ADDRESSING CHALLENGES OF HYBRID CAPSTONE PROJECTS IN A PANDEMIC ENVIRONMENT

Capstone courses are a common way to bring together earlier learnings into a practical demonstration of the skills acquired. At Åbo Akademi University, our Capstone course, or Project Course, has been running as a very practical, hands-on course, emphasizing the physical presence and interaction among students. The Covid-19 pandemic made it impossible to run the course in the standard way affecting the main course objectives. This article discusses the challenges and solutions of running the course in both hybrid and online format, and what learning can be drawn from this. The different tools and methods used for forming the teams and formulating the projects are analysed and evaluated, both through a student survey and using the lecturer’s qualitative hindsight. We show that by using proper tools and methods we can compensate for the drawbacks and limitations of a Pandemic environment.