Steering together: student and staff perspectives on autonomy in final year projects

Final year projects (FYPs) form an integral part of most undergraduate engineering degrees, aiming to assess a broad range of skills and qualities, many of which will have been developed as students have progressed through their university journey. While there is a consistent structure of assessment, allocation and delivery, these capstone modules have in-built flexibility. Although many students select their project from a pool developed by academic staff, several institutions offer a self-proposal process whereby students develop their own project. The authors were keen to explore why self-proposal has such a low uptake within their department, and whether this was common across other institutions. This paper offers a broad overview of a research project aiming to gain perspectives from staff and students, employing data analysis, surveys and focus groups. There were notable findings from the study, demonstrating that students who self-propose their project are likely to achieve grades up to 8% above average. Additionally, several key benefits and challenges, identified by students and staff are discussed, with students from different institutions facing similar challenges and barriers to those from the author’s institution. The study concludes that increased support for students choosing to self-propose would extremely beneficial, alongside work to mitigate some of the potential issues raised by both staff and students to ensure success. This paper forms the foundation of further publications, which are planned for the near future, offering a more detailed analysis and discussion of the results.