A comparative analysis of design principles for project-based IT courses

Project-based courses have become increasingly popular in Information Technology (IT) curricula. We have found the design of such courses needs to take into account a variety of desired learning outcomes in order to maximise the efectiveness of such courses. This paper describes four quite different project-based courses we have developed and run over several years, and are continuing to develop. We compare and contrast the different course objectives, group management, project characteristics, course content and student assessment used in these courses. We also reflect on the evolution of these courses and how feedback from diflerent kinds of course evaluation is used to continue their refinement. We have our experiences will be useful for others designing or refining their own project-based courses.