CHARACTERISATION OF EFFECTIVE DELIVERY AND SUPERVISION OF CAPSTONE PROJECTS

Delivering activities that are well aligned to the CDIO curriculum can present many challenges and often the complexity of these activities can lie outside the skill set of any single individual. Student projects at the University of Liverpool are now more complex than they were 15 years ago and it was felt that critical reflection of supervisory practice would be of benefit. This paper studies how the topic, structure, delivery and supervision of Capstone projects at University of Liverpool has evolved over the last 10 years. Several gradual shifts are noted: towards sustainability themes, towards cross-disciplinary approaches, and towards extended industrial collaboration. This paper presents an analysis of professional skills development in Capstone projects; drawing on consultation with academic faculty, current Capstone students and graduates now in employment. The prioritisation of various learning outcomes is compared across these three groups: the diversity of these outcomes suggests that academic faculty alone cannot hope to deliver them. This paper proposes that the key to effective delivery of complex learning activities lies not in developing and equipping any one individual supervisor with a never-ending skill set, but instead lies in fostering effective partnerships between a number of diverse individuals (academic faculty, technical staff, industrial partners). The paper then explores best practice in Capstone project supervision through reflection on current practice, and consultation with academic faculty supervisors, students, technicians and industrial partners/supervisors. The benefits of involving technicians and industrial partners in the development and delivery of Capstone projects is discussed; and the use of recent graduates as industrial supervisors is explored. The concept of using ‘Communities of Practice’ to guide and support Capstone supervision is presented and described. In light of our recent experience of using Communities of Practice, we also explore how this has the potential to augment faculty development initiatives, and to improve the competency of staff delivering Capstone supervision.