Monthly Archives: November 2023

SWOT you say?

cs467

I’d like to bring up some highlights of the online Capstone course (CS467) during the Fall of 2023.

Strengths

  • Great introduction in the post-bacc program to working with a larger team than just a partner project.
  • Strong outcome of the course for students is strong communication skills. Without communicating well during the project, then the entire team’s progress tends to suffer.
  • Tons of great project ideas. The hardest question for newcomers coming into the Software Development field is “what should I build”. So the fact that there are lots of interesting projects, and even projects that where you could be working with industry/sponsor code base is even better.

Weaknesses

  • Accountability of others for completing tasks. No negative benefit of not completing tasks, other than project goals becomes further delayed.
  • I found out mid way through the course about the Vertically Integrated Program (VIP) which I would have been a lot interested in. Maybe that should be better advertised somewhere within the first week so that gives time for those interested/accepted to drop in/out of the course?

Opportunities

  • Mandatory live quarter check in with the team. Was thinking it’d be a good idea to have a live session with the team to gauge the overall process/progress of the team in a synchronous environment rather than asynchronously. It also allows the team to engage with the professor/teaching assistants.
  • Someone could make an application to help with recruiting teammates for this course. The information would be “live” in a sense that you can add POST yourself, project preferences, contact (email, discord, etc.) and skill set. Then later people can PUT or update their own status on if they found a group or not, or otherwise delete their “looking for group” entry. The “looking for team” board would also be searchable and can be filtered on.
  • Enforce project management. Initially tried to do sprints, however that died off after a few weeks. This could be a learning opportunity for those wanting to land a job in the industry to be familiar with scrum, agile, and keeping tallies on the expected work to be completed.

Threats

  • No major threats I’ve identified in this course!