Development and assessment of the final year engineering projects : a review

Accreditation requirements for undergraduate programs for professional engineers require final year students to complete capstone projects, but currently there is no gauge or guarantee of consistency. Practices differ greatly between universities and little work has been initiated that seeks to identify good practice. The literature shows that there are no definite or guaranteed assessment criteria for assessing the Final Year Engineering Projects (FYEPs) highlighting the need for the development of guidelines for the FYEPs and assessment criteria.This paper presents a review on the FYEPs learning and teaching methodologies as employed across several universities at national and international levels and is part of a wider Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT) commissioned study - Assessing FYEPs: Ensuring Learning and Teaching Standards and Australian Qualification Framework (AQF8) Outcomes. This study is intended to promote quality practice amongst supervisors and academics involved in teaching and facilitating FYEPs in Australian universities. This preliminary literature review comprises one part of this wider study.