Relating student, teacher and third-party assessments in a bachelor capstone project

Abstract

The capstone is arguably the most important course in any engineering program because it provides a culminating experience and is often the only course intended to develop non-technical, but essential skills. In a software development, the capstone runs from requirements to qualification testing. Indeed, the project progress is sustained by software processes. This paper yields different settings where students, teachers and third-party assessors performed [self-] assessment and the paper analyses corresponding correlation coefficients. The paper presents also some aspects of the bachelor capstone. A research question aims to seek if an external process assessment can be replaced or completed with students’ self-assessment. Our initial findings were presented at the International Workshop on Software Process Education Training and Professionalism (IWSPETP) 2015 in Gothenburg, Sweden and we aimed to improve the assessment using teacher and third-party assessments. Revised findings show that, if they are related to curriculum topics, students and teacher assessments are correlated but that external assessment is not suitable in an academic context.