easyCapstone: A Framework for Managing and Assessing Capstone Design Projects

To enhance students learning and satisfy ABET requirements, the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Qatar University undertook over the past few years significant enhancements to the senior design project course. This work has produced a framework for managing and assessing capstone design projects. Along with a web-based application named easyCapstone to ease the framework adoption by automating key workflows particularly for managing the project registration, the submission of deliverables, scheduling project presentations, assessing students work and providing timely personalized feedback to students. Additionally, the students can maintain a project blog to document the project progress, project issues and relevant resources. This resulted in better ways to teach, manage and assess the technical and nontechnical course outcomes. This paper presents some of the lessons learnt and reports the experience of designing and developing easyCapstone. The evaluation results show improved students' perceptions that the course helped their professional growth. Also the detailed assessment and feedback given to students via easyCapstone made the course more valuable for preparing them for industry careers.