Undergraduate Computing Projects — an Investigation into the Student Experience

Abstract

This paper reports the results of a survey of third year undergraduate computing students undertaking an individual project. Using data gathered from the students themselves, we offer new insights into how students approach such projects. We identify the amount and focus of effort that students experience as appropriate to such an activity, together with the role of the supervisor, and we contrast the methodological approaches which academics advise with those adopted by the students themselves.

The Undergraduate Capstone Computing Project Experience

“…57 students out of 100 (57%) rated the value in terms of utility as low and only 15 students from 100 (15%) rated the value of a methodology as high. This contrasts with the findings of Joy [3] where 57% claimed to use the project methodology a lot.…”

“…The most significant proportion of time was spent on implementation (average 102 hours) and write-up (average 65.7 hours). The total hours for these 17 students align significantly with the 307 total effort hours identified by Joy [3]. The small case study here represents data that was carefully logged whilst Joy's data is drawn from student estimates in questionnaires.…”

“…Joy [3] suggested that students expend more time on average (369 hours) than the overall effort expected (300 hours) by his institution. After normalisation by removal of outliers, the effort hours cited by Joy is 307 hours.…”

A tool for capstone project management in computer science engineering

“…During this project, students integrate knowledge and skills learned in different subjects of the degree program. This project also offers students the opportunity to improve on those skills and acquire new ones to tackle larger tasks of greater difficulty than those completed during prior coursework which will better equip them for their future profession [7,8,10,12].…”

“…He or she must find a balanced degree of support for their student: not to leaving them unattended but, at the same time, not depriving them of the opportunity to learn independently either. Students must confront the difficulties that arise during the project on their own [6,10,13]. Another problem that advisors face quite often is the lack of information about the project they receive from their students, mainly regarding progress.…”