Professional Experience

Frequently Asked Questions

School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics (SCEM) of WSU has been running a very successful final year computing capstone program, named PX (Professional eXperience), for over 17 years. Over the years we have served many local, national and international organisations. Currently, we are collecting suitable projects for the upcoming semester.
Projects can range from a web or mobile application to a software needed for manipulation of hardware (e.g. WSU Solar Car has certain software components developed through PX projects).
Projects are collected prior to the start of the semester and students work on projects in Autumn or Spring sessions of each year. Projects are one semester (13 weeks) long. Autumn session runs from March - May and Spring session runs from August - October.
The suitability of projects for PX will be assessed by the coordinator and scope can be adjusted to suite the timeframe. Some larger projects can be accommodated using a staged approach, over consecutive sessions and/or involving more than one group.
A group consists of 3-4 final year computing students. Students will be closely supervised during this period by an academic supervisor.
As the provider of a project, you will be acting in the capacity of a 'client' for the project.
At the end of the semester you will get the developed system and all the documentation created for your project.
In this situation, you can get the students and academic supervisor to sign non-disclosure agreements. Please note the agreement documentation needs to be provided by you.
Other than providing your time (roughly 1 hr. a week for 13-14 weeks) for student meetings to clarify requirements, there are no other direct development costs involved. However, it needs to be emphasised, that continuous and timely input from you is vital for the best outcome of the project.
Meetings can be arranged to suit your and students' availability either at your organization, at the university, or through a videoconferencing facility like Zoom or Skype.
Students work in university labs. You are not required to provide resources, unless students are required to access a certain machinery within your organisation as part of the project activities.
University does not provide hosting facilities for websites. You would be required to organise the hosting services. However, as part of project activities, students can install the developed system in your selected server environment. For students to do this, hosting service arrangements needs to be organised by you, prior to the end of the semester.
While students can help you with the process of publishing the app, the fees will need to be paid by you. Google Play has a one-time fee of $25 and Apple App Store has an annual cost of $99. In addition, App Store requires you to go through rigorous app validation process, which can be completed by the students, if the accounts are setup prior to the end of the semester.
Generally, the students' involvement in project activities finishes when they have done the final presentation; unless they are given an extension (max 2 weeks) to complete the work, by the academics. If you require students to continue to work in your project after the semester finishes, you would need to make separate arrangements with the students and this does not involve the university. It is in your best interest to get the project completed within the semester time, as students' availability after semester cannot be guaranteed.

Under the WSU policies, the IP of assessment items (code and documentation in this case), created by students, is held by the students themselves. However, given the industry oriented nature of PX projects, students will be instructed that they may have to handover the IP over to the client (you). To do this there are two options:

  • Each student in the group will be required to sign an IP handover agreement with your organisation. This type of IP handover process should start in the first week of the semester and completed early (at least by the week 3), prior to students start working on the project deliverables - Please note that IP handover agreement documents would need to be provided by you (the client).
  • (Recommended) the students assign a MIT License to the source code releasing their rights and warranty obligations so you can use the developed material however you like. This works as any initial IP you have entering into the project remains yours, and the students can't use it in the future, and the students release their rights to code that would be deemed unusable by them because of your rights.
Projects needs to be submitted through our online system (https://px.scem.westernsydney.edu.au/). A client account is required to login to this system. Client accounts for this system are given by invitation only. Please contact the subject coordinator (pxadmin@westernsydney.edu.au) to get an invitation for a client account. In this email to the unit coordinator, please provide 2-3 sentences about your project. Once you have registered as a Client and logged in, in your Dashboard click on the plus [+] icon to submit a project.

For further information on the PX program, please contact the PX administrator (pxadmin@westernsydney.edu.au)

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