Reflections on Teaching Software Engineering Capstone course

Abstract

<p>For students, capstone project represents the culmination of their studies and is typically the last milestone before graduation. This paper reflects on organizing IT capstone projects in computer science and software engineering Master programmes in a Sino-Finnish setup. Based on our analysis we introduce various aspects based on our observations for improving course practicalities, introduction lectures, students’ initiative group working and overall interaction. We also discuss the importance of active learning and transferring the responsibility of learning from teachers to students in order to achieve the intended learning outcomes. During a capstone course students design and implement a solution to a complex, ill-defined real-life problem. We present and discuss the results from student feedback surveys and propose areas for further development.</p>