The Management of Student Industrial Experience (Capstone) Projects using a WEB based Collaborative Tool

This paper describes the motivation for and subject management aspects of a Web tool used in the Industrial Experience (IE) or capstone project of the Bachelor of Computing degree at Monash University. The management of these projects is a difficult exercise requiring the co-ordination of external clients, supervisors and students. This problem increases almost exponentially as the number of students increases. In 2001, there were 55 clients, 45 supervisors and 281 students involved in the IE subject. Coordinating physical meetings with this group of participants is impossible. A web based tool called WIER - Web Industrial Experience Resource - has been developed to alleviate some of the problems of information dissemination and co-ordination of students, clients and supervisors. This tool offers additional facilities not provided in comparable subject support software, including project administration and student assessment. Additional functionality includes the capacity for on-line evaluation of the tool. Findings from the first two years of use have indicated that notice dissemination, group formation, group assessment, group surveying and public access have been greatly improved by the use of WIER. However, bulk data entry via the web has been much more time consuming than expected.