Community-based capstone projects as university–community engagement: An exploratory case study of community aquaculture in Malaysia
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55573/IJAFB.117004Keywords:
community-based capstone, university–community collaboration, community aquacultureAbstract
Community-based capstone projects offer universities a practical mechanism for connecting academic learning with locally identified needs. However, their educational and social value is often discussed separately from the technical outputs produced by students. This exploratory case study examines a community-engaged capstone project undertaken in community aquaculture at Kebun Komuniti Wanita Taman Mawar, Pasir Gudang, Johor Malaysia. The study resulted in KELI.IO, a portable water-quality observation tool. Rather than evaluating KELI.IO primarily as an engineering system, this study treats it as an actionable community deliverable through which the relationship between community need, academic learning, stakeholder engagement and practical value can be examined. Drawing on capstone education, experiential learning, service-learning, civic engagement, participatory approaches and university–community collaboration, the paper uses an exploratory descriptive case-study approach based on project documentation, field narratives and descriptions of the community setting and implementation process. The evidence indicates that the project provided an authentic problem context, required students to translate disciplinary knowledge into a usable output, and created a practical means of consolidating and communicating selected pond-water observations. The technical documentation further reports a 30-day field observation, scheduled five-minute readings, and selected alert and battery tests; these results are used only as enabling evidence. The study does not establish changes in student learning, community empowerment, fish survival, productivity, income or sustained adoption because no purpose-designed social-science dataset or longitudinal outcome measures were available. The paper concludes with implications for capstone curriculum design, stakeholder participation, reflection, handover, maintenance and future mixed-method research.
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