Improving Outcomes for a Masters Capstone IT Project

Capstone project courses are a significant learning experience that encompasses student previous knowledge with the added challenge of completing a full development process from idea to final product. This paper is a case study that describes the issues and changes to our Masters of IT capstone project in the last 4 years. Being a 2-year conversion degree adds to the challenge due to limited time exposure to IT and software development. As students are mostly driven by assessment criteria, changes on how project progress is assessed were key to improve students' behaviour in terms of team work, consistent effort and resilience. Successful changes and lessons learned can be seen as recommendations for other academics looking to update or improve their postgraduate project offerings.