Effects of concept map approach on students' attitude and motivation towards documenting computing capstone projects

Abstract

Given their importance in assessing the objectives of computing programs, capstone projects have been included in the present curriculum. Through these projects, the issues in software development practice are directly experienced by the students. This paper provided students with a full picture of these issues by using concept maps. To present a comprehensive rubricbased documentation of this project, this paper employs a conceptual map instructional approach and finds a significant overlap between the management issues associated with the project management life cycle and the technical issues associated with the software development life cycle. Although these issues must be treated separately, they must be related with each other in software project reporting. A questionnaire survey is employed to measure the students' attitude and motivation (i.e., drivers of teaching) towards using proposed concept map to support project documentation. The survey findings indicate that the learning motivation and attitude of students can be improved by employing the proposed teaching approach.