5 Helping Students from

Different Disciplines
with their Final Year/
Capstone Project:
Supervisors’ and Students’
Needs and Requests

Julia Chen
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Christy Chan
City University of Hong Kong

Vicky Man
Hong Kong Baptist University

Elza Tsang
The Hong Kong University of Science
and Technology

Abstract: A capstone project (CP) demands mastery of a

broad range of skills, such as formulating research questions,
synthesizing and cross-referencing previous literature with
current findings, and writing up the study in the longest report
students have probably ever written. The study reported in this
chapter is part of a government-funded five-university project
on co-developing a mobile app for supporting CP writing in
various disciplines. This project is grounded in the belief that
the ubiquitous and interactive nature of mobile learning could
enrich learning and supervision experience (Källkvist et al.,
2009), which in turn would lead to higher student satisfaction
(Del Río et al., 2018). To develop a mobile app that helps su-
pervisors and students, a dual-method approach was employed
to gather both subjective and objective stakeholder feedback
data via focus group interviews and by analysing CP reports
from three disciplines to reveal common writing problems
(Flowerdew, 2018). Results show that the introduction section,

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37514/INT-B.2021.1220.2.05 91
Chen, Chan, Man, and Tsang

the literature review and the discussion sections, research map-

ping, and referencing are four major areas of concern.
Keywords: English across the curriculum, capstone project,
mobile app, student needs, textual analysis

One key feature of the new four-year undergraduate curriculum in Hong

Kong’s tertiary education is the explicit requirement for a capstone project
(CP) as a means to provide undergraduate students with a culminating ex-
perience that equips them with the employment proficiencies, such as prob-
lem-solving, presentation, and organizational skills (Cranmer, 2006; Washer,
2007; Zinser, 2003), needed for a knowledge-based society (Education Com-
mission, 2000). Research has shown that at least four factors are important
for the successful completion of the CP: quality supervision, good time man-
agement, strong communication skills, and affordances of technology. Super-
vision is largely a one-on-one activity that can be conducted on campus or in
online settings ( Jaldemark & Lindberg, 2013). Although supervision support
for students varies across disciplines and supervisors, good quality supervi-
sor-supervisee communication helps students reach CP milestones, such as
setting suitable research objectives (Greenbank & Penketh, 2009). Good time
management is the second key factor. Belinda Ho (2003) reports that stu-
dents respond differently to the same time management advice given by their
supervisors, and good planning is a key to completing a project on time. A
further requirement for a successful CP is strong communication skills. Both
first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) students “may be lacking in
specialized reporting and English skills” and would benefit from a language
intervention and enhancement program (Blicblau & Dini, 2012). The CP pro-
cess can provide training in the language skills required in industries where
students will find jobs; indeed, some students have reported “communication
and presentation skills being improved” as part of their capstone experience
(Thomas et al., 2014, p. 588).
The fourth factor relates to the affordances of technology. The last decade
has witnessed an increasing number of studies on the use of technology for
mediating capstone project supervision, largely due to the wide adoption of
learning management systems. For example, Marie Källkvist and colleagues
(2009) report student and supervisor satisfaction with virtual learning spaces
and communication tools. The availability of digital tools increases the pos-
sibility for multimodal supervision, which can benefit from the employment
of analytics to “give the ‘big picture’ of student engagement” (Stoneham &
Essop, 2014, p. 5). Increased online interaction with supervisors can also lead
to higher student satisfaction (Del Río et al., 2018).

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Further advances should bring together these four factors in situations

where technology is used to mediate and facilitate supervision, deliver core
competencies and communication training, and enhance CP planning man-
agement, which is the aim of the current study.

Background
An examination of the background of Hong Kong university students can
provide insight into their struggles during the CP writing process. An in-
creasing number of Hong Kong university students come from CMI (Chi-
nese as medium of instruction) schools as the number of EMI (English as
medium of instruction) schools has dropped dramatically from 90 percent to
25 percent since 1997 (Evans & Green, 2007; Fan, 2001). The MOI (medium
of instruction) fine-tuning policy has had a substantial bearing on university
students’ academic communication ability (Chen, 2020), which has become a
primary concern for both students and academics (Littlewood & Liu, 1996),
given the perceived need for fluent English to succeed academically in uni-
versity (Hyland, 1997). Numerous studies have reported that CMI students,
when compared with their EMI counterparts, generally demonstrate lower
competence and confidence in English and encounter greater difficulties in
understanding subject-specific vocabulary, writing academic texts (Evans &
Morrison, 2011), articulating complex ideas in English grammatically (Evans
& Green, 2007), and adjusting to the academic demands of their key study
area (Evans & Morrison, 2018).
Despite the language needs of CMI students, the Hong Kong undergrad-
uate curriculum leaves limited classroom contact hours for EGAP (English
for general academic purposes) and ESAP (English for specific academic
purposes) courses. This is especially the case in the sophomore and senior
years in nearly all the government-funded institutions, as shown in Table 5.1.
EGAP training is essential for helping students “navigate their
school-to-university transition and acculturation process” in English-medi-
um universities (Chen, 2020, p. 119) and acquire academic skills such as argu-
ment structure, academic register, and referencing and citation in the fresh-
man year. Recent studies have also noted the effectiveness of EGAP training
in enhancing undergraduate students’ general academic English skills. Evi-
dence from Peter Crosthwaite’s (2016) corpus-based study indicates that after
one semester of EGAP training, students demonstrate significant improve-
ment in the use of appropriate academic register, such as fewer first-person
pronouns, more nominalizations, and better argument structure. Another
study (Chen & Foung, 2017) adopted a learning analytics approach to com-

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pare the academic writing of students whose university entry English scores
were equivalent to International English Language Testing System (IELTS)
6.30-6.51 with that of students with a higher entry score (equivalent to IELTS
6.81-7.77). Results revealed encouraging improvement in the English profi-
ciency level and referencing skills of the former group in comparison with the
latter after 13 weeks of EGAP training.

Table 5.1. English courses offered by language centers in

eight government-funded universities in Hong Kong
University Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4
City University of Hong 3 credits EGAP
Kong (CityU) 3 credits ESAP
The Chinese University of 4 credits EGAP 3 credits 2 credits
Hong Kong (CUHK) ESAP ESP
The Education University 3 credits EGAP Writing
of Hong Kong (EdUHK) 3 credits EGAP Speaking
Hong Kong Baptist Uni- 6 credits EGAP
versity (HKBU)
The University of Hong 6 credits EGAP 6 credits ESAP
Kong (HKU)
The Hong Kong Uni- 6 credits EGAP 3 credits 3 credits ESP
versity of Science and ESAP
Technology (HKUST)
Lingnan University (LU) 9 credits EGAP

The Hong Kong 6 credits EGAP 1–3 credits ESAP

Polytechnic University
(PolyU)
ESP – English for Specific Purposes

ESP/ESAP training, although deemed equally essential for success in

students’ senior years, is valued very differently across Hong Kong univer-
sities. As presented in Table 5.1, half of the institutions do not offer English
training beyond the freshman year, while the other half extend support for
faculty-based discipline-specific English (ESP) and/or English for specific
academic purposes (ESAP) in the sophomore and senior years. To address
the scarcity of curriculum space for ESP/ESAP training and to provide sus-
tainable campus-wide support for enhancing discipline-specific academic
literacy, English Across the Curriculum (EAC) initiatives, supported by two
government funds, were introduced in four of the eight Hong Kong uni-

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versities in 2014 and one additional tertiary institution in 2017. One feature
of EAC is the collaboration between English teachers and faculty staff to
identify the competencies and skills required for successful completion of
assignments in content courses, such as the writing of case study reports,
capstone project dissertations, and critiques of professional practices (Chen,
2016). Accompanying language support services and resources, including
writing consultations, writing templates, and online learning materials, are
subsequently developed to supplement the lack of ESP/ESAP materials in
the four-year curriculum.
Although EAC resources have been developed with one-off government
and university funds, inadequate ESP/ESAP training and support have made
the CP writing and supervisory process challenging for students and aca-
demics. Keith Thomas et al.’s (2014) study reports that students failed to ap-
ply what they learned in their university studies when preparing their CP
dissertations, while academics felt that, due to heavy workload and pressure
to publish, “being a project supervisor is not easy” (p. 590). Another concern
expressed by supervisors relates to the paucity of materials available to sup-
port CP supervision. Other than departmental CP procedural documents,
academics have no access to structured and clear guidelines on effective CP
supervision (Roberts & Seaman, 2018).
One way to address the lack of ESP/ESAP provision in the curriculum
and to enhance student and faculty engagement in the CP preparation pro-
cess is to develop a mobile app which provides instant communication as well
as ubiquitous and one-stop English language support for faculty staff and
senior-year students. Studies with higher education students have shown that
students prefer accessing the internet on mobile devices (Wong et al., 2015)
and learning through bite-sized lectures (Koh et al., 2018). In contrast to lan-
guage learning websites, mobile apps offer more personalized user experienc-
es and foster students’ active participation via the use of multimodal materials
(Beach & O’Brien, 2014), progress-tracked exercises, and self-management
tools. The CP app presented in this chapter, which aims to help students in
various disciplines master a broad range of skills required for the successful
completion of CP dissertations, is the first attempt to utilize mobile technol-
ogy to address the gaps and language needs identified in the current delivery
of CP in Hong Kong tertiary institutions.

Methodology
The development of a mobile app, called Capstone Ninja, for supporting
CP report writing in various disciplines was the primary aim of a govern-

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ment-funded project for five Hong Kong universities. In order to develop

such an app that addresses the needs of both CP supervisors and students,
this study sets out to examine 1) students’ and supervisors’ needs and expecta-
tions in the CP preparation process and 2) what app functions and language
support are expected and needed.
To obtain “a holistic view of student writing needs in a particular con-
text” (Flowerdew, 2018, p. 5), the project team decided to use a dual-method
approach in the collection of both subjective and objective data through the
gauging of stakeholders’ feedback and the analysis of student writing because
“a combination of methods is preferred for a target- and present-situation
analysis” (Flowerdew, 2018, p. 5).
Focus group interviews were conducted with 12 students and five super-
visors of five disciplines (applied physics, computer science, electronic and
information engineering, environmental science1, and humanities), with
open-ended questions on the three major issues: the challenges they faced or
observed in CP writing, their comments on the app, and suggestions for its
future development. The questions were deliberately phrased in this way to
allow the respondents to express their views extensively. Responses from stu-
dents and staff were then compared to see where agreements and differences
lay. After that, consent was obtained to analyse nine CP reports from three
disciplines2 (electronic and information engineering, environmental science,
and applied physics). The textual analysis of the nine CP reports focused on
the four aspects that were identified as areas of concern by students or super-
visors in the focus group interviews: 1) the introduction section, 2) the litera-
ture review and discussion sections, 3) lack of research mapping, and 4) refer-
encing. A sentence-based approach was employed to examine “sentence-level
features, inter-sentential relations, coherence breaks, and functional sentence
perspective” (Connor, 1987, p. 680). This method allowed the project team to
“target certain features of discourse” and make “data-driven” discovery (Leki,
1991, p. 132). Such a “textual orientation . . . work[s] to actively foster the
construction in students of rhetorical schemata which hopefully correspond
to those of English-speaking readers” (Leki, 1991, p. 135). Text analysis in the
context of CP writing offered a means “to identify common problems” (Flow-
erdew, 2018, p. 5) for “purposive, tailor-made” materials (Flowerdew, 2018, p. 1).

1 The Department of Environmental Science was renamed the Department of Ocean

Science in the 2018/2019 academic year. For consistency purposes, this article uses the former
to refer to their staff and students.
2 Due to logistical constraints, the research team was not able to collect CP reports
produced by students of computer science and humanities at the time of writing.

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User Feedback: Findings from Focus Group

Interviews with Students and Supervisors
As noted above, students’ and supervisors’ views were solicited in three major
areas: challenges in CP writing, feedback on the app’s functions, and sugges-
tions for its future development. The interviews revealed interesting findings,
including some commonalities and differences between students and teachers.

Challenges in CP Writing
Both students and supervisors agreed that the content of the final-year proj-
ect posed the biggest problem for students. Student interviewees reported
one common challenge, which was not knowing how to start their CP. They
felt that they lacked ideas about their project requirements. Some students
found it difficult to decide on a broad area for their final-year project and then
narrow it down to a feasible research topic. Students also encountered various
problems with finding appropriate literature. For example, a computer science
student commented on the huge number of readings he had to do before he
could select a focus for his study, whereas a humanities student struggled with
locating enough information or sources to support his project. One engineer-
ing student expressed his concern about finding a suitable method that could
be applied to his project.
These findings were in line with what supervisors found most challenging
in CP supervision, which was guiding students on the content and organiza-
tion of their reports. Students showed a lack of preparedness in undertaking
the CP, which often requires intensive reading (Healey et al., 2013). As an
engineering supervisor noted, students “may not [have] enough information
and may follow some wrong path to reach their goals.” A humanities su-
pervisor observed that students were “not doing anything” at the initial re-
search and consolidating stage of their projects. She pointed out that students
should have done preliminary work over the summer, but when they finalized
their project in September, they were “not ready to do so at all,” and ended up
changing their projects because they realized that “what they proposed ear-
lier did not work at all.” Most of the supervisors emphasized the importance
of regular supervisor-supervisee communication. They believed there was a
connection between students’ (un)preparedness and the (in)frequency of their
communication and interaction with their supervisors. The humanities su-
pervisor believed that “if students meet their supervisors regularly, then any
problems can be identified, but the motivation for students to initiate meet-
ings is low.”

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Differences were found in students’ and supervisors’ perceptions of the

most difficult section of the thesis for students. Students felt that the in-
troduction chapter was the most difficult to write because of its important
location in the whole report, being the first section that the audience reads.
They also felt that the introduction chapter needed to include considerable
content, e.g., it must present background information, explain the purpose
of the study, and identify the study’s contribution to society. None of the
supervisors, however, mentioned the introduction section as posing the big-
gest difficulty for students. While the environmental science and engineering
supervisors did find some problems in students’ introduction sections, such
as the lack of concrete objectives, they observed that their students often had
more serious problems with other sections of the report. The engineering su-
pervisor pointed out that the literature review was often very thin and did not
contain sufficient relevant in-text citations. The environmental science super-
visor reported that the discussion section was problematic, as her students
could not include a critical analysis of the findings or do research mapping
(i.e., a comparison of their findings with those presented in publications) to
highlight the significance of their results. She also recounted how students
could not provide concise summaries of “the key point of views in one or two
sentences” in the conclusion section, and how some students failed to adhere
to proper style guidelines in the references section. The engineering supervi-
sor also mentioned the references section as a problematic area. The problem
went beyond formatting conventions to the selection of sources. Students
chose poor-quality references that were not appropriate or reported studies
that were conducted in contexts that were considerably different from their
own.
Another interesting difference between students and supervisors related
to students’ writing abilities. Students reported that their main worry was
content, as they believed this was the aspect that their supervisors would pay
most attention to. Organization and overall structure of the paper were also
mentioned as areas of concern. Language did not rank as an area of high
concern for students. Engineering students considered language as an area
of medium-level concern because without good language, they could not ex-
press their ideas clearly; however, this was far less a worry than the technical
aspects of their projects. While some humanities students showed awareness
of the need for an appropriate style and tone in their CP, environmental sci-
ence and computer science students did not mention language as an area of
concern at all.
In contrast, all the supervisors commented on students’ writing and other
language issues. The humanities supervisor reported that some students sim-

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ply connected loose and short excerpts from different sources and used them
to write a literary analysis with minimal criticism. Similarly, the engineering
supervisor noted that students tended to include all kinds of information
without “filtering and processing” the content. He remarked that if students
had shown him their work “maybe a week” before the submission deadline, he
would have taken “a look” at the clarity and organization; however, students
“seldom do it.” Common language problems that he often saw in students’ CP
reports included misuse of tenses and reporting verbs, as well as expressing
ideas using vocabulary that they did not completely understand. The applied
physics supervisor echoed the engineering supervisor’s observations, while
also noting that he considered CP supervision “a burden” and a time-consum-
ing and challenging task because he did not consider himself “trained” to give
feedback on English language or “fix” students’ writing problems.

Feedback on the Basic App Version

The second area covered in the interviews concerned the usefulness of the
Capstone Ninja app, which received a positive response from students and
supervisors alike. Students reported several aspects that they found especial-
ly useful, e.g., that the app helped them systematically learn about the re-
quirements and expectations of the different sections of a CP report. They
believed that the app was useful for self and flexible learning, and that it was
convenient and easy to navigate. Although some respondents felt that some
learning modules contained slightly too much information and could be
made more appealing, the majority of the students reported that the bite-size
learning modules served as handy and quick references for them during the
writing process. This finding is in line with the project’s rationale of bite-size
learning for better learner engagement and aligns with the call for just-in-
time support, especially for year-long capstone projects (Omer, 2015). These
student views were also in agreement with the comments from supervisors,
who perceived the learning modules on the app to be providing helpful as-
sistance to students in acquiring the skills of formatting and organizing a re-
search report. As noted by the environmental science supervisor, the learning
materials on the mobile app were “rich” and “enough for students to learn [the
content] by themselves.”
The convenience in managing the project tasks was another feature that
appealed to both students and supervisors. The majority of the supervisors
found the self-management tools, such as the to-do list, valuable and useful
for planning and checking CP progress. This was echoed by computer sci-
ence students, who found it easy to set schedules and deadlines on the app.

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Engineering students viewed the to-do list function on the app as a helpful
reminder of their deadlines.

Suggested Features for the Future App Version

One of the features students and supervisors would like to see in future ver-
sions of the Capstone Ninja app is a chat function. Student respondents
wanted to receive immediate and instant advice on their CP and use such a
chat function to alert supervisors about uncooperative group members. Su-
pervisors concurred that a chat function would be a valuable tool to schedule
meetings and communicate about simple matters. The engineering supervisor
considered the ability to communicate with students via the app a much-wel-
comed option as he would not want to give his mobile number to students.
Other suggestions made by students included developing content on oral
presentations of theses, providing external links to online resources, giving them
access to previous students’ CP reports, and including pre- and post-learning
module interactive questions to motivate them to “scroll” for learning. Supervi-
sors generally favoured the inclusion of more interactive features such as videos
and links to online resources. One supervisor also recommended developing an
accompanying web version of the app for use in the office.

Textual Analysis of Students’ CP Writing Problems

To further investigate the weaknesses in student writing expressed by the
CP supervisors, nine CP reports were examined, with particular attention
given to four aspects that were identified as areas of concern by students or
supervisors in the interviews: 1) writing the introduction section, 2) writing
the literature review and discussion sections, 3) doing research mapping, and
4) referencing.

Writing the Introduction Section

A close examination of the CP reports tended to confirm the concerns in-
dicated by the CP supervisors that students’ ways of stating research objec-
tives can be “idiosyncratic.” For example, the student writing in Excerpt 1
attempted to link the research gap to the project objectives but was not very
successful. “The second objective” is confusing, as readers would probably ask
how the recommendations relate to the project objectives.
Everyday Hong Kong and Shenzhen have a food waste enor-
mous production which faces different aspect of challeng-

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es. This project objective has two fold. The first objective is
to compare the policies and technology of Hong Kong and
Shenzhen in food waste problem, especially in recycling part.
The second objective is to give some recommendations in both
cities to achieve a more comprehensive approach to food waste
treatment. (Excerpt 1: Environment Science CP Report A)
While an introduction usually contains a general background, literature
review, and research objectives, novice student writers often struggle with the
order of these features. Excerpt 2 shows unnecessary repetition of the objec-
tive statement before and after the background.
The goal of the task is to locate the vehicle in a static state
with traffic lights and photodiodes through signal trans-
mission. Currently, the Global Positioning System (GPS)
is widely used in vehicle positioning through locating the
vehicle via four satellites. However, GPS can be inaccurate
and may fail to locate a vehicle precisely . . . . Therefore this
task tries to improve vehicle locating accuracy with the visi-
ble lighting system and traffic lights, to tackle the inaccuracy
problems of GPS. (Excerpt 2: Electronic & Information En-
gineering CP Report B)

Writing the Literature Review and Discussion Sections

One concern raised by supervisors related to students’ literature review and dis-
cussion sections being too thin, without relevant scholarly substantiation. In-
deed, textual analysis corroborates these observations as shown in Excerpt 3 and
Excerpt 4 below, where the student claims were not supported by any findings.
Coatings with single element materials and binary materials
were rather well investigated, but a little effort has been de-
voted to the development and research of materials based on
multi-element structures such as composite ternary borides
of aluminum and magnesium. (Excerpt 3: Applied Physics
CP Report B)
Cloud-based, which application is an upcoming trend in the
information world, because of shorter implementation times
and without additional hardware or software requires . . . .
Due to the potential benefits of cloud-based, more and more
industries and companies would like to use cloud-based as

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a tool to finish a different kind of missions . . . . (Excerpt 4:

Electronic and Information Engineering CP Report A)

Research Mapping
The analysis of the student reports indicates that most students failed to show
the relationship between the findings of the current report and published stud-
ies. Experienced writers tactfully show where and how their present work fits
into the research map in their field. They also use research mapping to demon-
strate the novelty or significance of their findings by showing that there is a
lack of such findings in existing research reports. Excerpt 5 illustrates an unsat-
isfactory attempt at research mapping. While the Germany example was used
to contrast the practice in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, no further details were
given to substantiate the comparison with previous research findings.
To increase plastic recycling in Hong Kong, the key to success
is how the policies are introduced and implemented . . . . With
the all-rounded strategy, examples like fining those people
who throw disqualified refuse into the bins and . . . would be
capable of increasing recycling rate. This is what has been done
in Germany but not in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. There-
fore, a comprehensive strategy is crucial to ensure its efficiency.
(Excerpt 5: Environmental Science CP Report C)
In the same way, Excerpt 6 has failed to elaborate on findings from previ-
ous research to present similarities in the results obtained.
Sediment with estimated calendric age of 595 years before
present (BP) located at the top of the sediment profile also
contradicts with the expectation. This suggests that mangrove
in Xi Wan might be not naturally formed. Other results ob-
tained from other research teams of this project (via personal
communication) also evidenced the mangrove ecosystem in
Xi Wan is a result of reclamation. (Excerpt 6: Environmental
Science CP Report B)

Referencing
By making appropriate references to credible sources (i.e., including effective
in-text citations), experienced writers engage critically with the text to show
how their current research contributes to both the knowledge (Abasi et al.,
2006) and their readers, in addition to how it relates to studies in the field

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(Yates et al., 2005). Such explaining, however, is very challenging for ESL stu-
dents, whose writing often exhibits features of patchwriting, i.e., the rearrang-
ing of words and phrases without truly paraphrasing the original sentences,
and demonstrates difficulties in “using the existing literature to back up [their]
points” (Pittam et al., 2009, p. 159). Although Excerpt 7 mentions a certain per-
son, no scholarly reference was made to further illustrate the argument.
During last year, Mr. W. L. Cheuk of the Hong Kong Poly-
technic University attempted to apply A* pathfinding al-
gorithm and obstacle avoidance algorithm solve the prob-
lems of SLAM and Cooperative-SLAM . . . . MR. W. L.
Cheuk focus on enhancing the performance of Single-Robot
SLAM, it inspires me very much. (Excerpt 7: Electronic &
Information Engineering CP Report A)
Supervisors also commented that students included non-credible in-text
citations, e.g., wiki articles, popular science blogs, and news articles. Excerpt
8 cites a newspaper article (深圳商報) written in Chinese, which the super-
visor considered inappropriate:
In Shenzhen, there are two main policies which are . . . and 家
庭生活垃圾分類投放指引 (深圳商報, 2017) to mitigate food
waste problem. (Excerpt 8: Environmental Science CP Report A)
Another major problem of referencing was inappropriate format:
For the reference of an alert message, according to Marina
& Kenneth, “Emergency vehicles at scene warning message
size is 39 bytes.” (Excerpt 9: Electronic & Information Engi-
neering CP Report B)
To summarize, a close examination of focus group interview data and tex-
tual analysis reveals that writing the introduction, literature review, and dis-
cussion sections of a research paper; doing research mapping; and referencing
are challenging for students in their CP preparation process. Textual analysis
suggests that novice CP report writers need help with situating themselves
in the field by demonstrating the importance of their report findings and
justifying their significance.

The Way Forward

The findings from the interviews and textual analysis have provided a clear
direction for the app’s development, which can progress in three major ways.

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Chen, Chan, Man, and Tsang

First, it is clear that the app needs to include more learning content to
help develop students’ literacy skills in CP report writing. Supervisor feed-
back and textual analysis indicate the need to strengthen students’ writing
skills in the following areas: setting the scene well by making the intro-
duction effective, developing a well-structured argument in the literature
review and discussion sections, and doing research mapping and referencing
effectively. To help students develop these skills, suitable excerpts from pre-
vious CP reports and credible publications should be used to illustrate the
important concepts. Links to relevant external resources, such as credible
websites that teach these skills, can also be incorporated into the app for
students’ extended learning.
A second area for future development pertains to the communication
and self-management functions of the app. Both students and supervisors
expressed their wish to use the app as a communication tool. In addition
to mass notifications for one-way communication and announcements, a
chat function is currently being developed for mutual communication on the
app. Given the importance of motivating students to set CP-related goals,
the team will explore the feasibility of developing more time-management
tools, such as incorporating departmental CP timelines and setting individ-
ual milestones.
The third area in the app’s development is testing and evaluating. Efforts
will be made to expand student and supervisor use of the app, as well as to
collect user feedback on the usefulness of the various app functions. One way
of doing so is by including a “Comment” function on the app for users to relay
their feedback. Another means of measuring the extent of student engage-
ment with the app would be establishing a learning analytics mechanism on
the back end that offers a systematic and quantitative approach to facilitate
understanding of user mobile behavior.
In sum, Capstone Ninja is a one-of-a-kind mobile app bridging the gap
in the provision of ubiquitous, multimodal CP language support for students
across the disciplines. This study, which has offered fresh insight into super-
visor concerns and supervisee needs, advances the development of English
across the curriculum in the digital age.

Acknowledgement
The study reported in this chapter is funded by the Hong Kong Government’s
UGC Funding Scheme for Teaching and Learning Related Proposals, proj-
ect title: “Language Enhancement for Capstone Projects Using Interactive
Apps.”

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 FinalYear Capstone Project

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