Abstract:
Industrial Projects IV is a compulsory capstone module for students enrolled for the
postgraduate Baccalaureus Technologiae (BTech) in Electrical Engineering (Power) in South Africa.
Many graduates from the National Diploma course often struggle to pass this module at their first
attempt. This may be due to a number of challenges, such as; struggling to integrate theory with
practice; perceiving their postgraduate studies to be overwhelming; feeling anxious as a result of
uncertainty about what is expected of them; not knowing how they will be assessed; and finally
experiencing a lack of support and understanding from their mentors. The purpose of this paper is to
highlight the course structure of a compulsory capstone module offered at a university of technology
which has helped students to overcome some of these challenges. The paper further contrasts the
assessment results of three different academics that were tasked with mentoring these power
engineering students and evaluating their various submissions. Results show that the use of a variety
of pedagogies enables postgraduate power engineering students to successfully attain academic
success, while predefined rubrics are essential in achieving reliability and validity of assessments
among different academics.
