This week is spring break at UW-Madison. What better time is there to update you on the Computer Science Capstone Course I teach? There have been a number of changes this year that I’m very excited about.
UW-Madison’s Computer Science Capstone
The Computer Science Capstone course I teach is an experiential course that undergraduates take in their final year. I try to pack into it as much real-world experience as I can so the students will be prepared for their first jobs post-graduation.
How The Capstone Works
The course partners with corporations and non-profits who provide the students with a project to work on all semester. They also provide mentors, so students get to work with some of our partners’ smartest people and get to know the partner companies themselves quite well.
Students work in team of 4-5 to complete the projects. The vast majority of them are computer science majors, but we have some data scientists, Product Management MBA students, and UX Masters students who also take the course and help us fill out our cross-functional teams.
To help the students deliver the project, I teach agile software development and require the students to use the techniques we talk about in class. I cover everything from how to figure out what to build using frameworks and concepts like…
- Lean Start-up
- The Lean Canvas & Mission Model Canvas
- Design Thinking
- Prototyping
- Google Design Sprints
…to how to deliver projects on sustainably-paced, empowered, dedicated agile teams with:
- Scrum
- Kanban
- Scrumban
We also use tools like JIRA, git, and slack that students are likely to encounter in their first jobs. The results of the course always blow me away each year. In the span of 15 weeks, students go from having a brief, ambiguous project description to a full, working product. It is so exciting to see each student grow in both technical knowledge and in their collaboration skills throughout the semester! We finish each semester with a demo and celebration of the students’ work with their mentors.
What’s Changed This Year?
This year, we’ve really scaled up the course. Until 2024, the course was only offered during the fall semester and we just added a spring semester option. Each section has around 100 students and we’ve partnered with 10 wonderful partners each semester for the 2023-2024 school year. If you’d like to know more about our partners, check-out this post and this post. Our partners range from large companies like Capital One and Epic, to start-ups like Last Lock and non-profits like PBS WI.
The other big news this year is that this course was made “official” and will be forever forward known as CS 620. In the true spirit of experimentation, we started the course as a “special topics” course. This year, it made it through UW’s rigorous course selection process and now it’s a permanent offering.
Scaling the Course for the 2024-2025 Academic Year
My goal for this course has always been to scale it so that every Senior at UW-Madison can take it. That requires more partners and more sections.
Next fall, we’re aiming to have 15 partners and 150 students take the course. I am currently also looking for a co-instructor who will teach with me next year and perhaps teach their own sections in the future.
We’re Looking For More Partners
If you’re interested in partnering with us next fall, please reach out to me via email here! Partnering with the course is a great way to not only get involved with the university, but recruit as well. Many of our partners have treated their student teams as a “four-month trial period” and hired a subset of their students after the semester finished. That’s really a win-win for everyone involved.
We’re Looking for More Instructors
I’d love to find another instructor who is interested in teaching more sections of the course. If you’ve got industry experience, know your way around agile software teams, enjoy public speaking, and are located in Madison, WI you may be a great candidate. Please reach out to me and let’s chat about the possibilities!
I am really excited that we’ve started offering the course both semesters. The more students we have taking the course, the more students we have better prepared to hit the ground running after graduation!
