Students’ Opinions on Financial Compensation from Project Work

Juho Heikkinen

1,2

and Ville Isom

ott

onen

Agora Center, University of Jyv

askyl

a, P.O. Box 35, FI-40014 University of Jyv

askyl

a, Jyv

askyl

a, Finland

Department of Mathematical Information Technology, University of Jyv

askyl

a, P.O. Box 35, FI-40014, Jyv

askyl

a, Finland

Keywords:

Project-based Learning, Financial Compensation, Fairness.

Abstract:

Project-based learning with real customers arguably offer value for all stakeholders. This value has been

discussed in literature both from the viewpoint of customers and the related economic value, and the enhanced

learning of students. This paper presents the results from an empirical study on students who have completed

a multidisciplinary project course with real customers. A qualitative survey was focused on how students

see the value of project-based learning and whether there should be ﬁnancial compensation to students. The

students placed a higher value on learning than ﬁnancial compensation, and while they argued that it would

be fair and nice if some compensation was paid, they did not see it as a necessity. They also considered

ﬁnancial compensation problematic: how should it be distributed within the team, and could it affect students’

and customers’ motivation to participate in the project course. Students emphasized that the issues related to

ﬁnancial compensation should be discussed openly.

1 INTRODUCTION

Many problems can emerge during project courses,

although student enthusiasm toward authentic project

participation usually yields a positive overall learn-

ing experience no matter what problems occur

(Isom

ott

onen, 2011). The starting point of this pa-

per is that this overall positive experience can mean

that students are not comfortable raising important but

sensitive questions during the project course.

Project-based learning can be organized as a

“Project with a client”, where students realize a

project for a real customer and are faced with real-

world problems (Fincher et al., 2001). In some cases,

the economic value that customers gain from this type

of projects is signiﬁcant, while the value for students

is in the learning (Mann and Smith, 2006).

One somewhat analogous situation in higher edu-

cation is unpaid internships, which have received neg-

ative publicity in the mainstream media over the last

few years

. In these cases, interns are essentially do-

ing the same tasks as employees of the company, but

without pay, and the learning aspect essential to in-

ternships is left out

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-27/

unpaid-intern-lawsuits-explained

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2013/04/19/

6-legal-requirements-for-unpaid-internship-programs/

The present qualitative study originates from a

project course where multidisciplinary student teams

realize projects for real customers. In each project, a

project contract is signed by the customer, each stu-

dent, and the university. Customers are billed an ad-

ministrative fee by the university, and the university

grants credits to the students.

While the students are generally satisﬁed with

the course, we have received (sometimes anony-

mous) feedback from students not participating on the

project course, arguing that students should get some

ﬁnancial compensation since they are in one sense

“working without pay” for their customer. Thus, the

course has been labeled as “exploiting students for the

beneﬁt of customers” by some. With this in mind,

we sent out a questionnaire to students who had com-

pleted our project course to ﬁnd out how they see the

value of project-based learning and the work they do

in projects.

A total of 38 students answered a qualitative sur-

vey (Jansen, 2010) that explored students’ opinions

on the project course arrangements in general, the

number of credits they are granted, and whether they

should be paid. The research focused on the issue

of ﬁnancial compensation and the related fairness in

project work.

One can argue that the premise of this research

is trivial and students are satisﬁed with conditions in

397

Heikkinen J. and Isomöttönen V..

Students’ Opinions on Financial Compensation from Project Work.

DOI: 10.5220/0005437603970406

In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2015), pages 397-406

ISBN: 978-989-758-108-3

 2015 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

project-based courses as they have been organized for

decades, and are ﬁxed part of curricula in many higher

education institutes. However, there seems to be little

to none empirical research on ﬁnancial compensation

to students.

2 RELATED WORK

Industry often participates in capstone courses as a

sponsor, providing resources such as funding and ex-

pertise, and sometimes acting as customers offering

“authentic involvement” (Dutson et al., 1997). War-

nick and Todd (2011) describe a project model in

which customers allocate an educational grant worth

$20,000 to the organizing school. A total of $1,500

of this is allocated to each team’s internal budget to

be used on realizing the project. The cost of projects

to customers seems to be low in general: according

to a survey of 165 programs, less than 10% of the

respondents reported utilizing project model where

customers pay more than $5,000 (Warnick and Todd,

2011).

Warnick and Todd (2011) describe the results

from surveys conducted with current and potential

customers of their school’s project course. The re-

searchers observed that granting IPR (Intellectual

property rights) to customers was essential in ensur-

ing meaningful projects for students as companies

would not join as customers without being granted

IPR. The authors also discuss how this IPR policy can

be seen as exploiting the students. They argue that the

value from learning enhanced by real-world problems

compensates granting IPR to customers, since the fo-

cus of project courses should be on learning. Similar

issues are discussed by Isom

ott

onen and K

arkk

ainen

(2008): the role of a real customer in the students’

learning process is valuable, but at the same time, one

has to pay attention to the students’ rights and ethical

issues that may arise from project work.

Mann and Smith (2006) propose a four-factor

model for estimating the value of capstone projects

and list several examples from the literature of sig-

niﬁcant ﬁnancial beneﬁts for the customers, includ-

ing savings up to $50,000 in consulting services. An-

other example by the same authors demonstrates that

customers can proﬁt from the project deliverables,

which support customers’ everyday business, result-

ing in savings through more efﬁcient use of resources,

or directly through sales of the ﬁnished products. By

participating in student projects customers also get to

evaluate their potential new employees in a real-life

setting (Todd and Magleby, 2005).

In summary, companies that participate in student

projects as a customer seem to be in a proﬁtable po-

sition: the price of student projects is relatively low

(Warnick and Todd, 2011), especially when the cost

is compared to professional consulting services, but

the value for customers can be signiﬁcant (Mann and

Smith, 2006).

For students, the value of project-based learning

is in the enhanced learning. Project work reinforces

learning, enables the students to demonstrate that they

have mastered their needed skills, and, when project

work is done in teams, provides an authentic working

environment (Fincher et al., 2001). The educational

beneﬁts are also one reason universities organize stu-

dent projects, since “many stakeholders in the disci-

pline believe that an ’apprentice approach’ is a key

component of inculcating learners into the discipline”

(Fincher et al., 2001). Although student projects re-

quire more resources from the faculty, they offer “sub-

stantial and sustained learning” (Brownell and Jame-

son, 2004).

Multidisciplinary project work, which is the spe-

ciﬁc context of the course under study, is seen as nec-

essary to prepare students for the working life after

graduation (Burnell et al., 2003) and this realistic set-

ting has a positive inﬂuence on student motivation and

work spirit (Daniels and Asplund, 2000). Students

consider these experiences invaluable and the course

as the most important during their studies (Brownell

and Jameson, 2004). Multidisciplinary projects done

in the ﬁrst year with real customers and real projects

are excellent preparation for later studies as students

gain important skills (Hirsch et al., 2001).

When designing a capstone course, the univer-

sity and teaching staff must consider several aspects

(Clear et al., 2001): if the capstone course is orga-

nized as a project with a real customer, one impor-

tant and sensitive issue is the ﬁnancial relationship

between the customer and the students. However,

whether students should get ﬁnancial compensation

from the projects is not thoroughly discussed in the

literature. Clear et al. (2001) discuss the policies re-

garding students being paid: it can be permitted, dis-

allowed, or permitted under certain conditions.

Another approach to experimental learning is co-

operative education. Reichlmay (2006) describes a

cooperative education program, in which students get

paid for the work they do during their studies. Stu-

dents get work experience in a long-term realistic set-

ting, and companies acting as customers get to know

their potential future employees. Similarly, Huggins

(2010) discusses cooperative education that in general

can be paid or non-paid, but does not go deeper in an-

alyzing these two options. Including payment to stu-

dents however increases the employers’ expectations

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398

while students get some income which is a bonus for

them (Huggins, 2010).

Neagle et al. (2010) discuss student companies:

when organizing a student company in their university

“a secondary, but not unimportant, driver was to pro-

vide students with earnings” as students often need to

work part-time to support their living. One challenge

was to assure the potential customers of the quality of

work provided by the student company. The authors

also discuss two other student company models in dif-

ferent universities. In both cases payment to students

was later replaced with granting credits to students as

compensation. Interestingly, granting credits instead

of payment improved students’ motivation and qual-

ity of work (Neagle et al., 2010).

The value customers gain from the projects can

be quantiﬁed through increased efﬁciency of busi-

ness processes or sales of new or improved products

(Mann and Smith, 2006). The value for students is

in the learning, which is more difﬁcult to measure

and compare with the value customers gain. This

raises the question about the fairness of the situation:

does the students’ enhanced learning balance the cus-

tomers’ economic beneﬁts.

3 THE PROJECT COURSE

During the project course under study, multidisci-

plinary teams of 4-5 students realize a project for

a real customer. Project topics are “open-ended”

(Daniels and Cajander, 2010) and the course is open

to students in all faculties, enabling, together with

the multidisciplinary approach, a wide spectrum of

project topics from local companies and non-proﬁt

organizations. The multidisciplinary approach also

means that the focus is in the learning general work-

ing life skills rather than enhancing substance skills.

The course is organized in collaboration between a

research unit and the university’s administration. This

further reasserts the multidisciplinary approach of the

course since no single faculty is in charge. While the

project topics are multidisciplinary, computer science

is present in majority of the projects in one way or

another.

The pedagogical approach used is project-based

learning, to which two aspects are essential (Helle et

al., 2006): students produce a solution to a problem,

and the projects produce an end result, such as a re-

port or a product. Further, the project course empha-

sizes the “thrown in the deep end” approach, mean-

ing that students have to take responsibility for their

work without constant supervision. Tutoring, how-

ever, is available from the course coordinators when

requested. Students are encouraged to work indepen-

dently, but also instructed to ask for help if needed.

The projects are supervised with a similar “light”

process, which focuses on giving students and teams

feedback on their deliverables and teamwork through-

out the project. The students write a mid-term report,

and feedback is given in a meeting with the project

managers and another meeting with all course partic-

ipants.

The project contract signed by all three stakehold-

ers (customer, students, university) stipulates that stu-

dents must spend between 120 and 180 hours on the

project and they receive 4-6 credits (European Credit

Transfer and Accumulation System, ECTS) based on

the hours spent (in the case of this course, 1 credit

equals 30 hours of work), and an additional credit

for participating introductory lectures before the ac-

tual project.

The possibility of variation in the credits and work

hours within team members was added after the ﬁrst

course instance based on student feedback. Students

have to plan the project according to the tentative as-

signment from the customer and decide how many

hours they can and have to use to complete the project,

and then keep track of their work hours. Granting

credits according to the actual hours spent prevents

situations where students might do non-essential tasks

just to achieve planned hours, while the project is al-

ready completed. Similarly, it allows them to work up

to 6 credits to achieve the project goals even though

the project would have been planned to match 4 or 5

credits. Further, it offers an authentic working life ex-

perience, as the goal of any project should never be to

spend all planned resources, and sometimes projects

take more time than expected. In addition to cred-

its, students receive an individual “project certiﬁcate”

that they can use as a reference.

The university collects an administrative fee (750

euros + 24% VAT) from the customers after the

course, and the customers pay for all the running costs

the teams need to realize the project. The project con-

tract stipulates that the customers are granted the IPR

to the results, and in case of “signiﬁcant economic

beneﬁt,” the students and customers are obligated to

negotiate additional compensation for the students.

Students also maintain the right to use the results of

the project in their own studies at the university, and

have the right to use the project as a reference.

Students'OpinionsonFinancialCompensationfromProjectWork

399

4 QUALITATIVE SURVEY

4.1 Research Questions

The research was initiated by four research questions:

• RQ1: What is the general opinion of the students

regarding the course model and the arrangements?

• RQ2: Are students satisﬁed with the number of

credits they get for the course and the model on

which the credits are based?

• RQ3: What are the students’ opinions regarding

ﬁnancial compensation in coursework with exter-

nal customers?

• RQ4: Does the issue of ﬁnancial compensation

emerge without speciﬁcally leading the students

to this topic?

While being the fourth RQ on this list, RQ4 was

actually the starting point for this research. The

research was initiated by the discussions between

the two authors of this paper on the issue of ﬁ-

nancial compensation: if the comments from non-

participating students regarding the unfairness of the

lack of payment were relevant, why the students at-

tending the course had not commented on the is-

sue. This whole research revolves around the issue of

value of project-based learning to students, and thus

more direct research questions RQ1, RQ2, and RQ3

were included. These three questions also enabled us

to potentially answer RQ4, as explained in the section

describing the questionnaire.

4.2 Questionnaire

After the summer 2013 course was completed, a link

to an anonymous questionnaire accompanied by a

foreword explaining the purpose of the study was sent

by email to all 114 students who had completed the

course in the four previous course instances, covering

a time period of two years. The email reached 111

students with three emails bouncing back due to inac-

tive email accounts. A total of 38 students answered

at least some parts of the questionnaire.

The questionnaire consisted of an introductory

text that described the purpose of the study and the ba-

sic course arrangements essential to remember when

answering the survey:

• In this project course, multidisciplinary teams

planned and realized a project for a real-life cus-

tomer.

• The course yields value and beneﬁts for students,

customers, and the university.

• There was a project contract stipulating the work

hours, administrative fee, and IPR.

• Students were granted credits based on work

hours but were not paid.

The questionnaire was implemented using a web-

based system offered by our university. The question-

naire consisted of three background questions: fac-

ulty, sex, and whether the respondent had been em-

ployed during the past 12 months, and four open-

ended questions that directly followed from the re-

search questions:

• “Q1: How do you see the basic arrangements of

the project course from a student perspective?”

• “Q2: Is the model used in granting credits good?

Is the number of credits reasonable?”

• “Q3: Should students be ﬁnancially compensated

in addition to credits for the coursework that has

external customer that beneﬁts from the work?”

• “Q4: Has completing the project course helped

you get employed?”

The ﬁrst page of the questionnaire consisted of the

foreword, background questions, and the Q1. The Q2

was on the second page with a short foreword related

to that question. The third page included Q3 and Q4,

again with a short foreword related to Q3. Further, Q3

was formulated to avoid limiting the answers to the

course under study; students could comment on the is-

sue also generally. The Q4 was included to be used in

evaluating the course from the management perspec-

tive, and thus the answers are not analyzed thoroughly

in this paper.

RQ1, RQ2, and RQ3 correspond directly to the

ﬁrst three open-ended questions, and RQ4 was en-

abled through the structure of the questionnaire, as the

issue of ﬁnancial compensation was not emphasized

in any way in the survey title, introduction, and the

ﬁrst two questions. We could thus review if the ﬁnan-

cial compensation in an unprompted manner emerges

from the ﬁrst two questions, and compare such obser-

vations with the answers to direct question on ﬁnan-

cial compensation.

4.3 Analysis Procedure

The analysis followed the procedure presented by

Jansen (2010). Our approach was ﬁrst-level analysis

(unidimensional description), where the data is coded

and then organized “into objects, dimensions for each

object and categories for each dimension” (Jansen,

2010). We utilized downward coding, where we spec-

iﬁed “diversity within an object by distinguishing di-

mensions and diversity within dimensions by distin-

guishing categories” (Jansen, 2010), moving towards

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400

Financial compensation

is not necessary

Work must be paid

Similar to unpaid

internships

University collects

the fees

Voluntary course

Customer are not

willing to pay

Compensation would

increase motivation

Unpaid work

undermines

paid work

Unpaid jobs

reduce paid jobs

Similar to

working life

OBJECT

DIMENSION

CATEGORY

Figure 1: Example of the outcome of analysis procedure. Adapted from Jansen (2010).

lower level of abstraction. From our research setting

and the use of downward coding, it follows that each

object corresponds with the theme of a predetermined

survey question. For each object, students’ answers

were ﬁrst coded into dimensions. Then, coding con-

tinued within each dimension, and categories were

identiﬁed as the level of abstraction lowered. Dur-

ing the iterative reviews of the coding some upward

coding was also done. In these cases a data fragment

representing a dimension or its category was moved

to a dimension that was deemed to be better ﬁtting.

Example of this structure is presented in Figure 1,

where the object “Financial Compensation”, two of

its dimensions and some their related categories are

depicted. In Section 5, these objects are presented as

subsections. Dimensions for each object are identiﬁed

at the beginning of paragraphs in quotation marks,

with paragraphs describing the categories related to

that particular dimension.

Since the topic of students’ opinions on ﬁnan-

cial compensation is not widely researched empiri-

cally, we wanted to perform this ﬁrst-level analysis

to achieve preliminary ﬁndings and thus give direc-

tions for future research that will utilize students’ in-

terviews, instead of using a more explanatory anal-

ysis such as pattern coding (Miles and Huberman,

1994). The quantitative background information was

purposefully left out for future research. As the an-

swers to the Q1 did not include themes related to the

ﬁnancial compensation, the analysis of students’ an-

swers to Q1 is not reported in this paper.

5 RESULTS

The main interest in this paper is the students’ opin-

ions on ﬁnancial compensation from project work.

The answers to Q4 did not contribute to this theme;

for what reason we only show the summary of stu-

dents’ answers here, in Table 1.

Table 1: Student answers to question “Has completing the

project course helped you get employed?”,

where n = number of students and f = frequency.

Answer n f

Course has helped getting me em-

ployed

6 20,7%

Hopefully it will help 5 17,2%

Has not help but I gained useful

skills

10 34,5%

Course has not helped getting me

employed

3 10,3%

I do not know 5 17,2%

TOTAL 29 100%

5.1 RQ2: Are Students Satisﬁed with

the Number of Credits They Get for

the Course and the Model on Which

the Credits Are Based?

Students’ comments regarding credits focused on

three main themes: number of credits, the model used

in granting credits, and the amount of work compared

to credits. Another theme that emerged from this

question was the tracking of work hours.

“Sufﬁcient, Suitable, and Limited Number of

Credits.” Students found the number of credits suit-

able and reasonable for this type of course. It enabled

them to focus on other tasks during the summer, be-

cause the amount of work and credits were limited to

180 hours and 7 credits. However, students noted that

maximum number of the credits is not enough for the

summer term to obtain the study grant for that period.

“Fitting and Flexible Model but Prone to Cause

Unfairness.” The model used to grant credits was

considered to be good and ﬁtting. It enabled variation

in workload between different teams as customers’

needs and project topics varied. It was deemed ﬂex-

ible to individual students, because individual contri-

butions were reﬂected in their credits. Students com-

Students'OpinionsonFinancialCompensationfromProjectWork

401

mented, however, that the number of credits should

be the same for each team member on each team, be-

cause the allowed variation in credits and workload

caused disruptions in teamwork.

Students argued that the model is good in prin-

ciple, but changes should be made. These proposed

changes included the possibility of have variation in

credits between team members and awarding extra

credits if the project quality was good. The model

was considered good if followed; one student said

their team spent more than the required hours per

credit, meaning that even though the hours and credits

were limited, students felt motivated to complete the

project.

“Suitable Workload in a Vacuum, but a Heavy

Workload Compared to Other Courses.” Students

compared the workload of the course to other lecture-

based and project courses. In both cases, they felt this

course had a heavier workload because they spent 30

hours for each credit, and the project was done dur-

ing a 3.5 month period compared to a full semester

in other project courses. The traditional model used

in almost all lecture-based courses is one where the

teacher estimates hours students have to spend study-

ing and sets credits accordingly.

Another factor contributing to the workload was

the existence of a real customer. Students felt this was

an external motivating factor that increased the pres-

sure to perform, and thus made the workload seem

bigger. When students evaluated the course “in a vac-

uum”, the workload was seen as suitable. One reason

students mentioned to explain this was that the project

was so enjoyable it did not feel like work.

The workload compared to credits gained divided

students’ opinions. Some considered them to cor-

respond well with the workload, while others found

the number of credits small compared to the work-

load. Because the course covers a time period of 3.5

months, the students felt committed to the project,

which, again, made them feel the workload was big-

ger.

“Tracking Work Hours Was Important to Learn to

Some but Useless to Others.” Mandatory tracking of

work hours was considered time-consuming and chal-

lenging by some students. This was related to their

opinions regarding project management being in ex-

cess of their expectations and, how it detracted from

actual project work. Some commented that tracking

work hours was a waste of time, and it was more im-

portant to establish solid team work and realize a suc-

cessful project.

Challenges were also related to personal differ-

ences between team members. Students commented

that team members had different concepts about what

types of tasks constituted work to be included in the

project. They had different skills and competencies,

which made distributing the workload difﬁcult. Sim-

ilarly, understanding other disciplines’ tasks and the

hours required to perform them was a challenge.

Conversely, tracking work hours was seen as an

important learning experience. Most of the students’

previous courses had not included a similar system,

but they recognized that tracking work hours is not

uncommon in the working life. Tracking work hours

also helped with project management by keeping

them on schedule. It increased motivation because

progress, or lack thereof, could be monitored. Stu-

dents suggested that more instructions should be in-

cluded how to efﬁciently track work hours.

“Learning Is More Important than Credits.” Stu-

dents felt the learning experiences gained from the

course were more important than credits. Thus, they

emphasized that the project course’s focus should be

in the learning and networking, not providing cheap

labor for customers. Additionally, one student com-

mented regarding ﬁnancial compensation. The stu-

dent argued that a salary or grant would help students

during the summer, because they cannot have summer

jobs due to the project’s heavy workload.

5.2 RQ3: What Are the Students’

Opinions Regarding Financial

Compensation in Coursework with

External Customers?

Although there was only one comment related to ﬁ-

nancial compensation in the previous answers, the

students reﬂected on and analyzed - with great detail

- possible ﬁnancial compensation and the factors re-

lated to it when directly asked.

“Financial Compensation Is Not Necessary.” Stu-

dents analyzed this project course against their ex-

periences in working life and internships. Because

the project course is voluntary and additional to their

studies, the terms are agreed upon before the course,

and all parties involved are aware of the lack of ﬁnan-

cial compensation, students felt that ﬁnancial com-

pensation was not needed and the current situation

is suitable. They compared the situation to prior un-

paid internships, and argued that, similarly, no pay-

ment was necessary. Students argued that the univer-

sity should be paid by the customer; they organize the

project course, tutor students, and are responsible for

the projects. Analyzing the situation from the view-

point of customers, they felt customers would not be

willing to pay students, therefore asking for additional

compensation would be pointless.

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402

“Learning and Credits Are More Important than

Money.” Students placed great value on the learning

experiences gained from the project course. Although

they acknowledged that their customers had gained

useful tools from the project, the students considered

other factors more important than payment; learning

experiences, credits, references, and networking with

customers were seen as suitable and reasonable com-

pensation. Possible future employment with the cus-

tomer was also seen as a suitable reward for project

work. In that sense, students saw the project as an

“investment in the future.”

“Fairness of the Situation” Again, students ac-

knowledged that customers might gain signiﬁcant

beneﬁts from their projects. In this light, students felt

that there should be the possibility of negotiating with

the customer regarding additional compensation. The

opportunity to be paid after signiﬁcant results would,

in their opinion, be fair, and it would increase moti-

vation. Students’ opinions here emphasized the sig-

niﬁcance of the results and beneﬁt to the customers,

as well as the fairness of the situation as an argument

supporting compensation. Students felt that ﬁnancial

compensation would help them during the summer,

and while not necessary, it would be a nice bonus for

the work.

One comment raised an important issue: whatever

the model regarding the ﬁnancial compensation and

fees collected by the university, it should be transpar-

ent and visible to all stakeholders; they should know

who pays for what and how the money is used.

“Work Must Be Paid.” Students made an argument

that project work does not differ from “real working

life”. In that sense, they commented quite strictly that

there should be a payment of services, just as in nor-

mal working life. They argued that unpaid jobs can

reduce paid jobs, as customers opt to participate in a

project course instead of using other commercial ser-

vices, such as consulting companies. Related to this,

one strong statement in favor of ﬁnancial compensa-

tion was that “unpaid work undermines paid work”.

Since the project course is organized during the sum-

mer term and it takes a lot of work and time, stu-

dents commented that some students might be unable

to take a summer job at the same time, and thus, com-

pensation would be in place. In students’ opinion ﬁ-

nancial compensation would also increase their moti-

vation to perform. Students also commented that the

running expenses should be covered by the customer.

“Payment Might Cause Problems.” Some stu-

dents argued that compensation might cause unfair-

ness within the team due to the unequal distribution of

work: some team members’ contribution to the results

could be more signiﬁcant, making it difﬁcult to dis-

tribute the compensation fairly. Students speculated

that similar situation might occur between different

teams who have different customers, some more will-

ing to compensate for good results, thus putting dif-

ferent teams within the same course in unequal posi-

tions. In students’ opinion, compensation might affect

the students’ motivation to participate in the course

and even dilute the teamwork as team members might

start competing against each other instead of working

together as a team.

Students analyzed ﬁnancial compensation from

customers’ point of view as well: students understood

that customers sometimes participate in the project

course in order to test ideas outside their normal

business or product development. Students realized

that customers might not be eager to participate if

the costs of this type of experimental R&D were in-

creased through ﬁnancial compensation to students.

Students acknowledged that increase in payment from

customers would also mean increase in requirements

and deliverables of the projects.

5.3 RQ4: Does the Issue of Financial

Compensation Emerge Without

Speciﬁcally Leading the Students to

This Topic?

The results regarding RQ4 seem quite clear. Addi-

tional ﬁnancial compensation did not emerge in the

students’ answers (except in a single comment) when

they evaluated the course model (Q1) or the cred-

its (Q2). However, the students analyzed this issue

deeply when speciﬁcally asked (Q3). We assume that

this can be caused by two things. First, students can

be cautious when sensitive issues need to be discussed

(Isom

ott

onen, 2011). Second, students simply are

more interested in learning experiences and do not

consider ﬁnancial compensation an essential part of

the project work, as our analysis of RQ3 seems to

point out. While ﬁnancial compensation would be

fair and a nice bonus for the work, students consider

project work as an investment in the future, and they

highly value learning experiences.

6 CONCLUSIONS AND

DISCUSSION

In this paper, we analyzed how students see the value

of project-based learning, focusing on students’ opin-

ions of whether or not they should get ﬁnancial com-

pensation for their work. Based on the qualitative sur-

vey, students were satisﬁed with the course and its ar-

Students'OpinionsonFinancialCompensationfromProjectWork

403

rangements, including the number of credits granted.

While additional ﬁnancial compensation would be a

nice bonus, the lack of it does not constitute a se-

vere ﬂaw. Students’ positive or negative attitudes to-

wards the course arrangements stems from compari-

son to other traditional courses and students’ expec-

tations. This is apparent when they compare gen-

eral experiences and the workload of projects to other

courses, similar to what has been reported before

(Isom

ott

onen, 2011).

The main results of this paper concern ﬁnancial

compensation for students. Financial compensation

had no dominant role when students generally as-

sessed the project course, even when slightly led to-

wards the topic. When asked directly, however, they

analyzed the situation more thoroughly.

Two opposing viewpoints regarding ﬁnancial

compensation were identiﬁed: ﬁrst, students valued

learning experiences higher than ﬁnancial compen-

sation and felt that ﬁnancial compensation was not

necessary. However, compensation would be a nice

bonus and improve the fairness of project course ar-

rangements. Similarly, providing earnings to students

was one reason to establish student companies as re-

ported by Neagle et al. (2010).

Second, some students drew a parallel between

doing projects and being employed by the customer,

and thus they felt they should be paid. Students ar-

gued that there should be compensation if the project

produces signiﬁcant proﬁt for the customer, as stipu-

lated by the project contract. We must acknowledge

that deﬁning whether or not a project has “signiﬁcant

value” can be problematic; it can take years for the

value of deliverables to be identiﬁed.

As previously mentioned, there are some simi-

larities between project courses and unpaid intern-

ships, and from the pedagogical point of view both of

them fall in the same category of experiential learning

(Burke and Carton, 2013). United States Department

of Labor has listed six criteria

to determine whether

a person is employed, or considered to be in an in-

ternship, which can be unpaid under the Fair Labor

Standards Act. Five of these criteria apply to project-

based learning in most cases, but one criterion deﬁnes

that there should be ”no immediate advantage” to em-

ployers. Project courses with real customers do not

generally satisfy this criterion, as the universities at

least claim the projects to be beneﬁcial to customers

(Mann and Smith, 2006). This dilemma corresponds

to the students’ opinions that there should be possi-

bility to negotiate with the customer in case they gain

ﬁnancial beneﬁt from the project. One could argue

that based on this criterion, project courses transform

http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm

from “learning experience to students” to “work that

should be paid” if customers gain immediate beneﬁt

from projects; more research on contract models used

on project courses is likely to be needed.

Students were satisﬁed with credits as the com-

pensation for the project course, and, when again

drawing a parallel with unpaid internships, this can

be seen acceptable as the project course is volun-

tary (Burke and Carton, 2013). In unpaid internships

the university does not have to provide instruction or

classroom, for example, and thus granting credits for

internship can be problematic: students have to pay

tuition fees to the university fees for the work they do

for their employers (Burke and Carton, 2013). The

Finnish university system does not have tuition fees,

and this can be one reason why our students felt that

the university should collect the payment from cus-

tomers, as they understood that organizing project

courses requires more resources than standard lec-

ture courses. Further research could focus on ﬁnan-

cial compensation from the viewpoint of educational-

cultural differences, especially free higher education

(Nordic countries

) versus one subject to tuition fees

(USA).

Burke and Carton (2013) in fact argue that unpaid

internships should undoubtedly be voluntary. This

viewpoint showed up on our survey as well, as stu-

dents acknowledged that they were participating on

an optional course, where conditions (no payment)

where known beforehand. In computer science cur-

ricula, however, it is not uncommon to have manda-

tory project course, leaving students with no options

other than participate on the course if they want to

graduate. From this premise, it would be interest-

ing to target this same questionnaire to students on

mandatory, real customer project courses.

Students reﬂected on other problematic issues re-

lated to ﬁnancial compensation as well, such as di-

vision of compensation within the team and possible

distraction. They argued that the negatives might out-

weigh the positives if ﬁnancial compensation was pro-

vided for students. They also acknowledged that cus-

tomers’ expectations of the quality of project deliver-

ables would increase, similar to what was reported by

Neagle et al. (2010).

Differences of opinion were present when stu-

dents analyzed ﬁnancial compensation from the cus-

tomers’ viewpoint. Some argued that students should

be paid, as they are essentially employed by the cus-

tomer. This implies that in students’ opinion the

customer would realize the project, even if student

https://theconversation.com/why-ﬁnland-and-norway-

still-shun-university-tuition-fees-even-for-international-

students-36922

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404

projects were not available, by utilizing commercial

services. Other students argued against ﬁnancial com-

pensation on the grounds that these projects are more

experimental in nature, and they could not be realized

without students’ participation as the price of student

projects is low.

As one student noted, no matter how the ﬁnancial

issues are arranged between customers, students, and

the university, they should be discussed openly. Based

on our experiences with project courses, we propose

a similar approach; ﬁnancial arrangements should be

discussed and explained thoroughly to all stakehold-

ers and clearly included in contracts. Keeping ﬁnan-

cial issues, especially compensation to students, open

and visible for each stakeholder is suggested by Clear

et al. (2001) as well. If sensitive issues are construc-

tively discussed by teachers, students might become

more willing to bring up ﬂaws regarding course ar-

rangements, thus enabling the development and im-

provement of project course models.

This research was motivated by comments re-

ceived concerning the claimed unfairness of the situ-

ation (“Students are not paid for the project work”).

Based on these results, we can conclude that these

comments are not concerning for the most part. How-

ever, since the students highly value the learning from

the projects, focus must be on continued development

of the educational areas of projects. Discussion re-

garding the ﬁnancial and other sensitive issues should

remain open as well. The comments show that ﬁnan-

cial compensation for students is a complicated issue

that can be viewed and analyzed from several perspec-

tives. This issue is not thoroughly discussed in litera-

ture, and in our view, needs further research.

Our data set includes background variables useful

for further analysis, and we plan to reproduce the sur-

vey presented here to new student cohorts. We also

plan to use semi-structured interviews based on our

preliminary insights into students’ opinions and use

additional material, such as students’ learning diaries,

in further research. Types of projects and customers

need to be analyzed as far as if the project is prod-

uct development for a company with ready-to-use de-

liverables or basic research for a non-proﬁt organiza-

tion. These compositions can make a difference in

student opinion on ﬁnancial compensation. For fu-

ture research, it is necessary to investigate different

concepts, such as student companies, cooperative ed-

ucation, and students’ experiences in them.

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