment is considered as one of the greatest challenges due to difficulties with communications, coordination, policies, delays and other company specific constraints. There is lack of student experience in dealing with project scope and open-ended design of most industry projects as well as project conflicts. Despite these challenges, the re-engineered Capstone Experience has energized all the stakeholders and has been a rewarding experience for students, Capstone Experience Subject Team, Major discipline experts and industrial clients.

Keywords:

Higher education, teaching methodologies, capstone project, professional learning, industry collaboration, information technology, specialisation.