Ill-structured problems in capstone courses – investigating students’ approaches and experience

This qualitative study investigates how students work with ill-structured problems in a capstone course, how they experience the problem-solving process, and how they use different types of scaffolding in this process. The analysis of interviews with student teams shows that their problem-solving process diverges from the recommendations of most problem-solving techniques. In particular, less time is spent on problem definition, and iterations between different parts of the problem-solving process are limited. The student teams seek scaffolding when they do not know what to do. While many teams start by consulting course materials (hard scaffolding), teams that experience uncertainty or stress in these situations often seek mentor support (soft scaffolding). These insights into the interlinkage between students’ experience and their use of scaffolding when working with ill-structured problems can inform course design as well as mentoring practice.