Developing the expertise of information systems students in real world capstone projects

This thesis is grounded in theory regarding judgment and focusses on the development of expertise in Information Systems analysis and design. It explores how final year students working in small teams think and behave compared to expert analysts when solving genuine problems with genuine clients. Students maintained journals and expert supervisors were interviewed. These were analysed using qualitative content analysis. Key differences found were in client relations; assignment based thinking; limited proactivity and insufficient holistic thinking about problems and solutions. Recommendations made draw widely from academic literature in project based learning, discussions with the experts and others.