Role of a Capstone Course
Capstone courses offer undergraduate students nearing graduation the opportunity to summarize, evaluate, and integrate some or all of their college experiences. Historically, capstone courses have been viewed as a “finishing touch” to provide students with the needed information or skills before graduation, hence the name “capstone.” Recently, the prevailing perspective is that a capstone course is an opportunity for students to demonstrate that they have met the goals established by their educational program.
By its location in the program, it is natural for a capstone course, in any discipline, to reflect the terminal learning outcomes of its program. It is also natural for the capstone course to have an expert profile in a particular discipline as its guiding vision (2.4.3 Development and Use of an Expert Profile). The natural role of a capstone course is to minimize the gap between the expert profile and the student’s current state of preparedness. Analysis of this gap guides the selection of the most appropriate type of capstone course, whether it be project-based, thesis-based, seminar-based, clinic-based, or internship-based. In addressing challenges associated with this gap, assessment of student learning not only helps students prepare for professional practice, but it also serves to inform curricular improvement and to document program quality for representatives of accrediting organizations.
Course Considerations
The steps for creating a capstone course, like any other course, follows the Analysis, Design, Development, Improvement, and Evaluation (ADDIE) Model outlined in the Methodology for Course Design (2.4.8). Special considerations in applying the ADDIE model to capstone courses are discussed in the following paragraphs.
Long-term behaviors: In defining long-term behaviors for a capstone course it is useful to begin with an expert profile that describes the high-level performance found in the professional practice of the discipline (2.4.3 Development and Use of an Expert Profile). The capstone course should be anchored in behaviors typical of professionals in the field, using key roles that are aligned with course intentions. No matter what stage of development an individual is in, expert profiles raise the bar on one’s performance. They inspire novices to accept the challenge of purposefully elevating personal skills. They help teachers prioritize, communicate, and facilitate learning outcomes that are aligned with long-term behaviors within the profession/discipline. They remind even the most talented professionals that there are multiple dimensions of professional practice, and that ongoing personal development in all dimensions is needed to stay abreast of new knowledge, technology, and ever increasing societal challenges. Identifying a small set of essential actions associated with each role can serve as an effective prompt for developing profession-focused learning outcomes (Davis, Beyerlein, & Davis, 2006).
Learning outcomes: The first step in crafting learning outcomes involves identifying roles emphasized in a particular experience. These depend on course type and context. The second step in crafting learning outcomes from a professional profile is identifying the type of outcome most closely aligned with each role in the professional profile. The third step in crafting learning outcomes involves projecting role behaviors, given in the professional profile, back into a specific course context. One begins writing outcome statements by noting which role behaviors given in the behavior-based profile are relevant to the course context. Next, it is useful to formulate common questions about student and professional performance, emphasizing these long-term behaviors. Finally, learning outcomes should be written in response to these questions about student performance, keeping in mind the type of learning outcome emphasized for each role (Davis et al., 2006). Capstone courses typically focus on two or more of the five types of learning outcomes (2.4.5 Learning Outcomes). These include:
Elevating Competencies
Facilitating Movement
Empowering Accomplishments
Expanding Experiences
Integrating Performance
Course Context: To achieve the desired set of learning outcomes, the capstone course should be centered on formal and informal activities that will elicit the greatest personal and professional growth. Table 1 shows five common types of capstone courses and the specific knowledge emphasized by each type of course.
Table 2 traces the impact of the five common capstone course types on achieving different types of program and course outcomes. Table 2 also provides suggestions on how different capstone course types might be augmented by special class sessions or course activities to increase their impact on subsidiary learning outcomes.
In project-based capstone courses the biggest differences stem from the types of projects undertaken rather than the disciplines involved (Dutson, Todd, Magleby, & Sorenson, 1997). Since so many capstone courses are project-based, and the majority of these generate design products, a breakdown of three common project types are given in Table 3. All project types require students to apply technical skills, use team-based processes, and engage in reflective thinking, in addition to creating a high-quality product. Distinguishing characteristics of each project type include the end product created, the recipient of project work, product attributes, constraints, team composition, and the collaborators involved.
Learner Profile: Since the main role of a capstone course is to minimize the gap between an expert profile and the students’ developmental state it is critical to analyze student preparation in prior coursework, decomposing targeted behaviors into subordinate skills and planning needed interventions to systematically cultivate these skills (Dick, Carey, & Carey, 2004). Hierarchies of learning skills in the Cognitive Domain (2.3.4), Social Domain (2.3.5), and Affective Domain (2.3.6) are needed in doing this subordinate skill analysis. Any number of learning style inventories can be used to understand differences in student populations within a particular class (Felder & Brent, 2005). Not paying attention to the learner profile can lead to difficulties in achieving ambitious capstone course outcomes, potentially alienating a population of students from the intended benefits of the course.
Performance Criteria: Capstone course performance is a mixture of process and product. Performance criteria related to process include self-directed learning, personal documentation, team organization, and team dynamics (4.1.7 Writing Performance Criteria for Individuals and Teams). Performance criteria related to products include knowledge acquisition, definition of client needs, validation of results, and formal communication (2.3.9 Forms of Knowledge and Knowledge Tables). Expectations of all capstone course stakeholders, such as students, faculty, staff, administrators, clients, program evaluators, and future employers, should be inventoried, weighted, and reflected in course performance criteria (2.4.9 Writing Performance Criteria for a Course).
Measures: High-quality assessment or evaluation of any performance depends on accurate and reliable measurements of performance. One can detect low-level understanding by using simple, quantitative tools, such as multiple-choice tests, true-or-false quizzes, and vocabulary definitions. However, more sophisticated measurement schemes are needed to assess or evaluate systems thinking, procedural knowledge, and attitude formation (1.4.1 Overview of Measurement). This is complicated in a capstone course environment where student teams often work on different projects for different clients. Rubrics are tools that can help capstone instructors come to legitimate conclusions about the construction of higher-level conceptual knowledge, performance skills, and attitudes (1.4.2 Fundamentals of Rubrics). When selecting from among alternative performance tasks, it is helpful to take time to establish a holistic rubric that emphasizes and integrates desired elements specified in the performance criteria. Holistic rubrics that span performance from novice to expert are also helpful in conveying course expectations to students and are useful in achieving consensus among project stakeholders on the quality of course outcomes produced.
Tasks: In capstone courses there exist a rich array of venues for eliciting student performance, such as journals, reports, team meeting agendas or minutes, design review presentations, project plans, web pages, proposals, final reports, research papers, and reflective essays. However, if one arbitrarily selects these tasks before articulating course performance criteria, it can misalign outcomes, facilitation, and assessment, wasting precious student and faculty time.
Assessment Framework
In Figure 1, three different user perspectives have been brought together in a framework that supports assessment for learning in capstone courses. These perspectives include the researcher interested in advancing the state of knowledge, the practitioner interested in bolstering skills important to the profession, and the student seeking professional growth. The researcher perspective is endorsed by the National Academy of Sciences and requires three elements of the assessment triangle (Pellegrino, Chudowsky, & Glaser, 2001). These three elements include a cognitive model that is appropriate for the discipline under study, an appropriate method for conducting performance measurement, and a coherent system for interpreting results. All three elements need to work together to produce sound measurements that, in turn, shed light on the nature of knowledge construction in the discipline and reveal which pedagogical approaches are effective or ineffective. The framework cements together guiding principles that facilitate the task of defining appropriate assessment targets, collecting sound and relevant performance data, and providing relevant feedback to different capstone course stakeholders (Beyerlein, Davis, Trevisan, Thompson, & Harrison, 2006).
While it is tempting to exploit capstone courses to draw program assessment data that supports accreditation, it is important to balance these with formative assessment that promotes student learning and growth. Stiggins (1996) emphasized five attributes for student-centered assessment which apply as much to capstone courses as to traditional courses. These include clearly communicated purposes, clear and appropriate targets, matching of targets and methods, appropriate sampling, and elimination of bias and distortion.
Concluding Thoughts
By mapping capstone learning outcomes to an expert profile, capstone courses help students navigate a bridge between academic coursework and professional practice. As such, capstone courses must be in a continual state of evolution to keep pace with changes in disciplinary knowledge bases, ways of being, and tools of discipline. This places a special obligation on those faculty who are teaching capstone courses to actively engage in professional development and to explore emerging tools and techniques. Capstone faculty must be more flexible, inventive, and assessment-minded than the average faculty member. Embracing, rather than resisting, this challenge is the key to long-term satisfaction in teaching capstone courses. Capstone courses can lead the way in helping academic programs stay abreast of changes in the external environment as well as changes in the expert profile itself.
References
Beyerlein, S., Davis, D., Trevisan, M., Thompson, P., & Harrison, K. (2006). Assessment framework for capstone design courses. Proceedings of the Annual of the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition.
Davis, D., Beyerlein, S., & Davis, I. (2006). Deriving design learning outcomes from a professional profile. International Journal of Engineering Education, 22(3), 439-446.
Dick, W. O., Carey, L., & Carey, J. O. (2004). The systematic design of instruction. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Dutson, A., Todd, R., Magleby, S. & Sorenson, C. (1997). A review of literature on teaching design through project-oriented capstone courses. Journal of Engineering Education, 76(1), 17-28.
Felder, R., & Brent, R. (2005). Understanding student differences, Journal of Engineering Education, 94(1), 57-72.
Pellegrino, J., Chudowsky, N., & Glaser, R. (Eds.). (2001). Knowing what students know: The science and design of educational assessment. Washington DC: National Academy Press.
Stiggins, R. J. (1996). Student-centered classroom assessment (2nd ed.). Old Tappan, NJ: Prentice Hall.
|
Capstone Course Type |
Knowledge Emphasized |
|
Project-based |
Efforts are directed towards applying knowledge in open ended problem solving and design (3.4.5 Effective Design of Problem-Based Projects). Since teamwork is vital to large-scale projects, attention to team dynamics is necessary (3.4.3 Teamwork Methodology). |
|
Thesis-based |
Efforts are directed towards participating in primary and secondary research (2.5.2 Research Methodology). |
|
Seminar-based |
Efforts are directed towards expanding, synthesizing, and personalizing know-ledge (3.4.7 Using Reading and Lecture Notes Logs to Improve Learning, 2.2.2 Elevating Knowledge from Level 1 to Level 3, and 3.4.8 Practical Implementation of Self-Assessment Journals). |
|
Clinic-based |
Efforts are directed towards applying knowledge in clinical settings. Understanding one’s role and reflecting on one’s experiences are central activities (3.4.2 Designing Teams and Assigning Roles and 4.2.3 Personal Development Methodology). |
|
Internship-based |
Efforts are directed towards acquiring and applying knowledge in community, government, or industrial settings (2.3.8 Learning Process Methodology) |
|
Project-based |
Research-based |
Seminar-based |
Clinic-based |
Internship-based |
|
|
Competencies |
M |
H |
M |
H |
M |
|
Movement |
H |
M |
M |
M |
M |
|
Accomplishments |
H |
M |
L |
M |
H |
|
Experiences |
H |
H |
L |
H |
H |
|
Integrated Performance |
H |
H |
M |
H |
M |
|
Client Driven |
Market Driven |
Service Driven |
|
|
End Product |
Tested implementation of concept |
Marketable concept |
Workable solution |
|
Recipient |
Sponsor |
Investor |
End user |
|
Product Attributes |
Novel, adds value, documented, meets requirements |
Competitive, adaptable, attractive |
Usable, maintainable, user-sensitive |
|
Constraints |
Fixed budget, defined context, defined customer |
Competitors, time to market, market size |
Life cycle, user skills, cultural values |
|
Team Composition |
Diverse technical skill set |
Technical & business skill set |
Technical & social skill set |
|
Collaborators |
Technical expert, senior manager |
User focus group, production & marketing experts |
Policy expert, manufacturing expert, users |