Balancing Freedom and Supervision in a Real-life Educational Project

The practicum course Information System Development, offered by the faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science of the Vrije Universiteit, has two main goals: (1) to give students hands-on experience with different aspects of working on a ‘real-life’ IT project, and (2) to let them apply previously learned techniques and methodology in a rationalized and integrated way. These goals imply a project setting that mimics reality as close as possible, giving students the possibility to experience a ‘real-life’ situation in which they can apply previously learned knowledge and methodology. At the same time, students need a fair amount of supervision to guide them through the project and to ensure that they correctly apply the appropriate techniques and methodology. In this paper, we present an overview of the practicum, its goals, and our approach to balance the amount of freedom and supervision in order to create a true learning experience for our students.