A Systematic Approach to the Pedagogic Design of Final Year Projects: Learning Outcomes, Supervision and Assessment*

Final Year Projects (FYPs) are nowadays relevant elements of university studies leading to several kinds of degrees. However,according to literature, most often the educational purposes of FYPs and their assessment procedures and criteria remain unspecified.This fact usually affects student performance and, consequently, it negatively nuances the educational aim of the FYP. Within thispaper, the authors report on an effort to define a pedagogic design for final year projects in engineering university studies. This designincludes a definition of the expected learning outcomes, a supervision scheme for final year projects and an assessment process. Thedefinition of the expected learning outcomes has been made based on competences. Such a definition has served as a basis for designinga supervision process coherent with the expected educational outcomes. The competence-based definition of the educational outcomes has also been used as a reference for designing the assessment system. Crucial aspects of this systematic approach are the competence-based definition of educational outcomes, the relation among educational outcomes, supervision process and assessment procedure andcriteria and the methodology for mark weighting. Nevertheless, the applied methodology allows for easy adaptation of specific aspectsto different contexts.