Assessing final year engineering projects (FYEPs) : ensuring learning and teaching standards and AQF8 outcomes : final report 2015

This research project is a partnership between seven universities – Central Queensland University (lead), University of Technology Sydney, The University of Adelaide, Curtin University, Deakin University, University of Tasmania and RMIT University. The purpose of the project was to develop good practice guidelines to assist engineering educators to improve Final Year Engineering Project (FYEP) practice and assessment and to ensure they meet Australian Qualifications Framework Level 8 (AQF8) outcomes. The project addressed the need that although Final Year Projects are a longstanding feature of undergraduate engineering programs, there is little consistency in how these projects are taught, assessed and supervised (Rasul, Nouwens, Martin & Greensill, 2009). The recent introduction of the AQF has presented new challenges to undergraduate engineering degrees and in particular, how Honours degrees are awarded. Previously awarded on merit, compliance at AQF8 now means that all students enrolled in four-year embedded Honours degrees will graduate with Honours. Final year projects, as capstone subjects “should enable students to demonstrate program exit outcomes, although opportunities to demonstrate these outcomes will exist throughout a program” (Lawson, Hadgraft & Rasul, 2014). These two factors, inconsistent practice and new levels of compliance, create a gap that this project addresses.