When I was in school, we had projects, but it wasn't that serious. The idea was just to build something and get it working. The circuit itself was of little importance, it was the construction skills. We prepared and etched the PCB, drilled the holes. Gathered the parts and stuffed the board, soldered, tested, troubleshoot, tested some more, and final build a case for the finished project. There were no papers to write, and usually the whole class was aware of your progress through out.