Benefits And Struggles Of Using Large Team Projects In Capstone Courses

Computer System Technology graduates should have strong conceptual and practical knowledge as well as being able to work collaboratively at all levels of software development. One way to bring this all together is by using a capstone course involving a major semester-long team project. This paper will describe and compare the projects used in our capstone courses over the last two years. It will also present and discuss the impact of having multiple teams all working on their own team project as opposed to having the whole class work together on the same large project. The paper will discuss scheduling and implementation problems, evaluation procedures, peer collaboration in problem solving and conflict resolution, students’ attitude toward using projects as an instructional tool, and instructor reflections on the process. Suggestions for improvement from both an instructor and a student perspective will be included.