Capstone Innovation Project - Pedagogical Model and Methods: June 2014
Capstone Innovation Project - Pedagogical Model and Methods: June 2014
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Faculty of Business, ICT and Life Sciences, Turku University of Applied Sciences, Finland
1
[email protected], 2 [email protected], 3 [email protected]
ABSTRACT
In autumn 2012, a new Capstone Innovation Project course based on the CDIO framework
was piloted at Turku University of Applied Sciences (TUAS). Encouraged by the positive
experience from the first pilot projects, the course was extended in autumn 2013 to cover a
larger group of the students of the Bachelor’s programmes in Information Technology,
Electronics, Business and Library and Information services. The innovation project is
implemented in multidisciplinary teams of 6-8 mainly 3rd year students. The course allows
students to develop a prototype solution to a problem or need of a real client. The project
covers the whole life cycle of a product development process from an initial idea phase to
closing the project. The pedagogical framework of the course includes innovation pedagogy,
problem-based learning (PBL) and project-based learning. User-centred methods are applied
in the planning phase of the project, and agile methods, especially Scrum, are used in project
implementation. This paper presents a case study describing the current experiences of this
extended course pilot, details the pedagogical process used and methods applied in different
phases of the projects (idea generation, rapid prototyping, implementation, closing), as well
as the learning experience and strategies for effective and realistic competence-based
assessment. The feedback analysis from the pilot course showed that the innovation project
was considered to be highly motivating, challenging and educating. The aim of this paper is
to define pedagogical models and methods that support motivation, learning, team cohesion
and collaborative, user-centred development process.
KEYWORDS
INTRODUCTION
The ICT Engineering education at TUAS has a long tradition of active educational
development. Examples of our development steps before joining CDIO in 2007 include
application of problem-based learning in different courses especially in the first year
engineering studies. Experiences on these activities have been documented in several
publications (Tuohi & Roslöf, 2007 and 2006; Roslöf & Tuohi, 2005). As one of the first
curricular and methodological changes facilitated by CDIO, a first-year “Introduction to
Engineering” project course was introduced into the curriculum (Saarenpää & Tuohi, 2010;
Roslöf, 2008). The first implementation of this course was run in autumn 2009 and after
According to the CDIO standard number five (CDIO, 2010), a CDIO programme curriculum
should include two or more design-implement experiences, including one at a basic level and
one at an advanced level. In addition to the first-year introductory project course, the
curriculums of TUAS ICT degree programmes have traditionally included several project-
based options. Several different courses contain projects, and the students can include
project-based activities as optional parts of their degree. The experiences of using projects
as efficient learning platforms have been good. An example of notable results in this field is
that TUAS project teams have been successful in international technology competitions
many times (Roslöf, 2013). Yet, there has been no integrated advanced-level project course
in the curriculums. That is, active students have been able to participate in projects also at
advanced level but, on the other hand, it has been possible not to take these opportunities.
Furthermore, there has been no clear process to coach, execute and assess these projects.
The development need concerning the advanced-level Capstone project in particular was
identified as a part of the stepwise CDIO adaptation process self-evaluation of our degree
programme curriculums. The topic was widely discussed with international colleagues during
the 6th International CDIO Conference in Montreal in the summer of 2010. Encouraged by the
experiences from other collaborators, it was decided to introduce a Capstone course into the
next curriculum update. The course description together with certain other curricular changes
was designed during the following year and, finally, a third-year course called Innovation
Project (12 ECTS credits) was included in the Curriculum 2012, i.e. the new project course
would concern all third-year students for the first time during the academic year 2014-2015.
When the Innovation Project course will be started for the first time according to the new
curriculum in autumn 2014, there will be a significant number of advanced student projects
launching and running simultaneously. Even though there is a long tradition of implementing
different types of student projects, this still means a novel mindset and sets requirements for
well-planned processes to initiate, guide, manage, report and assess the projects.
Accordingly, it was decided to plan and pilot the course framework well before the first “real”
implementation round concerning all students. The first pilot phase was run during the
academic year 2012-2013 and it consisted of only two multidisciplinary teams of volunteer
students. The main goal of the first pilot was to design and test the course structure and the
project steering process model. Based on the encouraging results and experiences of these
projects, an extended pilot with more students and external project assignments was started
autumn 2013. This second pilot is currently ongoing, and its most important goal is to
improve the course practices to such an extent that it is possible to start full scale activities in
autumn 2014.
In this paper, the second phase of the Capstone project course pilot in particular is presented.
The pedagogical process used and methods applied in different phases of the student
projects (idea generation, rapid prototyping, implementation and closing), the learning
experiences, as well as the strategies for effective and realistic competence-based
assessment are described and discussed.
The second extended round of Capstone Innovation Projects is piloted with students of the
Bachelor’s programmes in Information Technology (240 ECTS), Electronics (240 ECTS),
Library and Information Services (210 ECTS) and Business (210 ECTS). Majority of the
students participating, 50 out of 70, are studying in the Information Technology programme.
The curriculums of the programmes are structured fairly similarly including basic,
professional and optional studies. As an example, the structure of the Information
Technology programme is outlined in Figure 1.
The CDIO Capstone project, called Innovation Project course, is a mandatory common
professional course in the curriculum 2014. In the future, the course will take place in the
third academic year in the Engineering programmes and second academic year in the
Business programmes.
PEDAGOGICAL FRAMEWORK
Capstone projects are designed to encourage students to think critically, solve and find
solutions to challenging real word problems, test new ideas in a user-centred way and
develop skills such as oral communication, team work, project management and networking.
Projects are team-based, cross-cultural and multidisciplinary, composed of 6-8 members.
Interdisciplinary and multiculturalism requires that students work in English and apply skills
and investigate issues outside their own core competence (substance) area. The extent of
the course is 25 work weeks and 12 credits (ECTS). Accordingly, the theoretical student
workload is ca. 320 hours (1 credit corresponds to 27 hours of student work). Within this
limited period of time, the student teams need to create a solution meeting the client’s need.
The final deliverable(s) can take a variety of forms from project to project. The outcome can
be, for example, a video or animation, a service concept, a product prototype or a game
demonstration.
Altogether 15 innovation projects were launched on 30th October 2013. These projects will
run simultaneously until mid-April 2014 and they should culminate in a final product or
service concept. Ideally, the project idea should come from an external client which will make
the assignment more “real”. However, there are different points of views and disagreement
on this issue (see e.g. Armstrong et al., 2005). Nevertheless, based on our experience, the
students are often less committed and motivated when the institution or the students
themselves have the ownership of the project and there is no or only a weak “real world”
connection. Working with real customers makes the situation concrete and the teams need to
negotiate with clients about deadlines, content and the quality of the work. This environment
also teaches students to deal with uncertainty (Alarcon et al. 2013). Still, the students are
encouraged to come up with their own ideas, too. That facilitates developing their own start-
up ideas in a field of their own interest and enthusiasm. Most of the currently ongoing
Capstone projects (13 out of 15) are assigned by external companies or organisations.
As mentioned earlier, Capstone projects may take wide variety of forms. The only
requirements set for the project ideas are they need to be challenging enough and support
competence development of the degree programmes involved in the Capstone course. When
the course started, the project ideas were presented for the students in a poster exhibition
known as Capstone Fairs. The project owners (clients) presented their projects and were
available to give further information about the nature and content of the project and about the
background organisation. The students were asked to prioritise the three most tempting and
interesting projects from their own perspective and name one project that they found the
least interesting. Finally, all the students were placed in a project amongst their top three.
The course is divided in three main phases: Vision, Realisation and Start-Up. The Vision
phase follows a Lean start-up process from idea generation to rapid prototyping and vision
building (Ries, 2013). The Realisation phase focuses on the project implementation, and it is
implemented according to the principles and values of agile development using Scrum as the
project management method. The Realisation phase consists of seven two weeks sprints, i.e.
the length of the period is 14 weeks in total. The final phase of the course is “Start-Up” that
focuses on reflection and evaluates potential spin-off or start-up opportunities. Even though
the course is time-boxed and structured to proceed logically and in a linear fashion, actions
taken within the course follow the typical agile development process plan-do-test-evaluate
(see e.g. Sutherland & Schwaber, 2007). The course structure and the expected outcomes
from each phase are described in Figure 2.
Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5
The first TUAS Capstone pilot phase (2012-2013) was mainly designed based on the LIPS
project management model (Svensson & Gunnarsson, 2001). The strength of this model is
especially in documentation and strict deadlines. Two TUAS teachers studied for Scrum
“Start-up” is the final phase of the Capstone project. The phase was named “Start-Up” to
raise interest in entrepreneurship. One of the significant national objectives in Finland is to
increase the number of students who employ themselves as entrepreneurs. Our students
should be better prepared and more confident about starting their own development projects
after completing the Capstone course in a challenging project environment. The Start-up
phase will focus on closing the project and evaluating the future potential and application
areas. Also the whole process is assessed by project owners (clients), tutors and students.
ASSESSMENT
During the first Capstone pilot phase, it was recognised that the assessment of the projects
needs to include different types of competences. As stated in the CDIO standard 11 (CDIO,
2010), assessment should cover student learning in personal, interpersonal, product and
system building skills, as well as in disciplinary knowledge. Use of multiple methods and
including different perspectives facilitates an effective, realistic and holistic competence-
based assessment. To secure a fair, objective and comparable assessment, templates with
structured questions were used in each phase of evaluation. The assessment areas and their
weight in overall grade are presented in Table 1.
Table 1. Assessment
One of the ultimate objectives of the Capstone projects is to build a bridge towards
entrepreneurship for the students. Our campus is located in a regional science park which is
a nurturing environment for new start-ups. Our second round of Capstone pilots is still in
progress, and it is too early to estimate how many projects will be vital for start-up journeys
arranged by Boost Turku, a student-based network for young entrepreneurs and
entrepreneur-minded people in Turku (Boost Turku, 2014).
For example, the game industry is one of the most rapidly growing sectors in Turku area.
Therefore, Boost Turku has plans to organise a specific game start-up journey this summer.
In Figure 3, a model of how game development projects (including some Capstone projects
as well) could be further developed to fulfil the requirements of participation for the game
start-up journey is described. ICT Showroom (a local student project exhibition and
competition event) is the place where the project groups will have a chance to demonstrate
their results, and to receive valuable feedback from companies and other stakeholders
including Boost Turku representatives.
The use of innovation pedagogy has a lot of potential. However, many times projects even
with promising results and satisfied customers will be forgotten. As visualised in Figure 3 our
Innovation Project course will last until late spring 2014. At the end, the objective will offer
students possibilities to find solutions with regard to how to continue their work in one way or
another. That is, during the final weeks of Capstone projects the students have to negotiate
together with their customers what the next steps could be. There are many options available.
Therefore, it is relevant to participate actively in these negotiations with the customers who
have shown interest for the results and further discussions. The students can continue the
activities, for example, during their work placement or thesis projects. Sometimes this can be
supported with external funding resources as well.
In the first pilot phase, was found that the students were some way “over planning”. That is to
say, the students had difficulties moving from the idea generation and planning phase to the
rapid prototyping and implementation phase. Therefore, Scrum was found to be a useful tool
to push students towards this phase, and it also made it easier to commit the product owner
and potential users to the development process. Although the Lean process and Scrum are
used in this second pilot, it seems that one of the most difficult tasks for many student teams
is stepping out from the university to meet potential clients and users to test and prototype
the initial idea. Also turning the vision into concrete actions and tasks that will lead to a
concrete prototype solution seems to be fairly challenging for some teams. In addition, the
lack of project management skills seems to delay students from moving from the vision
phase to realisation and causes some confusion among the teams. One solution would be
that an intensive course of agile project management could be organised for second year
students to secure a sufficient level of project management skills prior starting Capstone
Innovation Project. Yet, it is obvious that students do not have all the knowhow needed in the
projects and establishing these skills forms an integral part of the method. However, the
support of our staff including project engineers in the laboratories is in some cases essential
in order to guide the teams further.
Already the first pilot phase showed that assessment criteria defined in CDIO standards is
difficult to apply in some projects. Especially projects which include, for example, artistic
dimensions are more difficult to assess. The assessment methods and criteria need further
development before the next course round starts in autumn 2014.
In addition, our internal process of finding the customers will be evaluated again after this
second pilot phase. Currently, all the available topics were presented in an exhibition as
discussed above. These topics were found based on our teachers’ active roles in regional
development. The question is whether this is the ideal way to execute innovation projects. If
students were also participating in this preliminary work they would get experience of
meeting potential customers before the process started. One of the possibilities is to study
how participation in this process would effect students’ commitment and motivation.
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Mika Luimula is a principal lecturer, and Head of the Digital Media Laboratory in the Degree
Programme of Information Technology at Turku University of Applied Sciences. He holds a
PhD in information processing sciences and an MSc in mathematics. He is leading game
development R&D activities in the Game Tech&Arts Laboratory. His research interests
include game development, serious games, health informatics and location-aware systems.
He has published around 50 scientific papers in the above-mentioned research areas.
Corresponding author
Riikka Kulmala
Turku University of Applied Sciences
Faculty of Business, ICT and Life Sciences
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