Center for Teaching and Learning
Notes from
Creating and Teaching Capstone Courses
Friday, November 19, 2-4 P.M.
Outline of contents
I. Initial questions raised
II. Successes described by instructors of capstones
III. Frustrations [and possible responses]
IV. Sample, tentative definitions of a capstone course
V. Sample syllabi
Handout
(Includes definitions, key questions, & other resources)
1. What is a capstone course? What are its goals?
2. How much should a c.c. focus on research? How much should it focus on integration of knowledge and skills? Can these two objectives work together?
3. How do we balance desire for coverage of new material with desire for depth?
4. How do we balance professional preparation with both conceptual and applied work of students?
5. Can a capstone course be attached to an already existing course? How would that work?
6. If we separate capstone courses by areas, how do we achieve departmental cohesion? If we have a common course, how does one instructor teach and evaluate projects in a range of areas?
7. What is the proper relationship of the capstone to the rest of the curriculum?
8. What are the proper emphases on theory and practice?
9. Is the capstone properly formative or summative? Can it be both?
10. How are capstones related to assessment?
11. How are capstones related to the college’s mission statement?
12. Do we emphasize process or product?
13. What is the students’ role in defining the course?
14. To what degree should the capstone be a stimulating and satisfying experience for faculty as well as students?
15. Should the capstone be united by a theme or topic, or should it focus on students’ individual projects?
16. How many credits should the capstone be worth?
17. What is the ideal enrollment? How large is too large?
18. What are the best ways to handle a large project broken into smaller assignments?
19. What are the best ways to use peer groups, especially for peer review?
20. Is the capstone best offered in the fall or spring?
II. Successes described by instructors of capstones:
Recommended techniques
1. Graded steps along the way toward a major project; intensive drafting process.
2. Student-led discussions prefaced by prearranged meeting with professor.
3. Student participation in writing workshops (must be taught how).
4. Cover both research and content by limiting research to a literature review.
5. Use a “conversational model” [e.g., feminist theory in conversation with other liberatory theoretical work] to help students build on previous knowledge and take interdisciplinary approach.
6. Have students present relatively brief presentations before or in addition to the major presentations.
7. Use Sparc as an audience for presentations.
8. Make groups responsible for class sessions to ensure success as seminar.
9. Assign large percentage of grade to participation to ensure success as seminar.
10. Give a class or two off to relieve pressure and tension and allow them to work independently on projects.
11. Include assignments preliminary to major projects, e.g., report on trends in a scholarly journal over a period of 5 years or bring in a primary source and discuss.
Student Achievements
1. Students synthesize skills by reading and analyzing professionals’ articles.
2. Students realize the worth of the course some time after they take it.
3. Successful teamwork in science labs.
4. Bonding achieved among senior majors.
5. Achieved high quality of discussion, including intellectual honesty.
Additional results
1. Team-teaching was stimulating for faculty. Also a good idea to bring in guest lecturers. Cross fertilization models collaboration and allows faculty to grow intellectually.
2. Capstone projects serve as the basis for high quality independent studies.
III. Frustrations [and possible responses]:
1. How to get students to understand required depth of thought and analysis; how to encourage and assess depth.
- [Have them read professional essays as early as possible.
- Use FYS to get them started thinking with depth, complexity, and originality.
- Assign abstracts of articles. Compare in pairs or groups.
- Assign structured study questions, including those that require relating reading to other readings and issues raised in class.]
2. Senioritis.
- [Schedule course in fall?]
3. Students fearful of and intimidated by new demands made on them.
- [Have students read papers from previous semesters.
- Assign major projects in stages.]
4. How to phase in major research project.
- [History gateway (200-level) requires research plan; some students carry on with same plan in later courses.
- See other suggestions under “successes.”]
5. How to incorporate assessment.
- [ History distributes a questionnaire to capstone students, follows up with discussions, gets permission to use papers for assessment.
- Art collects file including artist’s statement and a CD of work.
- Capstones could be used to rethink major curriculum.
- Capstone course definition (not the catalog description) should include the learning objectives of the department. There the department would have defined the intellectual growth and disciplinary skills that are important for the graduate. As a senior experience, the capstone would be the time and place where the students would show off these outcomes and for faculty to evaluate them (through assessment instruments).]
6. Tension between bonding and collegiality, on the one hand, and, dynamics of evaluation, on the other.
- [Clarify relationship between collegiality, distinctiveness of course and students’ taking more responsibility, working with more—not less—rigor.
- Schedule presentations near the end of the term when energy flags.
- Link performance to faculty recommendations as well as course evaluation.
- Use FYS to initiate link between seminar format and responsibility.]
IV. Sample, tentative definitions of a capstone course:
1. A culminating experience reinforcing students’ disciplinary skills and identities.
2. A common learning experience at the end of the student’s undergraduate career (i.e., culminating), with the (some of the) following purposes:
a. hone skills of communication, written and oral, research, and/or critical thinking;
b. foster identity as major/as preprofessional
c. reflect on/interpret content of discipline and/or implications (assessed what learned as major);
d. reflect prospectively/intentionally on future directions for discipline/major as academic, activist, professional, career;
e. multidisciplinary—reflect on major discipline’s approaches/contributions to knowledge compared and contrasted with other approaches
V. Sample Senior Seminar Syllabi
History 420 Senior Seminar Fall 2004
PS 499: Critical Readings in Political Science Spring 2004
PS 499: Critical Readings in Political Science Spring 2002
Music 480 Senior Seminar Spring 2005
• Music 480 Schedule
• Music 480 Oral Presentation Grading Sample
• Music 480 Resources
Workshop: Defining and Creating Capstone Courses
Friday, November 19, 2-4 p.m.
Buttrick 101A
Capstone courses: some definitions
“A capstone experience is typically defined as follows, ‘a culminating experience in which students are expected to integrate special studies with the major, and extend, critique, and apply knowledge gained in their major’ (Wagenaar, 1993). It is viewed as a ‘final, mastery experience’ (Davis, 1993). It focuses on the ‘ways of knowing’ in the discipline and addresses the types of questions and issues faced by the discipline” (Murphy).
It provides “a sense of closure and connection between courses” (Murphy).
It is “also a turning point for the student, from education, to professional practice” (Murphy).
“The capstone course . . . integrates learning from the courses in the major with the courses from the rest of the academic experience” (Moore).
“In short, the capstone course links or integrates the rational expectations of society for education with the mission of the university and the mission of a major program of study” (Moore).
Some potential dangers or limitations of capstone courses (Moore)
- Subjective evaluations resulting from nonspecific expectations.
- Too much flexibility for less motivated and goal oriented students.
- Too unfocused.
- Requires faculty to abandon specialized agenda.
- Great demand on student time, learning, and performance.
- Does not adequately assist average or below average students.
_______________
Moore, Robert A. “Capstone Courses.” http://users.etown.edu/m/moorerc/capstone.html.
Murphy, Patricia D. “Capstone Experience.” http://www.nedsu.nodak.edu/ndsu/marmcdon/assessment/assessment_techniques/captstone . . ..
Capstone Courses: Questions to Consider
Should objectives for the seminar align with objectives for the major? How?
Should the seminar relate to the mission of the college? How?
Should general education goals and courses outside the major be integrated into the design of capstone courses? How?
Is the capstone course rightly understood as the culmination of the major or of the student’s entire college experience, with a focus on the major?
Should new skills be taught in a capstone course?
Should professional preparation be a factor in designing capstone courses?
To what extent should collaboration be part of the capstone experience?
What role does the affective (attitudes, interests, values, and feelings derived through learning and by interaction with other learners and professors) have in a capstone course?
In what sense does or should a capstone course address ethical and social issues?
How should/could capstone courses relate to assessment?
Additional resources
Association of American Colleges & Universities. (2004). Capstone courses. Retrieved June 3, 2004, from http://www.aacu-edu.org/issues/curriculum/
capstone.cfm.
Baker, M. P. (1997). “What is English?” Developing a senior “capstone” course for the English major. RadfordUniversity. ERIC Document Reproduction Services No. ED 411 512.
Catchings, B. (2004). "Capstones and quality: The culminating experience as assessment." Assessment Update, 16(1), 6-7.
Department of English, CaliforniaStateUniversity, San Bernadino. (date?). Senior project for English majors. In CaliforniaStateUniversity, San Bernadino, Outcomes Assessment Plan, Department of English (pp. 10-11). Retrieved June 3, 2004, from http://gradstudies.csusb.edu/outcome/BA_English.pdf
Ervin, E. (1998). English 496: Senior seminar in writing: “Writing for diverse publics.” Composition Studies, 26(1), 37-42.
Henscheid, J. M. (2000). Professing the disciplines: An analysis of senior seminars and capstone courses (Monograph No. 30). Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, NationalResourceCenter for the First Year Experience and Students in Transition.
Johnson, R. The capstone course: A synergistic tool for pedagogical and assessment goals in higher education. Paper presented at the 10th AAHE Conference on Assessment and Quality, June 1995, Boston, MA.
Moreley, L., Morahan, S. & Young, C. The capstone experience as assessment. Paper presented at the 7th AAHE Conference on Assessment in Higher Education, Miami Beach, FL. Includes examples from mathematics, English, and political science.
Nichols, J.A. “Capstone courses: A model for assessing quality of student learning. In T. W. Banta & C. L. Anderson, eds. Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Assessing Quality in Higher Education. Ensched, Metherlands: University of Twente, 1992. 437-48. Focus on ethical and social contextual issues in university-wide capstone.
Rowles, C. J., Koch, D. C., Hundley, S. P., & Hamilton, S. J. (2004). Toward a model for capstone experiences: Mountaintops, magnets, and mandates. Assessment Update, 16(1), 1-2, 13-15.
Smith, B. L. (1998). Curricular structures for cumulative learning. In J. N. Gardner, G. Van der Veer, and Associates, The senior year experience: Facilitating integration, reflection, closure, and transition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Teaching Sociology 21.3 (1993). Whole issue on capstone courses. See especially:
Wagenaar, T. C. “The capstone course.” Teaching Sociology 21.3 (1993): 209-14.
 |
Agnes Scott College Center for Teaching and Learning |