Effects of Project Type on CS Capstone Courses

Le résumé fourni par la source

Computing educators face many challenges when teaching capstone courses. We examine what impact capstone project type has on student performance, career readiness and course evaluation by considering three project types: Academic, Industry, and Service Learning. We studied data from 139 unique participants, each for two semesters (total 278 observations), over three years of a capstone program at Washington State University. We studied data for individual student performance in the course, student evaluation of the course, and self-rated student perceptions regarding career readiness. Analysis of data indicated that Industry projects with a full-stack application resulted in higher values for course evaluations and career readiness scores. Ranked & pairwise correlation analyses were conducted, revealing pairwise correlations between career readiness and course evaluations (strong-negative) and student performance and course evaluations (moderate-negative); possible implications are discussed. Qualitative data in the form of anonymous student comments via course evaluation surveys indicate some students appreciated working on business-grade applications while other students found amount of documentation involved excessive. The study's implications and possible limitations for replication are addressed, including capstone program length, cohort size, project recruitment, and project variance.

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