The role of Final Year Project and Capstone Project in undergraduate engineering education in Malaysia and Japan

Over the years, the concept of teaching engineering has changed from practical to more emphasis on theoretical studies. To reverse this trend, Final Year Project and Capstone Project courses were introduced in engineering programs in many Institutions of Higher Learning. Both Final year and Capstone projects are types of project work compulsory for final year engineering students to demonstrate their capabilities in applying the knowledge acquired during their academic program. Project work is an important subject as it enables the students to experience similar and/or real situation on how projects are carried out in the industry. This paper present an overview of the objective, implementation and assessment of project work in institutions in Malaysia and Japan. The Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Malaysia and Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Kanazawa Technical College ( KTC), Japan is used as the case study. In addition this paper put forward several proposals to improve the effectiveness of project work implementation and assessments for final year students of an Electrical Engineering Degree program.