Ten Years of Capstone Projects at Okanagan College

In this paper we discuss ten years of teaching of "Projects in Computer Science" (COSC 224), "Software Engineering" with the following "Software Engineering Project" capstone projects (COSC 470 and COSC 471 respectfully) at the Computer Science Department of Okanagan College (OC). We included "Object-Oriented Systems Analysis and Design" (COSC 236) course in the discussion, which was used for the initial systems analysis and design in the Fall before the project development in COSC 224 in the Winter, as it was suggested by the students in several anonymous program reviews. Also we provide retrospective analysis and evaluation of capstone projects, starting from very small artificial projects, then moving on to projects with international industrial sponsors and sponsors from universities. Then, after many discussions with the students and within our department we decided to work with local small companies instead of large international corporations and universities. Starting from 2013 many capstone projects in both COSC 236/224 and COSC 470/471 supported applied research projects at Computer Science department, especially those that were related to the projects supported by the "Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)" in 2014--2016.